Archaeology and Women

Ancient and Modern Issues

Sue Hamilton, Ruth D Whitehouse, Katherine I Wright, Sue Hamilton, Ruth D Whitehouse, Katherine I Wright

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781598742237
• eBook ISBN: 9781315434117
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

Archaeology and Women draws together from a variety of angles work currently being done within a contemporary framework on women in archaeology. One section of this collection of original articles addresses the historical and contemporary roles of women in the discipline. Another attempts to link contemporary archaeological theory and practice to work on women and gender in other fields. Finally, this volume presents a wide diversity of theoretical approaches and methods of study of women in the ancient world, representing a cross section of work being carried out today under the broad banner of gender archaeology. The geographical and chronological range of the contributions is also wide, from Southeast Asia and South America to Western Asia, Egypt and Europe, from Great Britain to Greece, and from 10,000 years ago to the recent past. An ideal sampler for courses dealing with women and archaeology.

25PART I

THE STUDY OF GENDER AND WOMEN IN ARCHAEOLOGY26

27GENDER ARCHAEOLOGY AND ARCHAEOLOGY OF WOMEN: DO WE NEED BOTH?

RUTH D WHITEHOUSE

This paper is a discussion of the present state and possible future directions of gender studies in archaeology. I identify two distinctive approaches, characterised here as ‘archaeology of women’ and ‘gender archaeology’. I suggest that, while they have rather different aims and methodologies, both have a role to play in what is still an immature and developing field of study.

By ‘archaeology of women’, I mean the archaeological equivalent of women’s history or anthropology of women: a focus on the 50% of past populations that has been neglected in earlier androcentric studies. Studies in the archaeology of women have had three main foci. First, they have concentrated on making women visible in the archaeological record, no longer subsumed within the generic category ‘man’, a term used to refer both to humanity as a whole and to the male half of it, thus serving to generalise the male experience and render invisible the separate experience of women. Second, there has been a focus on challenging the stereotypical representations of women’s roles and relations in the past, which, in the absence of explicit discussion, had been allowed to stand as assumed universals of human existence, instead of projections onto the past of present-day ethnocentric cultural norms. The third focus of work within this framework has been the re-evaluation of women’s contribution to past societies, including re-examination of women’s possible roles in what have traditionally been regarded as milestones of social evolution, such as the development of farming.

‘Gender archaeology’ is a more inclusive term. In studies under this heading, gender is regarded as a system, concerning men as well as women, masculinity (or masculinities) as well as femininity (or femininities). The foci of study in gender archaeology are varied. One is the challenge to essentialist binary systems of gender classification and the search for third (or more) genders. Another line of research investigates the intersection of gender with other categories of social organisation, such as age, status, and ethnicity. There has been a 28tendency also to recognise and investigate different aspects of gender, such as roles, relations, ideologies, and identities. Some theorists have concentrated on researching the ‘nature’ of gender, exploring models developed in other disciplines, ranging from essentialist biological determinism to equally extreme social constructionism, involving gender as transacted or performed. ‘In-between’ theories that recognise and explore the complexities of biology/culture interactions in the sphere of gender have yet to appear on any significant scale in archaeology.

Both the archaeology of women and gender archaeology stem from the same origin, namely, feminist scholarship, which identified major androcentric biases in past interpretations (although some would argue that gender archaeology, whatever its origin, should not now be linked to any feminist agenda). In subjects where gender has been a focus of research for much longer than in archaeology, such as history or anthropology, these two types of approach have been to some extent sequential. An initial phase concentrating on the study of women is often described as remedial, and is followed by a more inclusive approach as the subject matures, looking at maleness as well as femaleness and at many different aspects of gender (eg, Wylie 1991: 31–32).

