Feminist Archaeology

Archaeology faces the unique challenge of stretching social theories of sexuality in new chronological and methodological directions. This essay uses an analysis of citational practices to consider how feminist and queer theories articulate with archaeological investigations of sexuality. Both
queer theories and feminist archaeological practices are shown to be powerful tools that can be used to expand archaeological interpretations of gender and sexuality.

This paper develops the theme of the feminist and post-processual critique of the processualist and traditional study of archaeological architecture. The article discusses the avenues through which a feminist exploration of archaeological architecture may proceed in practice, using data from Opovo and other sites in Southeast Europe.
https://www.ruthtringham.com/project/engendered-places-1994/

Abstract: Archaeologists–feminist or otherwise–use biologically sexed human remains to make inferences about cultures' conceptions of gender. Creating an easy link between 'sex' and 'gender', however, is not without problems. Recent debates within the social sciences have centered on the evolving, historical definition and cultural relevance of both of these terms. Interestingly, skeletal analysts' voices tend to remain silent in this debate.

In recent decades, archaeologists have responded to internal dialogues and external critiques by facilitating greater involvement of descendant peoples and other source communities in many aspects of archaeology. Although significant changes have occurred, substantial ethical challenges remain. While most archaeologists are nominally in favor of a more equitable archaeology, in reality they still hold the power in terms of the actual production and interpretation of archaeological knowledge, access to or use of data, and the capital derived from these processes. The very idea of sharing power appears threatening to some because it means a radical revisioning of ethical responsibilities and research paradigms and altering deep-seated notions about scholarly privilege, intellectual property, and control over the production of knowledge... On the other hand, members of descendant communities,  who understandably experience their own anxieties over losses of cultural knowledge, have challenged the relevance of archaeology to their needs and beliefs, sometimes seeking to amend historical power imbalances through exclusionary practices, restrictions on access to sites or the information derived from them. At the same time, archaeology often occupies an ambivalent or subordinate position in relation to political and economic interests (Hamilakis 1999; Schmidt 2005). ...

The archaeology of empire is permeated by sexual narratives. This has been especially true of archaeological research on the Spanish Americas, where the material remains of colonial settlements have often been interpreted as products of a literal and figurative marriage between two cultures. However, investigating colonization as a consensual domestic arrangement has masked the ways in which imperial projects relied on the exercise of power, including sexual regulations and sexual coercion. Recent archaeological
and ethnohistoric research at the Spanish-colonial military settlement of El Presidio de San Francisco affords a different perspective, one in which the public and institutional exercise of sexual control was central to the imperial project. [Keywords: archaeology, imperialism, sexuality, North America, Spanish-colonial]

Link to Full-Text PDF: https://www.jonathantannerthomas.com/essays/2019/11/12/whos-afraid-of-sally-binford.

On a winter day in January, 1994, just shy of her 70th birthday, Sally Rosen Binford cleaned her house and arranged her things. She wanted to convey a sense of orderliness, of intention. Sally had mailed farewell letters to friends, family, and lovers. When everything was squared away, she proceeded to carefully feed a handful of pills to her companion, a poodle named Jake, and then to herself. They both died on the spot.

The history of the ancient textile factory "Natividade Nunes da Silva", built in the XX century, in Belver (centre of Portugal) allow us to explore feminine work in a rural area and the ledearship under three generation of women administration, manufacturing handcrafted textiles.

Substantial contributions to the archaeological study of gender in the Pacific Northwest have been made over the past 30 years. Despite these advances, considerations of gender—particularly those which embrace feminist epistemologies—continue to be markedly lacking. This article surveys gender/feminist approaches to archaeology in the Pacific Northwest by examining archaeological studies of and references to gender in published and grey literature. It also explores regional trends in research presented at annual Northwest Anthropological Conference meetings from 1990 to 2016. Results suggest that a diversity of approaches to exploring gender have been taken but there is considerable work to be done, particularly on the Southern Plateau which has the least engagement with gender, and in the realm of theory where practitioners have been reticent to embrace feminism and its potential for emancipatory change. Archaeologists in the Northwest are well positioned to more effectively embrace gender and feminist perspectives in their practice, mitigate sexism/androcentrism, and contribute
to contemporary discussions about queer/non-binary, female, and male dynamics.

