Gender Archaeology

by Stig Sø; rensen, Marie Louise

• ISBN13: 9780745620152
• ISBN10: 0745620159
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-08-22
• Publisher: Polity

Summary

This major new textbook explores the relations between gender and archaeology, providing an innovative and important account of how material culture is used in the construction of gender. Throughout this lively and accessible text, Sorensen engages with the question of how gender is materially constituted, and examines the intersection of social and material concerns from the Palaeolithic Age to the present day.Part One discusses a range of important general issues, beginning with an overview of the recent role of gender and gender relations in our appropriation of past societies. After introducing the debate about feminist or gender archaeology, Sorensen examines archaeology's concern with the sex/gender distinction, the nature of negotiation, and feminist epistemological claims in relation to archaeology. In Part Two, the author focuses on the materiality of gender, exploring it through case studies ranging from prehistory to contemporary society. Food, dress, space and contact are examined in turn, to show how they express and negotiate gender roles. This illustrated textbook will be essential reading for students and scholars in archaeology, anthropology, material culture studies and women's studies.

Author Biography

Jesus College, Cambridge (affiliation)

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	viii
Acknowledgements	x
Part I
Gender into the Past	3	(13)
Gender and archaeology: an introduction	3	(4)
Arguing for gender archaeology	7	(3)
The need for theorizing	10	(2)
Outline of an argument	12	(4)
Gender and Archaeology: a History	16	(25)
The development of feminist critique and gender archaeology	16	(4)
The relatively late inclusion of gender in archaeology?	20	(4)
The presentation of women in archaeology and prehistory	24	(10)
Epistemology, gender and archaeology	34	(3)
The nature of gender archaeology: contextualization	37	(4)
Theorizing Gender: Sex and Gender	41	(19)
The sex-gender discussion	42	(3)
What is sex?-current discussions within archaeology	45	(7)
What is gender?-current discussions and archaeological practice	52	(2)
On the relationship between sex and gender	54	(6)
Theorizing Gender: Negotiation and Practice	60	(14)
Gender negotiation	60	(3)
Agency and gender in archaeology	63	(2)
The agent, the individual and archaeology	65	(2)
Woman or women: the question of cross-cultural generalizations	67	(3)
Gender (and) archaeology	70	(4)
The Materiality of Gender: the Gendered Object	74	(25)
Gender and the object	74	(2)
The nature of objects	76	(6)
The materiality of gender: communication and practice	82	(7)
Constructing gender through things, making objects gendered	89	(10)
Part II
Food: the Performance of Feeding and Eating	99	(25)
Nutritious and symbolic: the culture of food	99	(3)
Food and embodiment	102	(4)
Discourse through food	106	(11)
Drinking as social performance	117	(5)
Archaeology, food and gender	122	(2)
Dressing Gender: Identity through Appearance	124	(20)
The point of clothes	124	(3)
Dress and archaeology: a brief outline	127	(4)
Methodology and analysis	131	(5)
Dress and identity in prehistory	136	(6)
A fabric for discourse	142	(2)
The Engendering of Space	144	(24)
Gendered space	144	(2)
Archaeology and space	146	(6)
Phenomenology and the landscape's space	152	(4)
House and home	156	(10)
Archaeology, gender and space	166	(2)
Contact: the Short-lived Triangle	168	(14)
Adultery - changing partner	168	(1)
Contact and innovation	169	(2)
The archaeology of contact	171	(6)
Technology and the danger of the new	177	(3)
Gender and contact, gender as contact	180	(2)
The Beginning: on Becoming Gendered	182	(21)
A gendered world, or looking back to the beginning	182	(5)
Gender research and the origin of humans	187	(3)
Gendered cultural expression and practice during the Upper Palaeolithic	190	(10)
Gender and the Palaeolithic: self-reflection and artifice	200	(3)
Reflections	203	(6)
References	209	(17)
Index	226