Such a sequential development would seem to be progressive and an appropriate model for archaeology to follow. The concentration on women, characteristic of the remedial phase, can be criticised from a number of perspectives. First, it tends simply to substitute a new female bias for the previous male one. Second, it can lead to what is sometimes called ‘pseudo-inclusion’, in which the study of women is recognised as valid, but becomes a specialism, comparable in archaeology to something like the study of lithics, which any individual archaeologist may choose to concentrate on or not. Further, it is studied mostly by women, becoming effectively ghettoised and marginal to mainstream studies within the discipline. By contrast, gender is often recognised as a fundamental dimension of social life, which no one can afford to ignore. If this is the case, gender archaeology should aid in the study of women, as well as of men and other previously neglected social groups such as children and old people. The logic of this argument is that gender archaeology is an improvement on the archaeology of women, and this is the view to which I would subscribe in principle. However—and this is the starting point of this essay—there have been a number of developments in gender archaeology, especially in Europe, which are worrying and, in my opinion, unhelpful if allowed to proceed unchallenged. They include critiques of gender essentialism, the neglect of biology (particularly reproduction), and the abandonment or dilution of the concept of power in the study of gender relations. These topics are discussed in the following sections.

For this account, I look in particular at three recent textbooks: Sarah Nelson’s Gender in Archaeology: Analyzing Power and Prestige (1997), Roberta Gilchrist’s Gender and Archaeology: Contesting the Past (1999), and Marie Louise Sørensen’s Gender Archaeology (2000). I also draw some examples from 29two volumes of edited papers: Jenny Moore and Eleanor Scott’s Invisible Peoples and Processes: Writing Gender and Childhood into European Archaeology (1997) and Tracey Sweeley’s Manifesting Power: Gender and the Interpretation of Power in Archaeology (1999). To some extent, these volumes can be taken to illustrate a distinction between a North American (Nelson and Sweeley) and a European tradition of gender research (Gilchrist, Sørensen, Moore and Scott). This is undoubtedly a simplistic distinction, and I would not wish to imply that all gender research by North American scholars is of one type and that by European scholars of another, but I do feel that the problems I discuss are particularly characteristic of European writing on the subject; they are associated with broader developments in archaeological theory in Europe, falling broadly within the scope of postprocessualism. These developments have influenced American archaeology to a lesser extent.

CRITIQUES OF GENDER ESSENTIALISM

Gender essentialism can be described as the assumption of a universal binary dichotomy between women and men and corresponding notions of universal features of femininity and masculinity. Critiques of such essentialism in archaeology have appeared in a number of contexts (see, most recently, Gero and Scattolin 2002), but it has been at its most marked in what I describe here as the European tradition. For instance, Brian Boyd, commenting on Ian Hodder’s 1990 book, The Domestication of Europe, writes about the tendency ‘to fall back on structural dichotomies which simply reproduce traditional analytical categories man/woman, wild/domestic and thus implicitly rely on notions of universal femininity or masculinity’ (Boyd 1997: 28). Hodder himself, writing in the same volume, makes an even more radical critique: ‘But even the use of the term “gender” would appear to involve defining some universal, essentialist category. The very notion of gender, even the question of whether “it” can be discerned as a distinct category of relationship or identity or domain may have varied through time’ (Hodder 1997: 75).

These authors and others are concerned—rightly—with the risks of imposing ethnocentric categories on the archaeological past and, in true postmodern spirit, are challenging all of the analytical categories that are usually employed. However, there are problems with this approach. First, there is a real contrast with studies in disciplines other than archaeology. In fields that deal with living people, such as sociology or anthropology, or with well-documented historical societies, there is a built-in limit to the scope of any charge of gender essentialism. Scholars in these disciplines find that everyone, or the vast majority of people, in the societies they study can be clearly identified as either women or men—however variably defined, socially and individually—and that this distinction has a marked effect on the course of people’s lives. If we contrast this with prehistory, European prehistory in particular, we find that, in some of the 30literature at least, it is peopled with shadowy individuals of multiple genders, gender-benders, or even no gender at all, while at the same time, attributes traditionally taken as indicators of maleness or femaleness are reinterpreted in other ways. A few examples will serve to illustrate this point.