"In this paper I suggest that gender archaeology has followed the three main feminist epistemologies as described by SandraHarding (1986): feminist empiricism, standpoint theory, and feminist postmodernism. I explore the main principles of these orientations and discuss their use in gender archaeology, offering examples from Norwegian, Spanish and North American contexts. My
purpose is to trace a genealogy of gender archaeology from the point of view
of epistemology that will reveal its feminist character. Even though it has been developed within the processual and post-processual contexts of archaeology, a review of its epistemological principles will show that gender archaeology must be situated within a wider feminist framework."

This course provides an introduction to the archaeology of North America. We will explore alternative histories and decolonizing practices that promote a more diverse and inclusive archaeology. We will also examine how the practice of archaeology in North America has changed since its early days while exploring how recent social movements have led to a more ethically committed archaeological practice. This course is designed to challenge students to examine the past to better understand the present though socially engaged perspectives, such as: Black Lives Matter, feminism, gender, queer theory, indigenous archaeology, and multivocality. African diaspora, racism, colonialism, NAGPRA, and repatriation will also be discussed. We will cover a large time-frame, from the initial peopling of the Americas to the present day. Furthermore, the topics we will cover include: environmental archaeology, foodways, childhood, fieldwork, dating methods, interpretation, materiality, everyday life, ethnoarchaeology, experimental archaeology, warfare, and the archaeology of California. By the end of the course, students will have a better understanding of the dynamic theories and methods of North American archaeology, and will be capable of critically reflecting upon how to conduct archaeology within a decolonizing framework. One of the greatest values of studying the past is the awareness we gain of ourselves and the present world by assessing our own and others' experiences, and by evaluating how our own background and beliefs may color our interpretations of the past.

Does sexuality have a past? A growing body of archaeological research
on sexuality demonstrates that the sexual politics of the past were as
richly varied and complex as those of the present. Furthermore, investigations
of past sexualities have much to say about conventional
archaeological topics such as state formation, subsistence and settlement
systems, and the emergence and elaboration of symbolic systems,
and they have made methodological and theoretical contributions to
the archaeology of social identities and visual representations. To date,
most research has clustered into five groupings: reproduction management,
sexual representations, sexual identities, prostitution, and the sexual
politics of institutions. The most intriguing new development is the
growing application of queer theory as an archaeological methodology
for investigating nonsexual as well as sexual matters. In particular,
queer theory provides a methodological bridge between archaeological
research on sexuality and research on other aspects of social identity.

This paper is a summary analysis of the current situation in archaeology at the level of gender from its theoretical bases. It deals with the media and personal scope of patriarchy and male chauvinism in archaeology, within the academic field, both within institutions and in field work, as well as the public sample of archaeological studies. It exposes the hair-splitting differences between gender archaeology and feminist archaeology. And it shows some combative cases of feminist archaeology, from the visibility of women in the past and in archaeology, acting in the space of public and social archaeology.

The art and iconography of the Minoan civilisation of Bronze Age Crete is rightly described as having a refreshing vitality with a fortunate combination of stylisation and spontaneity in which the artist is able to transform conventional imagery into a personal expression. The dynamism, torsion and naturalism evident in Minoan art stands in stark contrast to the hieratic rigidity of other ancient civilisations, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the iconography of the Minoan Epiphany, a set of mainly glyptic (rings, seals, and seal impression) images which appear to depict religious celebrants experiencing direct and seemingly ecstatic encounters with deities.

This collection of essays explores this central aspect of Minoan religion, taking a strongly archaeological focus to allow the artefacts to speak for themselves, and moving from traditional ‘representational’ interpretations into ‘embodied’ perspectives in which the ecstatic capabilities of the human body throw new light on Aegean Bronze Age ritual practices. Such ideas challenge rather passive assumptions modern Western observers hold about the nature of religious feelings and experiences, in particular the depictions of altered states of consciousness in ancient art, and the visionary potential of dance gestures.

