Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Connvenors:
Francesca Fulminante, Bristol, Oxford and Cambridge University, UK; University Roma Tre, Italy, francesca.fulminante@bristol.ac.uk
Matteo Colombini, University of Siena and Massa Marittima Museums, Italy colombini.matteo82@gmail.com
Ana Margarida Vale, CITCEM/FLUP, University of Porto, Portugal, ana.m.vale@gmail.com
A few years ago, in 2020, an EAA session, ‘To gender or not to gender’, organised by B. Gaydarska, K. Rebay-Salisbury, P. Ramirez-Valiente and J.E. Friez, challenged the then dominating view of gender development and symbolism in Euro-Mediterranean antiquity, as elaborated by Robb and Harris, from a blurred gender representation in Neolithic burials to a binary Bronze and Iron Age representation. The 2020 EAA session and other following debates, such as the “Warriors and Weavers” EAA 2024 session, the work by Pape-Ialongo in Germany and Guidi-Cuozzo in Italy, instead turned our focus to the association between gender and biological sex, revealing that the interplay between indicators of different personhood and identity aspects, such as age, status, class and even ethnicity, is much more complex than the old binary suggests, including now the emergence of different genders in the prehistoric data. Building upon these foundations, it is important to continue this work and challenge still existing gender stereotypes in the past, expanding our focus also especially to sub-adults. As is well known, it is difficult to establish the sex of sub-adults anthropologically, hence it is almost impossible to assess if their sex is mirrored in the representation of their gender or not. Thanks to scientific analyses of peptides in teeth enamel is now possible to overcome this barrier. A recent study by Katharina Rebay Salisbury and others demonstrated that in Bronze Age Germany sex and gender seem to go hand in hand. However, this has to be investigated for other regions and periods. In this session, we welcome papers challenging the current gender stereotypes in the representation of burial in archaeology and addressing the scholars who work in these fields globally. We also invite papers from the anthropological field for comparative perspectives. In this way we aim to achieve more nuanced and balanced interpretations. This session is sponsored by AGE and funded by the British Academy (2023 – 2024 BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants Scheme, SRG2324\241025).
Papers:
Challenging Gender Preconceptions Through Comparative Analysis of Chalcolithic Funerary Contexts in Portugal
Ana Vale, CITCEM/FLUP, University of Porto, Portugal
Mónica Corga, UNIARQ/FLUL, University of Lisbon, Portugal
Chalcolithic burials in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula present a landscape of collective funerary practices. These practices encompass a variety of burial spaces, including megalithic tombs, tholoi, hypogea, and pits, alongside deposits of human remains found in the ditches and walls of 3rd millennium BC enclosures. Notably, the reorganisation of bones and the creation of ossuaries have been documented, with fewer individual or small group burials.
This context complicates our understanding of burial practices associated with social identities and highlights the challenge of exploring the connections between biological sex and gender representations. While determining biological sex through techniques such as amelogenin peptide analysis and others such as ancient DNA testing is essential, it is equally important to visualise the spatial distribution of identified female and sub-adult individuals, as well as the relationships among them.
This presentation seeks to critically review Portuguese funerary contexts from the 3rd millennium BC, aiming to quantify and interrelate the existing data. Recent research in the southern Iberian Peninsula (e.g., Cintas-Peña et al. 2023) reveals a significant representation of women in collective burial structures and their notable presence in individual burials. Despite these findings, gender stereotypes persist in archaeological narratives and in the representations of the past, particularly in museum displays. Therefore, this study will investigate the significance of female individuals within collective burial spaces, aiming for an intersectional approach, and examine the roles and relationships of sub-adults in relation to other buried individuals. By doing so, we aim to challenge prevailing narratives and contribute to a more nuanced understanding of gender dynamics in Southwest Iberian Chalcolithic communities.
The Archaeological Controversy About the Sex of the Golden Man: Between Kazakh Political Identity and the Quest for a Female Warrior Symbol
Manon Dupuy, University of Tours, France
This paper deals with the archaeological controversies about the sex/gender of the ‘Golden Man’, whose burial site was discovered in Kazakhstan in 1969. The Golden Man has been erected as a national symbol, conveying Kazakh patriotic and masculine values.
The burial site, which dates back to the 4th century BCE, is that of a young person, buried with almost 4000 gold objects. Through their analysis, feminist archaeologists defend the idea that it could be the tomb of a female warrior or priestess; Kazakh archaeologists believed that the deceased was a young warrior.
This topic illustrates a well-known mistake: believing that one can determine the sex of a skeleton based on its associated objects. The subtlety here is that both sides—traditional archaeology and gender archaeology—fall into their own biases, projecting their idealised conceptions onto the skeleton. Why is the gender/sex of this warrior so important to both parties? This paper is a study of controversies; it aims to trace the extremely concrete material issues that gave shape to the controversy. It is a study of controversies and their objects: their arguments, choices and methodologies.