Tim Yates, in a very interesting essay on an archaeology of the body, looks at the Bronze Age rock art of Sweden (Yates 1993). The human figures in this corpus have traditionally been divided into those with a phallus shown and those without, often equated with men and women, respectively. Yates challenges this argument, particularly the straightforward association of the penis with maleness and its absence with femaleness, which he considers a culturally specific Western notion. Instead, he argues that in Bronze Age Scandinavian society, masculine identity had to be guaranteed by signs applied to the surface of the body (the signs in question here being the phallus, and also weapons, on the human figures; and on the deer representations, antlers). It follows from this that the figures lacking phalli and weapons are not necessarily female: they could be male children or adolescent boys who had not yet been assigned cultural masculinity. In fact, Yates implies that this is the most likely interpretation, with the two groups of carvings representing uninitiated and initiated males, respectively. While there is much of value in Yates’ account, it has to be noted that one result of his reinterpretation is the exclusion of women from the picture of Scandinavian Bronze Age society—a very ‘old’ outcome of a new approach.

A second example is Louise Hitchcock’s study of ambiguously gendered figures in the art of Minoan Crete (Hitchcock 2000). In this article, Hitchcock argues that, although in Minoan art in general one can normally recognise clearly defined male and female genders, there are two notable exceptions: the ‘Priest-King’ figure in the fresco of this name and the taureador in the bull-leaping fresco, both from Knossos. In both of these representations, the gender indicators are ambiguous and Hitchcock argues that this ambiguity was deliberate. She writes that ‘Minoan Crete existed within a contextual framework of Bronze Age cultures where sexual ambiguity, multiple genders, plurality and difference played a sanctioned role in the dominant social order’ (Hitchcock 2000: 79). In the same volume, Naomi Hamilton’s paper on sex and gender in prehistoric figurine studies also challenges the validity of recognising two mutually exclusive categories of male and female in figurine studies, referring to the existence of ambiguous and dual-sexed figurines, possibly reflecting the existence of dual-sexed individuals or gender-crossers, while the presence of many sexless figurines may indicate that sex was not a major structuring factor in society (Hamilton 2000). These studies all offer interesting and valid observations, but they also serve to deflect attention from the existence of clearly defined men and women in the societies in question and their probable different experiences of life and death.

A second problem with the critiques of gender essentialism is that they tend to have a rather paralysing effect. Of course, all analytical categories are 31constructs and vary critically with perspective. However, we have to start somewhere. If we are not allowed to use women and men, or even gender, as analytical categories, we seem to be precluded from studying anything to do with femaleness and maleness (whatever we want to call it) at all.¹ In practice, even those writers in what I have called the European tradition do tend to use the terms ‘women’ and ‘men’, implicitly treating them as meaningful categories, at the same time as deploring gender essentialism (a contradiction not explicitly dealt with in any of the works quoted here). The fact is that gender fluidity and multiple genders have become trendy in prehistoric studies. While of course there are legitimate issues to study here, and many authors, including those quoted above, are making valuable contributions, this is not true of everyone. There is a tendency to use these concepts as a short-cut to demonstrate informed status and political correctness. Hitchock’s account of being criticised for gender essentialism by a discussant at a conference (Hitchock 2000: 69) parallels my own experience: I have been at several conferences where people who are not major contributors to the field of gender studies themselves have leapt up to criticise other people’s papers on the grounds of gender essentialism. For these critics, if one hasn’t identified several supernumerary genders, or a seamless spectrum from male to female, one is regarded as hopelessly blinkered and ethnocentric.

Leaving aside these caricature reactions, let us return to the serious work on the subject. Where is all the material on multiple genders, gender fluidity, and gender transgression coming from? I think there are three main sources, of different kinds.