Speculative asides on the potential for a Minoan origin for Classical Greek humanism, and hints in the imagery on ancient Cretan conceptions of the cosmos, are set against sound archaeological theories to explain this lively and dynamic corpus of images. Beautifully illustrated with images and sketches of the relevant artefacts, this wide-ranging volume will stimulate audiences with archaeological, prehistorical and spiritual interests, as well as historians of religion and art. ‘The Minoan Epiphany’ also represents an influential antecedent to the Visionary Humanist philosophy which forms the majority of Bruce’s current independent research interests.

El estudio de cómo se han creado, mantenido y gestionado las relaciones entre mujeres y hombres, de cómo se ha definido la identidad femenina y la masculina y de cómo se han considerado la heterosexualidad y la homosexualidad en las sociedades del pasado es de vital importancia en el presente debido a que gran parte de los estereotipos y presunciones que justifican la sociedad patriarcal, el uso de la violencia y el mantenimiento de desigualdades en la actualidad tienen su origen en cómo hemos mirado esos aspectos en las sociedades del pasado. Sólo mediante la investigación de calidad y la divulgación comprometida se pueden deconstruir esos conceptos y crear nuevas miradas sobre las mujeres y sobre los hombres tanto del pasado como del presente. La propuesta que presentamos para el dossier de la Revista de Prehistoria de Andalucía pretende analizar las aportaciones realizadas a la arqueología feminista y a la arqueología de género desde o en Andalucía en los últimos años. El dossier recopila una serie de trabajos que ponen de relieve los debates teóricos y metodológicos que han surgido en el desarrollo de los estudios de las mujeres y del género; analizan los avances de la disciplina en estos años y lo más importante, reflexionan en qué punto nos encontramos y hacía dónde queremos y debemos encaminarnos.

At El Presidio de San Francisco, Spain’s northernmost outpost in the
Americas, military settlers refashioned their social identities by
refusing the racializing sistema de castas and asserting a shared
colonial identity as Californios. Dress was a central practice involved
in this case of colonial ethnogenesis. Many studies of identity transformation
in the Spanish Americas have treated dress as an individualistic
medium for personal expression and social mobility.
However, the artifacts and archives of El Presidio de San Francisco
point instead towards the central role of colonial institutions in
‘fashioning’ colonial subjects. While government-issue clothing
functioned as a social leveler among the new Californios, dress also
set firm constraints on the metamorphosis of social bodies. The
findings of this study raise questions about the limits of ethnogenesis,
both as a strategy used by historic subjects and as a
theoretical model of identity transformation.

This thesis used a feminist archaeological theoretical framework to approach the analysis and presentation of the osseous tool collection from the Broken Mammoth site (XBD-131) in interior Alaska. The Broken Mammoth site dated to the Pleistocene/Holocene transition and has good organic preservation, which allowed for the recovery of seven formal osseous tools, which were available for physical analysis. Each tool was assessed for use and manufacture wear, and examined and photographed using a high-resolution scanner, digital micrograph, and standard digital camera. The tools were compared to a dataset of osseous tools from Western Beringia, Eastern Beringia, and North America compiled from previous research, in order to interpret the collection by function. The tools were interpreted as a combination of a projectile point or composite projectile pre-form cache, blunted projectiles, a foreshaft or projectile, and an eyed-needle. The feminist theoretical approach was used to develop a reflexive interrogation of the process of the tool analysis and to engender activity at the Broken Mammoth site.
The osseous tool collection was, in part, reflective of hunting strategies for small, fur bearing animals and of detailed or decorative sewing. I conducted a review of ethnographic literature from the Arctic and Subarctic, noting where men and/or women participated in the manufacture of clothing from raw material procurement through hunting to use of a completed garment. This analysis revealed the importance of women’s labor in this process.
The results of the ethnographic review were applied to previous research from the Broken Mammoth site, and the results of the osseous tool analysis, leading to the conclusion that women’s activities are visible at the Broken Mammoth site. 

