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How can we use material traces of past lives to understand sex and gender in the past?
Browsing All posts tagged under »archaeology«
Grand Challenges for Archaeology of Gender and Sexuality
A few years back there was a survey of archaeologists to determine the 25 Grand Challenges that archaeology could help solve…That survey was pretty specific about what they considered ‘Grand Challenges’: ‘The Web survey defined grand challenges to be fundamental problems in science and explicitly excluded “disciplinary challenges with respect to the practice of archaeology, […]
Cosmopolitan Women of the European Bronze Age
May 31, 2015
“Bronze Age Woman Had Surprisingly Modern Life” Ok, I think: what are we talking about here? what would be both modern and surprising? The subtitle of the article clarifies things: The stunningly well-preserved remains of the Egtved Girl from 3,500 years ago reveal her travels as a high-status woman of her day. Ahah! the “surprise” […]
Bonampak Sex Change: From Heir to Heiress
October 28, 2013
An article in the Mexican newspaper La Cronica de Hoy reported last Thursday on a new book being presented in Mexico this week, The Spectacle of the Late Maya Court: Reflections on the Murals of Bonampak. Written by art historians Mary Ellen Miller and Claudia Brittenham, the book builds on a long-term project by Miller […]
Ancient Women Are Confusing
September 16, 2013
At least, they are when they show up in positions of power. On Wednesday September 11, Fox News published a report, originally by the AFP, about the discovery of the tomb of Shangguan Wan’er, a Tang dynasty imperial bureaucrat in the Chinese court of Empress Wu Zetian. AFP is the credited source for Fox. But […]
And a Little Child Shall Lead Them
April 21, 2013
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives 
January 31, 2016
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