Gender Transformations in Prehistoric and Archaic Societies

Springer eBooks, 2013

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a speci fi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein.

JULIA KATHARINA KOCH, WIEBKE KIRLEIS (eds)GENDER TRANSFORMATIONS in Prehistoric and Archaic Societies, 2019

All articles in this publication have peen peer-reviewed. For more information see www.sidestone.nl

Scales of the transformation in Prehistoric and Archaic Societies, 2019

enables the bundled presentation of current research outcomes of the multiple aspects of socio-environmental transformations in ancient societies. As editors of this publication platform, we are pleased to be able to publish monographs with detailed basic data and comprehensive interpretations from different case studies and landscapes as well as the extensive output from numerous scientific meetings and international workshops. The book series is dedicated to the fundamental research questions of CRC 1266, dealing with transformations on different temporal, spatial and social scales, here defined as processes leading to a substantial and enduring reorganization of socio-environmental interaction patterns. What are the substantial transformations that describe human development from 15,000 years ago to the beginning of the Common Era? How did interactions between the natural environment and human populations change over time? What role did humans play as cognitive actors trying to deal with changing social and environmental conditions? Which factors triggered the transformations that led to substantial societal and economic inequality? The understanding of human practices within often intertwined social and environmental contexts is one of the most fundamental aspects of archaeological research. Moreover, in current debates, the dynamics and feedback involved in human-environmental relationships have become a major issue, particularly when looking at the detectable and sometimes devastating consequences of human interference with nature. Archaeology, with its long-term perspective on human societies and landscapes, is in the unique position to trace and link comparable phenomena in the past, to study human involvement with the natural environment, to investigate the impact of humans on nature, and to outline the consequences of environmental change on human societies. Modern interdisciplinary research enables us to reach beyond simplistic monocausal lines of explanation and overcome evolutionary perspectives. Looking at the period from 15,000 to 1 BCE, CRC 1266 takes a diachronic view in order to investigate transformations involved in the development of Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers, horticulturalists, early agriculturalists, early metallurgists as well as early state societies, thus covering a wide array of societal formations and environmental conditions. The volume Gender Transformations in Prehistoric and Archaic Societies shows that gender matters on all societal levels and throughout times; be it in reconstructed social and economic organisation in research on prehistoric times, in the investigation and recent perception of women's roles in past and modern societies or as expressed in the still low representation of females in higher academic positions of knowledge production in archaeology. The proceedings are the outcome of the inter-national Workshop on Gender Transformations in Prehistoric and Archaic Societies, which took place from 8-10 March 2018 in Kiel, Germany, organised within the framework of CRC 1266 Scales of Transformation. The workshop provided a platform to stimulate discussions on gender transformations in the past and the effects of gender inequality on scientific discourses in our research community, which was much appreciated by the numerous international participants, who promoted and enjoyed the cross-cultural academic exchange. This volume is being presented in the 21st century, about 100 years after female suffrage was established in Germany. Nevertheless, feminists are still confronted with draw-back mechanisms, leading, e.g., in Switzerland to demonstrations by women, who continue to have to demand equal pay, or in Germany, where females once more have to fight for sexual self-determination because gynaecologists are juristically punished if they inform the public about medical treatment concerning abortion. This shows that even today, gender equality and gender freedom are not self-evident, and that their necessity has to actively be kept alive in the general consciousness. Gender transformations, the topic of the workshop and this volume, also accompany our discussions on societal and environmental transformations, in particular when dealing, e.g., with material culture or settlement patterns in the past, but also with the question of scientific actors and gendered bias in doing research. By gendering the archaeological discussion on transformation processes within the framework of our CRC, we want to assimilate and stimulate the impulses of gender-sensitive research and processes that are currently on the European and the worldwide agenda. We are very thankful, in particular to Julia Katharina Koch, for the organisation of the workshop and for her engagement with the editing of this book. Her expertise in gender archaeology and her long-lasting engagement with the German association FemArc e. V. and the EAA-community Archaeology and Gender in Europe (AGE) enabled her to bundle an impressive number of contributions on gender transformations for this volume. We are especially grateful to Nicole Schwerdtfeger and Carsten Reckweg for the preparation of the figures for publication and to Katharina Fuchs and Hermann Gorbahn for controlling the editing flow and for further support with technical and communication issues. We also wish to thank Karsten Wentink, Corné van Woerdekom and Eric van den Bandt from Sidestone Press for their responsive support in realizing this volume.

Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2019

Gender in the European Neolithic has seen little debate, despite major scholarly interest in identity and social relationships. This article considers how gender operated in the Linearbandkeramik (LBK, c. 5500–5000 cal. BC), the first farming culture of central Europe. A new theoretical approach is developed from the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, and the feminist philosopher Braidotti, proposing that how difference and variation are conceived is an important element in how identity is experienced and performed. The concept of ‘difference-within-itself’ is introduced and applied to an assemblage of c. 2350 burials from the LBK via correspondence analysis. The results of this analysis are combined with variation in daily activities and health between malesexed bodies and female-sexed bodies to argue that differences between males and females shaped lifeways in the LBK, providing different and varied ways of participating in social life. It is concluded that there was diversity and fluidity in female identities, while male identities had more limited possibilities and were subject to further social constraints. The implications of these gendered differences for models of LBK social organization are then considered.

2018

It is notable how little gender archaeology has been written for the European Neolithic, in contrast to the following Bronze Age. We cannot blame this absence on a lack of empirical data or on archaeologists' theoretical naïveté. Instead, we argue that this absence reflects the fact that gender in this period was qualitatively different in form from the types of gender that emerged in Europe from about 3000 cal BC onwards; the latter still form the norm in European and American contexts today, and our standard theories and methodologies are designed to uncover this specific form of gender. In Bronze Age gender systems, gender was mostly binary, associated with stable, lifelong identities expressed in recurrent complexes of gendered symbolism. In contrast, Neolithic gender appears to have been less firmly associated with personal identity and more contextually relevant; it slips easily through our methodological nets. In proposing this " contextual gender " model for Neolithic gender, we both open up new understandings of gender in the past and present and pose significant questions for our models of gender more widely. Es llamativo lo poco que se ha escrito sobre arqueología de género en el Neolítico europeo en comparación con el período posterior, la Edad del Bronce. Esta escasez no puede atribuirse a la falta de datos empíricos o a la ingenuidad de los arqueólogos. Más bien, como proponemos aquí, esta ausencia refleja el hecho de que hay una diferencia cualitativa entre las manifestaciones de género en este período y los tipos de género que emergieron en Europa a partir de 3000 aC. Estos últimos siguen constituyendo la norma en contextos europeos y americanos actuales, y nuestras teorías y métodos están diseñados para analizar estas formas específicas de género. En los sistemas de género de la Edad del Bronce, el género consistió mayoritariamente en una identidad binaria asociada a identidades estables que persistían durante toda una vida y que fueron expresadas en complejos recurrentes de símbolos de género. En contraste, el género en el Neolítico parece haber tenido una asociación más tenue con la identidad personal; en cambio, parece haber sido más relevante a nivel contextual. Por lo tanto, las manifestaciones de género del Neolítico se nos escapan a través de nuestras redes metodológicas. Al proponer un modelo de 'género contextual' para el Neolítico mediante la identificación del cómo y del porqué de esta diferencia, ofrecemos nuevas formas de comprender el género en el pasado y presente del Neolítico, planteando al mismo tiempo cuestiones de relevancia más general para nuestros modelos de género.

