The Archaeological Challenge of Gender asks, what do we know about the relations between men and women in past societies, and on what basis is this knowledge built? Although sources of data are meagre and often indirect, this book plays particular attention to exploring gender relations in a way that acknowledges its complexity.
Contributors show how difficult questions on gender relationships in past societies are, avoiding preconceived ideas and naive reasoning. The book starts with a grounding introduction that takes readers through questions such as: what is gender archaeology? What are its objectives and methods, but also its shortcomings and dead ends? How can social anthropology contribute to our knowledge of the gender relations of disappeared societies? In what way have these real or, more often, supposed gender relations been put at the service of a discourse on the present society? Chapters then tackle specific themes using case studies from around the globe that highlight common issues, controversy and methodological problems.
Taking a critical approach and addressing the way knowledge is constructed in this field, this book is for students and researchers in Archaeology, Anthropology and Gender Studies.
The Archaeological Challenge of Gender asks, what do we know about the relations between men and women in past societies, and on what basis is this knowledge built? Although sources of data are meagre and often indirect, this book plays particular attention to exploring gender relations in a way that acknowledges its complexity.
Introduction; The past of gender and its contemporary stakes;
1.
Prehistoric gender: an instrumentalized narrative;
2. Gender in the past:
trends, dead ends and developments in the archaeology of gender and women;
Setting the scene;
3. Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*In
Archaeology);
4. Sex and gender among monkeys and apes; Past and present
biases in hunter-gatherer studies;
5. Pink Guns: ancient huntresses and
modern biases;
6. Strawman the Hunter;
7. Revisiting Late Palaeolithic
societies from a gender perspective: limits and possibilities; Primitive
matriarchy: new insights into an old issue;
8. What myths tell us about the
age of male domination;
9. On the Neolithic Great Goddess in South-East
Europe; Interpreting data;
10. The Dame du Cavillon: fantasies and
realities;
11. Giving voice to the dead: the roles and status of Neolithic
men and women;
12. Blossoming in the shadow: Women in western Zhou China
(1045 771 BCE);
13. Occams battle-axe: Some thoughts about responsible
archaeology spurred by Bj 581
Anne Augereau is a prehistorian at Inrap (French Institute of preventive archaeological research). She is a specialist in the Neolithic period, with a particular interest in lithic technology, mining archaeology, funerary archaeology and gender archaeology. She has directed numerous archaeological excavations.
Christophe Darmangeat is senior lecturer in social anthropology (Université Paris Cité, LADYSS). His research, at the crossroads of social anthropology and prehistory, has focused in particular on the emergence of gender, wealth inequalities and the forms of collective violence, using an evolutionary and materialist approach. He runs a blog, lahuttedesclasses.net.
