Bender studied for a PhD on the Neolithic of Northern France at the Institute of Archaeology, London. From 1967-68 she was Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago. In 1972 Bender was a Lecturer in the Department of Extra-Mural Studies of London University. Her first monograph Farming in Prehistory, published in 1975, was described as a 'painstaking compilation' of archaeological evidence on the development of agriculture. Later she moved to the Department of Anthropology, UCL, being one of several material-culture focused anthropologists within the department in the late 1970s and early 1980s alongside Daniel Miller and John Gledhill. Bender's later work utilised a phenomenological approach to landscape, collaborating with Christopher Tilley and Sue Hamilton. Her study of Stonehenge is considered a seminal work in considering archaeological sites as historically dynamic, with numerous stakeholders.
Selected publications
Bender, B. and Phillips, P. 1972. The early farmers of France. Antiquity 46: 97-105.
Bender, B. 1975. Farming in Prehistory. London: John Baker.
Goodall, V.M. and Bender, B. 1975. The Quest for Man. London: Phaidon.
Bender, B. 1978. Gatherer‐hunter to farmer: A social perspective. World Archaeology 10: 204-222.
Bender, B. 1985. Emergent tribal formations in the American Midcontinent. American Antiquity 50 : 52-62.
Bender, B. 1986. The Archaeology of Brittany, Normandy, and the Channel Islands. London: Faber and Faber.
Bender, B. 1989. towards a theory of social evolution - on State systems and ideological shells. In Miller, D., Rowlands, M.J. and Tilley, C.Y. Domination and Resistance. London: Unwin Hyman.
Bender, B. and Edmonds, M. 1992. Stonehenge: whose past? What past? Tourism Management 13: 355-357.
Bender, B. 1993 Landscape: Politics and Perspectives. Oxford: Berg.
Bender, B, Hamilton, S., and Tilley, C. 1997. Leskernick: Stone worlds, alternative narratives, nested landscapes. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 63: 147-178.
Bender, B. 1998. Stonehenge: Making Space. Oxford: Berg.
Hamilton, S., Tilley, C. and Bender, B. 1999. Bronze Age stone worlds of Bodmin Moor: excavating Leskernick. Archaeology International 3: 13–17.
Bender, B. 2000. ‘Investigating Landscape and Identity in the Neolithic’, in A. Ritchie Neolithic Orkney in its European Context, pp. 223–230. Cambridge: McDonald Institute Monographs.
Bender, B. 2001. Landscapes on-the-move. Journal of Social Anthropology 1: 75-89.
Bender, B. and Winer, M. 2001. Contested Landscapes: Movement, Exile and Place. Oxford: Berg.
Bender, B. 2002. Time and landscape. Current Anthropology 43: S103-S112.