‘Warriors’ and ‘Weavers’. Challenging Gender Stereotypes in Iron Age Italy: A Comparative Perspective (Osteria Dell’Osa, Fossa, Veio and St Teodoro-Incoronata)
Francesca Fulminante, Bristol, Oxford and Cambridge University, UK; University Roma Tre, Italy
In the 1990s John Robb provided a comprehensive overview of the development of gender symbolism and ideology in prehistory. During the Neolithic, gender representation seems to have been much more ambiguous and blurred. With the Copper-Bronze Age and more distinctively with the Iron Age and Archaic Period, a binary ideology seems to emerge, especially from the funerary evidence, between ‘martial warriors’ and ‘beautiful weavers’ (Robb-Harris 2017). While Robb-Harris’ model still partially holds today, many scholars have challenged this binary conception (Gaydarska et al. 2023).
We present a contextual analysis of the cemeteries of Osteria dell’Osa (Latium vetus), Fossa (Abruzzo), Veio (Etruria) and St. Teodoro-Incoronata (Basilicata) during the 1st Millennium BC, which shows mostly gendered individuals. However, there is also a significant number of ungendered individuals, burials with both female and male elements and some burials anthropologically determined as female with male objects, and vice versa.
In some cases, anthropological analyses are ambiguous, or the odd objects could be votive offerings, but the study highlights some complex patterns that deserve further investigation. In future, we plan to use peptides analyses to sex these individuals scientifically to disentangle objectively the complex relation between sex, gender, and identity in past populations.
The Etruscan Settlement at the Accesa Lake (Tuscany, Grosseto, Italy): Shaping a Society of VII – VI Century BCE Through the Lens of a Multidisciplinary Gender Approach
Matteo Colombini, University of Siena; Massa Marittima Museums, Italy
Francesca Fulminante, Bristol, Oxford and Cambridge University, UK; University Roma Tre, Italy
The Etruscan settlement of Lake Accesa (late 8th–late 6th century B.C.) was discovered at the beginning of the 20th century and has been intensively studied since 1980 by the University of Florence. The site is located 20 km northeast of the Etruscan city of Vetulonia (Tuscany, Italy). The material culture from the aristocratic tombs and houses gives us an idea of an elite that based its wealth on the exploitation of mineral resources, agriculture, fishing and breeding. The archaeologists’ interpretation divided the elite into two gender categories: men, warriors with political power, and women, who kept the house and wove. The evidence for this interpretation was supposed to be found in the grave goods: women were identified by the presence of spindles, while graves with weapons were always considered to belong to men. The poor preservation of the skeletons has made it almost impossible to carry out reliable anthropological analyses for sex determination. The Massa Marittima Museums, the Universities of Bristol, Durham and Siena, the British Academy (2023-24 SRG2324\241025) developed a new approach combining material culture, spatial analysis, anthropological studies and archaeometry to try to fill this gap and clarify gender stereotypes. The paper presents the preliminary results based on tombs 6, 33 and 37.
In the Name of the Mother. Directions of Research on Gender and Age in the Study of Cemeteries
Mariassunta Cuozzo, University of Molise, Italy
The study of behaviour towards different young age groups starts from a reflection on the very concept of ‘childhood’, which constitutes a social and cultural category. As ethnographical and archaeological work shows, modern Western conceptions differ from those of many societies studied by ethnographers, wherein the different age groups—often from earliest childhood—are involved in social and ritual activities following specific paths, in specific stages, and in specific ways.
In this paper I will be focusing on the relationship between the funerary representation of women and children in the archaeological evidence of Second Iron Age Campania (Southern Italy; from last quarter of the eight to the first quarter of the sixth century BC). A key aspect for our understanding of the ideologies at work in this period are the significant variations in the funerary landscape determined by deep changes in the dominating mentality, involving new conceptions of childhood, the construction of funerary sacred spaces and new norms regulating access to formal burial.
Visualising Intersectionality in the Mortuary Sphere: A Methodological and Analytical Approach
Emily R. Stanton, Emory University, USA
Archaeology produces no shortage of data. The results of excavations fill rows upon rows of shelves in archives, libraries, and museums. Yet distilling information from such vast quantities of data is not an easy task (see Forte 1994 in Bradbury et al. 2015:565). Using an intersectional lens to discuss multiple social categories adds in another, yet necessary, layer of complexity when interpreting and discussing data and its modern relevance.Drawing from my doctoral work on exploring multiple categories of persons as indicated in the mortuary sphere in Iron Age southwest Germany near the Heuneburg hillfort (c. 600-400 BCE), I present a methodological/analytic approach to analysing mortuary contexts with large datasets. This research design is especially well-matched to questions related to the intersectionality (particularly the age-gender-status confluence) of identity as represented in mortuary remains with a focus on the graves of high-status women in the Heuneburg interaction sphere. Additionally, I present a case study discussing ways to visualise intersectionality in the mortuary sphere using tools from MS Excel and the Affinity Design Suite to make this data and its interpretation accessible to wider audiences.
