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How can we use material traces of past lives to understand sex and gender in the past?
And a Little Child Shall Lead Them
I have to admit that I was a little mystified when Archaeology online recently publicized research that used errors in working a single stone tool to propose that its less-skilled maker was probably a child. Not that I think the idea is implausible. Errors in production have been a staple of the archaeology of childhood […]
Execution Archaeology
April 13, 2013
Now there’s an arresting notion. A story from the online English-language edition of the German news magazine Der Spiegel tells us that “Germany sees rising interest in execution site archaeology: For years, few were interested in unearthing what lay beneath old gallows and scaffolds. But, in Germany, growing interest in “execution site archaeology” is throwing […]
Ain’t I a Woman?
March 19, 2013
Well, no, actually– not even 30% of one. But you sure are making history. That’s my gut reaction after being asked by BBC Radio to participate in a broadcast reacting to a news story published on the BBC website today. Tagline: Rocky Horror Show writer Richard O’Brien thinks of himself as 70% male and 30% […]
Really Richard
February 17, 2013
That’s the verdict of researchers at the University of Leicester who late last year, in a targeted research project, recovered skeletal remains they suspected could be those of Richard III, King of England from 1483 to 1485. I saved the link to the original story in the New York Times back in late September 2012, […]
(Warrior) Queen for a Day
October 5, 2012
Tomb of Maya Queen Found– “Lady Snake Lord” Ruled Centipede Kingdom says the headline from National Geographic. And not just any kind of queen– the story opens The suspected tomb and remains of a great Maya warrior queen have been discovered in Guatemala. [emphasis added] I am trying to be excited. I am trying not […]
History, Memory, and Everyday Practice in Colonial Guatemala
September 9, 2012
An unprecedented report of colonial Maya paintings from a residence, uncovered under years of overlaying plaster in the highland Guatemalan town, Chajul, provides an extraordinary window into the ways colonized Maya used what the colonial order offered in order to build a world that was not quite what the colonial authorities might have expected. Images […]
Sex, Gender, and the Olympics
July 30, 2012
I could almost feel sorry for the International Olympics Committee. Almost. But then I think about the lives that have been damaged by their insistence on sorting out who “really” is female, and who is not. Beginning in 1968 the International Olympics Committee required individuals seeking to compete in women’s events to prove “their femininity […]
April 21, 2013
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