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How can we use material traces of past lives to understand sex and gender in the past?
Browsing All Posts filed under »gender«
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 […]
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 […]
Men, Women, and Inequality in the Neolithic
June 3, 2012
The rich dude gets the hot chick even in prehistory. Thus a perceptive reader commenting on Wired Science’s coverage of newly published research on the roots of inequality in Neolithic Europe sums up the whole story. More soberly, the BBC News emphasizes the contingency of the new findings in its story, titled Cardiff uni claims […]
Sixty Women of Ancient Tushhan
May 13, 2012
My archaeology news source sent me an article from Britain’s The Independent, posted online on Wednesday, that has caused a little stir because it reports on a “previously unknown language”. But what caught my attention was this sentence: The tablet revealed the names of 60 women – probably prisoners-of-war or victims of an Assyrian forced […]
“So I could be easeful”: Celebrate and Support New Scholars
May 4, 2012
The Chronicle of Higher Education is a tabloid that few outside the academy will have heard of, and fewer insider the academy actually read than might be indicated by its ubiquity in campus administrative offices. It becomes relevant to many new or nearing completion PhDs because it contains employment ads. While the image conjured up […]
“The Materiality of Everyday Life”: Commentary
April 29, 2012
Back from the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, this year held in Memphis. I had been invited to be one of two discussants for a session organized by Cynthia Robin, professor anthropology at Northwestern University, and Lisa Overholtzer, finishing her PhD dissertation there. For me, the pleasure of seeing these colleagues, and […]
April 21, 2013
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