Marie Louise Stig Sørensen

The project ‘Iron Age female identities in the southern Carpathian Basin’ stresses gender as something that is particular to time and place. The paper explores both data and inferential reasoning to zoom in on what may have produced particular settings for gender within these communities. Some of the changes in social organisation over the 1st millennium BC may have related to, and caused, fundamental changes in social relations at different scales. The increased social complexity would affect people’s relationships with each other, widening their spheres of interaction, and potentially threatening or challenging the degrees of control over their lives, such as control of the body’s reproductive capacity. In terms of the wider project of understanding gender, investigating how gender relations were impacted as well as a partner to these important social and political transformations is a complex task — but also one of significance in terms of providing fuller insight into what we mean when we state that gender is a ‘social construct’

This chapter discusses the classic heritage tensions and challenges that are linked to the proposed reconstruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues. Arguing that the most fundamental question is not how but why they should be reconstructed, the reasoning formulated around three core aspects are considered. The first is about authenticity. Classical examples of how reconstructions articulate with authenticity are outlined as a background to the recently softening up of the concept and to argue that understanding authenticity as a malleable and discursive quality could provide inspirational for the reconstruction of the Buddha statues. The second concern relates to political and socioeconomic aspects arguing that the reconstruction efforts are essentially political as the destruction and reconstruction are conceptually interconnected with the latter lending support for competing national/regional historiographies. This calls for foresight and carefulness in decision making. As regards the third aspect, the role of the local residents, the chapter points to the tendency of systematic neglect of local residents in terms of meaningful engagement, and some of the ways this manifests itself. It also argues that it is not enough that all agree that this is regretful, we need to work on methods aiming at more meaningful and sustainable involvement.

A chapter that reflects on the various questions that have arisen from the changed understanding of wool and when it became available. The reflections focus on various aspects of prodcution and consumption arguing that this largely invisible technology may have had a substantial impact on Bronze Age communities -  labour divions , landscaoe use, and economy - from cirka 2000 BC onwards.

www.cambridge.org/9781108493598