Archaeology and Gender Studies

Deconstructing Gender and Sex

Issues of gender presence and interrelations for the past have increasingly been focused upon in the last two decades in the English-speaking archaeological community. Conkey and Spector are widely credited with the first paper to systematically examine the application of feminist approaches and insights to archaeological practice and theory. Studies were published during the 1970s in Scandinavia, which went largely unnoticed due to the comparatively few archaeologists who understand the Nordic languages, exploring archaeological issues using an explicitly feminist perspective. In1979, Norway hosted a workshop discussing the androcentric element in archaeological interpretation; however, the proceedings remained unpublished until 1987, when they were distributed in English. The proceedings have largely remained uncited in the literature on the history of gender archaeology, resulting in the incorrect attribution of a late date for the inception of its beginnings.

Fundamental terminology such as theory, gender, and sex requires working definitions, and Hill has identified four core concepts that are being used inconsistently:

• 1.
  The methods by which gender studies are incorpo rated into investigative frameworks
• 2.
  The inappropriate, ahistorical usage of ethnographic analogies with prehistoric data
• 3.
  An overemphasis upon one line of inquiry and verification
• 4.
  The conflation of gender studies with feminist politicking

This is a consequence of gender archaeology's failure to produce significant alternative methodological advances on issues like household organization, ideology, labor division, and production by comparison with traditional processual and postprocessual frameworks.

Hill defines theory as “a conceptual framework that provides the foundation for explanation.” With no inclusive, programmatic “feminist theory” having been proposed and taken up as an investigative framework for prehistoric archaeology, a focus point [Page 245]has been feminist-inspired critiques of androcentrism within archaeology. The critiques of the explicit and implicit androcentrism in existing archaeological theoretical frameworks have contributed in particular to clarifying categories of gender and sex as organizing principles.

It has been argued that gender is not genetically inherited, but a process of structuring subjectivities, whereas sex is biologically determinate and static. However, not all feminists and anthropologists concur with this strict separation. These philosophies, whereby sex is a social construct formed by discursive practices, implicate Western biological anthropology in denying that the same physical characteristics can be used in a cross-cultural capacity to characterize sexual identity. This approach of sexual fluidity has been undermined by the application of DNA analysis to skeletal remains.

Despite the conclusions drawn from molecular results, it must be recognized that the investigations were conceived and the DNA findings interpreted through a culturally mediated Western concept of biology. While a sex-gender divide remains useful, the underlying construct is a distinction between Western scientific views on anatomy and how biology and culture interact from birth through concepts of appropriate role plays, dress code, diet, and occupational activity. This can serve as a useful analytical tool, provided it is recognized the division is not rigid.

Aside from the distinction made between anatomy and the cultural conceptualization of gender, gender studies are concerned with analyzing both males and females. Fieldwork has challenged the notion of a distinct male-female dichotomy, through expanding the categories to include a third or fourth gender in some non-Western societies. Furthermore, ideology of gender is also expressed through various objects, activities, and spatial arrangements in the landscape. Gender is therefore an important social variable, which must not be directly assumed, but rather is interwoven with the social values of the society being studied.

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