The immediate academic context is provided by the shifting sands of postmodern theorising, where no categories or stances are stable and perspective is all. Since archaeology is a late arrival at this theoretical ball (as it usually is), there are plenty of practitioners in other disciplines to copy and no shortage of material to draw on.

A second source is the present-day social context of the times we live in. Attitudes towards sexuality and gender (closely connected in our own society at least) are changing rapidly; moreover, both gender and sexuality are considered major components of personal identity and therefore of great interest to everyone. It is surely not by chance that changing attitudes in our own times should coincide with challenges to traditional categories in interpretations of the past. In this respect, the search for multiple genders and gender transgression in prehistory is just as ethnocentric as the binary male/female dichotomy that is criticised (referring simply to different phases of our own recent history). It is arguable, at least, that concentration on the individual and issues of personal identity represents a peculiarly contemporary concern and may not be very relevant to prehistoric societies.

The third source is ethnography—the records made by anthropologists of societies with different ways from our own of conceptualising and organising 32gender, which turn out to be multiple and varied. Some paragraphs ago, I stated that those who study present-day societies, including anthropologists, describe societies in which all, or most, people are clearly either male or female. Now I seem to be contradicting this statement. I return to this contradiction later and show that it is more apparent than real, but first I describe some of the social and symbolic phenomena that anthropologists have described in this context.

Additional Genders

Additional genders (and additional sexes) and categories that collapse our customary division between culture and biology do occur ethnographically. I am concerned here with institutionalised third or additional genders, not issues of personal gender ambiguity. Well-known examples are the hijras of India (Nanda 1990; 1993) and the two-spirit people (formerly called berdaches) found in many North American groups (Blackwood 1984; Roscoe 1993; Whitehead 1981; Williams 1997). However, such occurrences are far from universal, and many societies have binary gender systems as rigid as those of traditional Western patriarchal societies. Gilbert Herdt, an anthropologist with a particular interest in the subject, provides a useful account in his 1993 book, Third Sex, Third Gender. He summarises the situation as follows:

We must conclude that it is indeed rather difficult to create and maintain third sex and third gender categories … yet, nonetheless this achievement is by no means rare and is, indeed, to be expected as part of the historical, social and psychic landscape in a good number of times and places. … Conversely, sexual dimorphism is not inevitable, a universal structure. Certainly it is celebrated in many places but it is not privileged at all times and places. (Herdt 1993b: 80)

What we should deduce from this is that we should certainly be looking for additional genders in the archaeological past. However, if we fail to find them, it is not necessarily because of ethnocentric blindness: many societies apart from our own have dichotomous binary gender systems. A second point we should recognise is that, where additional genders exist, they involve very small numbers of people. I would not argue from this that we should therefore ignore them; however, this fact does pose problems for us as archaeologists, in that such low numbers tend to disappear in the margin of error of preservation and/or any statistical procedure. If we wish to find such groups archaeologically, we need to find other, qualitative methods to explore them.

Fluctuating Gender, Gendered Substances, Objects, Attributes, and Acts

While institutionalised third (and more) genders are relatively rare, it is common for societies to conceptualise gender quite differently from the way we do. We tend to regard gender as part of personal identity, attached to the individual 33and normally fixed for life: changes in gender or sex identity represent profound and often traumatic decisions and are rare. Other societies have different ways of thinking. For example, they may think in terms of gendered substances that are present in all individuals and vary in quantity and proportion at different times in the life cycle.

One example is provided by the Hua of New Guinea, studied by Anna Meigs (Meigs 1984; 1990). The Hua believe that there are female substances (menstrual blood and closely linked parturitional fluids and vaginal secret...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• Introduction, Sue Hamilton, Ruth D Whitehouse, Katherine I Wright
• PART I: THE STUDY OF GENDER AND WOMEN IN ARCHAEOLOGY
• PART II: WOMEN IN ARCHAEOLOGY
• PART III: WOMEN IN ANTIQUITY
• Index
• About the Authors