J. K. Koch & W. Kirleis (eds.): GENDER TRANSFORMATIONS in Prehistoric and Archaic Societies. Sidestone Press, Leiden, 2019

A reconsideration of some previous archaeological interpretations of gender may offer much more variability and freedom to our current understanding of gender identity. The perception of gender in archaeological interpretations commonly reflects our current social reality. In the Western Christian worldview, the traditional gender categories of men and women were based on biology and presume the primacy of reproduction in human societies. Alternative social roles were judged as deviations by the biased majority. The extremely difficult position of homosexuals in 20th-century Western society was caused mainly by the lack of an appropriate and commonly recognised gender category that could accommodate them. Not surprisingly, the concept of transsexualism developed in cultures that only recognised and valued two gender categories, based on biological sex. Tribes in North America and Siberia had gender categories ready for such cases.

Gender Transformations in Prehistoric and Archaic Societies, 2019

Southern Italy from the 8th to 4th centuries BCE was an area of intensive cultural contact and exchange. Even prior to the Roman conquest, local communities experienced significant social and cultural change. It will be argued here that these changes also had a considerable impact on gender roles. The paper furthermore addresses the impact of time and space on the development of social roles connected to gender, both on the subjective, personal and on the objective, absolute scale. It will be demonstrated that there seems to be a remarkable shift in gender conceptions in pre-Roman southern Italy. The study discusses the role that the new, eastern Mediterranean influences and people may have played in this process, looking at possible forms of interaction, disposition, and agency, both on the indigenous and on the immigrant side. Finally, these observations and suggestions will be compared with an apparently analogous and better documented situation in the colonial past and its long-term consequences. While one should exercise caution in drawing parallels between the protohistoric and recent pasts, it seems that strikingly similar processes, especially regarding the development of gender conceptions and inequalities, can be observed – in both cases leading to the empowerment of the male side and a de-powerment of the female side within the indigenous communities.

American Journal of Archaeology 117.4, 2013

Spencer-Wood continues to bolster feminist historical archaeologies and Springer gains another strong addition to its ever-growing Contributions to Global Historical Archaeology series. There is much diversity packed into these pages. Chapters range from synthetic overviews of tea drinking and feminist theory to detailed case studies of individual reformers and their households. There is global scope. Massachusetts, California, and New York all receive individual attention, sharing space with studies of South Africa, Sweden, and the Pacific. The 19th century-which saw the entrenchment/ negotiation of the titular spheres and is so often the focus of feminist archaeologies-receives the most attention. Collectively, however, authors cover the early modern period through 1940; there is even a chapter on medieval Spain. Studies of the later 20th century could have made connections between these early periods and present-day gender roles more explicit. Nevertheless, the editor has assembled a refreshing chronological breadth. Material practices of Anglo, European, Mexican, Native, and African Americans are addressed. Sites are both urban and rural. Chapters grapple with cultural entanglements (of reformer and reformed, colonized and colonizer, immigrant and native, male and female, etc.). There is some engagement with historical masculinities and subaltern gender identities, usually in the context of domestic life. The emphasis of the editor (and the all-women contributors) remains on middle and working class heterosexual women as social agents. Spencer-Wood organizes the volume into five thematic sections after her introductory chapter, a roadmap to the collection that defines its central goals as denaturalizing (1) the separate spheres philosophy and (2) inherited gender stereotypes. While it is no longer revolutionary to approach gender as a cultural construct tied to race, age, and class, much work remains to be done clarifying this important topic. The volume achieves this end both through synthesis and microhistorical exposition. Part 1 demonstrates that the ideal separation of the spheres never existed in practice. Rather, men's and women's public and private experiences overlapped and entangled. Materialbased approaches are particularly good at demonstrating the fallacy of the spheres via spatial and practical evidence. Chapters in this section focus on the presence of the public sphere of social reform within the supposed private sphere of the home. Annie Gray discusses the long history of women and tea, concluding that women manipulated this iconic beverage as much to challenge normative gender roles as to reinforce them. Deborah L. Rotman studies Arts and Crafts style production within a feminine collective in Deerfield, Massachusetts, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Colonial revival nostalgia provided a model of gender equity for these women. Kim Christensen offers material biographies of two female reformers Historical Archaeology, 2015, 49(4):154-156. Permission to reprint required.