Archaeology of Gender
Overview
This module introduces students to the archaeology of gender. Topics
include: (1) how gender biases have affected archaeological research
and interpretations as well as the participation of women in the profession;
(2) the relationship of gender to changes in sociopolitical organization
(using the Hohokam as a case study); and (3) gender identities and their
expression in the archaeological record.
Lesson Objectives/Reading Journal Topics
By the end of the lesson, students should be able to:
- Identify the ways that archaeological studies explicitly or implicitly
incorporate gender in their research designs and interpretations.
- Describe the relationship between political changes and gender relations
in one case study (the Hohokam Pre-Classic to Classic transition) and
how this relationship was studied archaeologically.
- Discuss the problems with categorizing sex and gender in terms of
binary oppositions and how these categories have affected archaeological
interpretations. How can archaeology contribute to a broader conceptualization
of gender identities?
Matrix Principles
Diverse Interests and Social Relevance (the presence of gender bias
in purportedly objective studies, problems with normative categories
of gender identity and sexuality, the effects of gender bias on the
profession, and actions to address that bias).
Instructional Procedures
Class 1
Readings
Johnson, Matthew
1999 Archaeological Theory: An Introduction. Blackwell Publishers,
Oxford.
Chapter 8
Crown, Patricia L, and Suzanne K. Fish
1996 Gender and Status in the Hohokam Pre-Classic to Classic Transition.
American Anthropologist 98(4):803-817.
Format: Discussion
In the first part of the class, we consider how gender bias has affected
archaeological interpretations. We discuss assumptions of male dominance,
the emphasis on studying what are assumed to be men’s activities,
and the position that gender is “hard to study” in the archaeological
record. We then address how the archaeology of gender questions these
underlying assumptions and leads to more robust interpretations. Gender
biases in the profession, and how they have and have not changed over
time, are briefly discussed in this class (and are addressed more fully
in the module on equity).
In the second part of the class, we closely examine and discuss an archaeological
study of gender and status, Crown and Fish’s article on the Hohokam
pre-Classic to Classic transition. In this example, students are able
to see how gender is linked to broader sociopolitical changes. As with
the other archaeological case studies presented in the course, we also
review the links between research questions, evidence, and interpretations.
The authors also demonstrate how different activities are associated
with different genders, based on a cross-cultural study.
Class 2
Readings
Arnold, Bettina
2002 "Sein und Werden": Gender as Process in Mortuary Ritual.
In In Pursuit of Gender, edited by Sarah M. Nelson and Myriam
Rosen-Ayalon, pp. 239-256. AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California.
Weglian, Emily
2001 Grave Goods Do Not a Gender Make. In Gender and the Archaeology
of Death, edited by Bettina Arnold and Nancy L. Wicker, pp. 137-155.
AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California.
Format
Before moving on to the assigned articles, we discuss the concept of
gender as a binary opposition that results from normative ideas about
biological sex and sexual orientation. It is also related to the social
dominance of one sex. Within this normative framework, gender or sexual
ambiguity is seen as deviant, something that needs to be fixed or punished.
Examples include:
- the persistent surgical “correction” of intersexed persons;
- the stigma of homosexuality, homophobic violence; and
- resistance when members of one sex enter the perceived domain of the
other (the discouragement of “girlish” behavior in boys,
violence against women in traditionally male domains—e.g., the
cases of harassment and rape of women cadets in the Air Force academy
that have recently appeared in the news).
Archaeology, which reveals the human experience over time and space,
can question and overturn normative ideas about gender and sex. For
the remainder of the class, we discuss articles by Arnold and Weglian
that demonstrate how sex and gender identities (and their range and
variation) can be studied in mortuary assemblages. Arnold’s discussion
includes sex and gender as continua and how transvestism and multivestism
can be understood and studied in the archaeological record. Weglian
looks at a late Neolithic/early Bronze Age cemetery in southwest Germany
and argues that the pattern of grave goods demonstrates the existence
of 3-4 gender categories. Again, students are asked to examine the links
between questions, evidence, analysis, and interpretation.