Using Geometric Morphometrics to Assess Metacarpal Robusticity: A Preliminary Evaluation of Sex, Sidedness, and Economic Production in MesoamericaPeter Mercier, Dept of Anthropology, University of Central Florida, USA
Sarah Freidline, Dept of Anthropology, University of Central Florida, USA; Dept of Human Origins, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Sarah Barber and Lana Wiliams, Dept of Anthropology, University of Central Florida, USA
Laborious economic tasks (e.g., craft production) manifest on the skeleton and build the hand muscles, causing subtle skeletal changes that are difficult to quantify and visualise. Geometric morphometrics (GM), a digital multivariate statistical shape analysis method that uses spatially-related landmark points to evaluate morphological variability, accurately measures such skeletal changes. Differences in robusticity, defined by muscle attachment development and cortical bone thickness, may reflect variations in activity type, frequency, and intensity associated with the gendered division of labour in ancient Mesoamerican societies, where female identities have often been associated with making pottery, grinding corn, and crafting textiles, and male identities have often been associated with lithics production, hunting, and agriculture. GM is used in this study to measure robusticity differences between 1) males and females and 2) left and right hands in southeast Mesoamerica. 3D models were generated from metacarpal scans, and landmarks and semi-landmarks were placed on the proximal surfaces. Principal component analyses (PCA) show that all metacarpals exhibited morphological differences between males and females, potentially from gender-based differences in physical activity. MANOVA results showed statistically significant differences between left and right hands for the second and third metacarpals, potentially from bilateral upper limb movements during economic production.
The Forgotten Women of Vanuatu: 3000 Years of Women Resilience and Adaptation
Frederique Valentin, UMR TEMPS 8068, Nanterre, France
Wanda Zinger, Archaeo- and Palaeogenetics group, Institute for Archaeological Sciences and Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment, University of Tübingen, Germany
Aymeric Hermann, UMR TEMPS 8068, Nanterre, France
Stuart Bedford, School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
In Vanuatu, as elsewhere in Oceania, women were generally considered to have an inferior social status in 19th century chronicles. Our archaeological and bioarchaeological data on funerary practices, associated objects, and biological characteristics of the deceased provides some balance to these negative stereotypes promoted by missionaries and other Western observers, which still hold considerable influence today. Based on three examples (or snapshots), we show that the social dynamics and female agency were different before colonisation. Dating from the time of first arrival 3000 years ago, women buried in the Teouma Lapita cemetery had a special status, with ornaments and, in some cases, skeletal elements subsequently placed in decorated funerary vessels. Four hundred years before present, at the ceremonial burial of Roi Mata, some women were highly decorated, some associated with men and some other buried as single individuals. Some of them had close affinities with Polynesia, underlining the continuing interconnectedness and adaptability of Pacific societies through matrimonial networks. Finally, female resilience and adaptation to 19th cultural changes can be seen in the woman on Emae, buried with both customary and newly introduced exotic items, representing status at a time of radical transformation.
Amazonian Women Leaders, the Road to Gender Equality and the Defence of the Amazonian Territory
Ines Ruiz Alvarado, Universidad Cientifica del Sur, Peru
This study examines the resistance and leadership of Indigenous women in the Ese Eja Infierno community in the Peruvian Amazon, focusing on Maricela Marichi’s leadership. The research employs a decolonial and gender-based approach to analyse how Indigenous women defend their territories amid threats such as illegal mining, deforestation, and organised crime. Amazonian women face multiple challenges, including environmental destruction, gender-based violence, and human trafficking. Despite these adversities, they have emerged as key figures in both environmental activism and gender equality advocacy. Their struggle highlights the intersection of ecological defense and gender justice, linking territorial sovereignty with the fight against systemic gender oppression. This study explores how these women construct leadership and develop resistance strategies, merging feminist and Indigenous perspectives. A key outcome of this research is the documentary I Am the Forest, which portrays the resilience of Ese Eja women leaders. Women defenders often face targeted violence, particularly sexual violence, as a tool of repression. However, they continue to lead efforts for environmental protection and gender justice. By documenting their struggles, this research contributes to understanding how Indigenous women are reshaping leadership and resistance and can illuminate similar, but often denied and neglected, struggles and dynamics in the past.