This research examines 44 images of Minoan tree cult as depicted in sphragistic jewellery, portable objects and wall paintings from Late Bronze Age Crete, mainland Greece and the Cyclades. The study also compares the Aegean images with evidence for sacred trees in the Middle and Late Bronze Age Levant, Egypt and Cyprus. The purpose of this investigation is the production of new interpretations of Minoan images of tree cult. Each of the chapters of the book looks at both archaeological and iconographic evidence for tree cult. The Aegean material is, in addition, examined more deeply through the lenses of modified Lacanian psychoanalytic modelling, “new” animism, ethnographic analogy, and a Neo-Marxist hermeneutics of suspicion. It is determined that Minoan images of tree cult depict elite figures performing their intimate association with the numinous landscape through the communicative method of envisioned and enacted epiphanic ritual. The tree in such images is a physiomorphic representation of a goddess type known in the wider eastern Mediterranean associated with effective rulership and with the additional qualities of fertility, nurturance, protection, regeneration, order and stability. The representation of this deity by elite human females in ritual performance functioned to enhance their selfrepresentation as divinities and thus legitimise and concretise the position of elites within the hegemonic structure of Neopalatial Crete. These ideological visual messages were circulated to a wider audience through the reproduction and dispersal characteristic of the sphragistic process, resulting in Minoan elites literally stamping their authority on to the Cretan landscape and hence society. See: http://www.peeters-leuven.be/boekoverz.asp?nr=10733

This article approaches feminist critiques to values and interests behind the writing of the past with a focus on Archaeology and Maintenance Activities. Conventional discourses project our present hegemonic gender system and its rationality onto the past. In so doing, they help to sustain and strengthen inequality between men and women, and invisibility of all those who do not conform to its normativity. Profound changes are to occur through reconceptualization, and not only through inclusion of new agents in the shape of women, children, the elderly, third genders, etc. without necessarily affecting its foregrounding logics. By placing cooperation and interdependence at the center, and by highlighting social bonding and connection, affective capacity, and care as fundamental to social life, Maintenance Activities propose different ways of understanding human groups and historical development.

Este artículo se centra en la crítica de la arqueología feminista a los valores e intereses que articulan la producción discursiva del pasado a través de la propuesta de las Actividades de Mantenimiento. Los discursos convencionales proyectan sobre el pasado el sistema hegemónico de género del presente y la racionalidad que lo acompaña. Con ello, sostienen y refuerzan la desigualdad que actualmente existe entre hombres y mujeres a la vez que invisibilizan a quienes no se ajustan a su normatividad. El artículo defiende que un cambio profundo pasa por reconceptualizar el discurso, y no solo por incluir nuevos agentes en forma de mujeres, niños, ancianos, terceros géneros, etc. sin necesariamente alterar la lógica que lo vertebra. Al situar en el centro la importancia de la cooperación, la valía del vínculo y la conexión social, la capacidad afectiva y la práctica de la relación y del cuidado como pilares fundamentales de la vida social, las Actividades de Mantenimiento proponen maneras
diferentes de entender a los grupos humanos y el devenir histórico.

Gender and race are central to archaeological investigations of empire. In research on the Spanish colonization of the Americas, one prominent theory, the St. Augustine pattern, argues that cohabitation between Spanish men and Native American and African women in colonial households resulted
in a distinctly gendered form of cultural transformation: indigenous, African, and syncretic cultural elements appear within private domestic activities associated with women; and European cultural elements are conservatively maintained in publicly visible male activities. This article reconsiders the
St. Augustine pattern through analyses of new research that has revealed considerable diversity in the processes and outcomes of colonization throughout the Spanish Americas. Archaeological methodologies
such as the St. Augustine pattern that rely on binary categories of analysis mask the complexity and ambiguity of material culture in colonial sites. Additionally, the abundance and ubiquity of indigenous, African, and syncretic material culture and foodstuffs in colonial households
in the circum-Caribbean indicate that macroscale economic, trade, and labor relationships, rather than household composition, were important causes of colonial cultural transformation in the Americas. An analytical focus on labor in colonial settings provides a multiscalar methodology that encompasses
both institutional and household-level entanglements between colonizers and colonized.

