Career
She is known for her contributions to the archaeology of gender and ethnoarchaeology. She is the author of What This Awl Means: Feminist Archaeology at a Wahpeton Dakota Village, a book which combines Spector"s autobiography with the excavation of the Little Rapids site (also known as Inyan Ceyaka Otonwe) in Scott County, Minnesota and a fictional story of a young Dakota woman who lived in the village. While a professor at the University of Minnesota, Spector helped found the women"s studies program at the university, and chaired the program from 1981 to 1984.