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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 »history«
Bonampak Sex Change: From Heir to Heiress
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 […]
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 […]
“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 […]
Nuns and Princesses (Middle Saxon Edition)
March 18, 2012
Catching up with reading recent archaeology news, I am coming late to the Cambridge Archaeological Unit’s report that they titled Mystery of Anglo-Saxon teen buried in bed with gold cross. Great website from Cambridge University, lots of good long contextual quotes, and a sympathetic subject: a teenage girl buried with a piece of craftwork comparable […]
What’s the News in News about Roles of Maya Women?
March 2, 2012
I am waiting (impatiently) for yesterday’s UC Riverside press release to get picked up by the mainstream media. The press release tells us that Contrary to popular belief, women played a central role in Maya society before the arrival of Spanish explorers in the early 16th century, a University of California, Riverside graduate student has […]
Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives 
October 28, 2013
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