The longest tradition of figurine production in the Americas is found on the Ecuadorian coast, beginning with the Valdivia culture around 3500 BC and ending with the arrival of Spanish conquistadors, or possibly even later. In this article, figurines from different cultures and time periods in this tradition are analyzed with an emphasis on body politics, presenting the author’s reflections about how these artifacts embody ancient relations between people, especially with regard to gender asymmetries. It also discusses at some length the question of how contemporary perspectives for analyzing ancient materials are often influenced by western, patriarchal, ideology-laden interpretations. 
Although the corpus of figurines analyzed in this research is well known, prior to this study it has not been considered from the perspective of gender asymmetries, even though it is an excellent source of data for such analyses, especially in a diachronic perspective. The study argues that the figurine traditions of particular cultures implicitly emphasize some ideals, such as naturalizing the idea of females depending on males. The author argues that the frequent representations of female individuals associated with pregnancy and childcare can be seen as a political agenda designed to idealize the roles of mother and wife for women, and to limit the influence of female individuals in public activities connected to power and authority.

Artifacts of female dress such as brooches and pendants have long been objects of interest to scholars of late Iron Age /early medieval Scandinavia. They figure in dating and tracing stylistic developments, and their presence is often (controversially) used to help assign gender to burials. There are three types of pendants which constitute a type of feminine adornment unique to Viking Age Gotland: the so-called tongue, sieve, and ladle pendants. The purpose of this paper is to examine these pendant types and the possible symbolic and magical functions behind their forms and manner of use, and how these functions intersected with the ideologies mapped onto female bodies in Old Norse culture(s). The pendants’ appearance as fixed and incomplete sets is analyzed, and the designs of the “tongue”, “sieve” and “ladle” are located within the wider field of Iron Age iconography - particularly in association with the depiction of idealized gender roles. In conclusion a hypothesis as to why these particular amulets were used exclusively by wealthy Viking women is presented; that the tongue, sieve, and ladle pendants signaled and were involved in the construction of a particular type of elite female identity linked to specifically feminine forms of embodied power and prestige within late Iron Age society.

El presente trabajo pretende analizar la manera en que la interpretación historiográfica ha construido el relato de muchas de las sociedades del pasado. Al introducir el género como categoría de análisis, se pretende identificar posibles sesgos patriarcales que podrían estar detrás de este relato y que definitivamente distorsionan el pasado de tal forma, que termina justificando diversos escenarios discriminatorios del presente. Se analizan algunos de los relatos e interpretaciones sobre la Cultura Valdivia (Ecuador; 3800-1800,ANE).

Feminist principles made a formal entry into archaeology in the late 1970s, as scholars – the majority of whom were women – began to draw attention to the androcentric biases implicit in archaeological interpretations of the past. Further, these writers noted the degree to which similar patriarchal biases shaped the political economy of the discipline itself, to the general disadvantage of women. In the years to come, these early sociopolitical concerns would be expanded upon by subsequent feminist and queer archaeologists, who in addition identified heterosexist biases in the discipline. These authors called for a better representation of women, men, and others in the past (which had its own political implications in the present) and a commitment to improving the presence of women and sexual minorities among the practitioners of archaeology. This “double politics of representation” has often been acknowledged as the main – or even the only – contribution of these archaeologies. Yet, without downplaying the importance of representation, it should be noted that engendered archaeologies have significantly improved archaeology in general through the provision of alternative historical interpretations, the promotion of self-criticism and reflexivity within the discipline, and the development of new practices and fields of inquiry.

The androcentric, male-biased archaeological perception with a linear understanding of the past, which is mainly focused on material culture with a descriptive concern, is a product of cultural-historical​ and positivist archaeological traditions. Through time, this approach has chosen to focus on material culture, nurturing from dichotomies such as nature/culture, domestic space/communal space, man the hunter/woman the gatherer, productive/fertile etc. But this shift into a different understanding of the past, with a concern of past societies social aspects, still has not been able to alter the androcentric base of the discipline. The mainstream archaeological knowledge production is still not concerned with the context of the archaeological artifacts and data; when relating the archaeological thing with the human(s) who produced, used, functioned and valued it, archaeologists mainly define and interpret the thing itself with androcentric, implicit and presentist gender codes. But the archaeologist itself should approach this relation of humans and things –both in past and today– searching for agents who produced, used, valued and functioned those things, rather than de-contextualizing both the subject and the object by interpreting them with today’s androcentric gender norms. The main aim of this paper is to start an argument and criticism of the male-biased archaeological knowledge production and therefore the discipline itself with a ‘deconstructive’ manner, through feminist archaeology as a critical archaeological approach.