A Critical Analysis of the Evidence for Sexual Division of Tasks in the European Upper Paleolithic

Abstract

This chapter provides a critical analysis of the evidence for technical activity specialization in the European Upper Paleolithic by sex. It reviews the arguments based on the kind of evidence researchers are likely to collect (e.g., direct, indirect, and analogical). Some hypotheses are based on suppositions generated by ethnographic comparisons, while others rely on direct or indirect indices (task diversification, activity zone locations, skill level identification, diversity of grave goods, and body evidence like handprints and skeletons). The aim of this chapter is to show that there was a reasoned distribution of activities within groups, accompanied by an emerging social hierarchy, but that it is very difficult to account exactly for what women and men did. And even if we suspect that some tasks were respectively performed by males or females, it is possible that there was also a certain amount of technical specialization that was not related to gender.

Cognitive performance and specific aspects of language processing are associated with Oldowan-like chert flaking and retouch

“…Interestingly, descriptive data suggested disproportionate preferences between male and female subjects across the three post-experimental interview responses (cf. Arthur 2010;Bird 1993;Brandt et al 2006;de Beaune 2019;Gifford-Gonzalez 1993;Keeley 2010;Sassaman 1993;Tumler et al 2017;Waguespack 2005). The data suggest again that at least some subjects perceived quartz flaking for choppers and specific aspects of chert retouch very differently and if they preferred one, they were likely to disfavor the other.…”

Woman the hunter: The archaeological evidence

“…Another way in which males and females remain equal in the Paleolithic is in death. There are no consistent sex differences in treatment of the dead across most of the Pleistocene, neither in burial type nor in placed funerary objects (De Beaune, 2019; Riel‐Salvatore and Gravel‐Miguel, 2013). Considering the deep literature exploring the association of sex and funerary objects in more recent cultures, the lack of association in the Paleolithic is striking.…”

“…In some cases, the grave goods and paleopathology agree in demonstrating women were well‐practiced projectile hunters, such as at the Peruvian Early Holocene site of Wilamaya Pratjxa (Haas et al., 2020). We should also accept that despite its name, “thrower's elbow” may not reflect participation in throwing activities (Djukic et al., 2015; Kubicka and Myszka, 2020).…”

“…The first example of using genetics to identify a maker or user of a deer-tooth pendant in the Upper Paleolithic found the owner to be female (Essel et al, 2023); perhaps we will see more research in this direction in the future. Also, there are no sex differences in tool types being placed into burials in the Paleolithic (De Beaune, 2019;Riel-Salvatore and Gravel-Miguel, 2013), unlike in the Neolithic (Harto Villén, 2021;Masclans et al, 2021). In fact, paramasticatory anterior dental wear in Neanderthals, which is assumed to be associated with leather processing, is equally present in all sexes (Fox and Frayer, 1997).…”

“…The other approach lambasts the idea that activities could be feminine and masculine in the past at all—at least in the way we see these terms—and without clear evidence to the contrary, no reconstructed behavior should be gendered (e.g., Hrdy, 1981; Khorasani and Lee, 2020). Though there are contemporaneous publications taking these two approaches, and some authors suggest both (e.g., Conkey, 1991; De Beaune, 2019; Knapp, 1998), the former approach could be described as second‐wave feminism increasing awareness of women's contributions and the latter a third‐ or fourth‐wave feminist paradigm challenging whether gender roles are inherent at all. The problem with the first approach is that it still assumes a gendered division of labor while celebrating women's roles (Khorasani and Lee, 2020).…”