Gender in Eastern European Prehistory

Chapman, John; Palincaş, Nona

doi:10.1002/9781118294291.ch20

Cited by 4 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…The study of gender in European prehistory has followed a similar pattern in many regions (Chapman and Palincaş 2013; Diaz-Andreu and Monton-Subias 2013; Edwards and Pope 2013; Hitchcock and Nikolaidou 2013; Sørensen 2013a; Whitehouse 2013). A pioneering, feminist first generation in the 1980s–1990s succeeded in accumulating case studies throughout Europe.…”

Section: The State Of Mainstream Gender Archaeologymentioning

confidence: 90%

“…Figurines provide the most obvious evidence of gender (Figure 3). Small figurines, usually of clay, are common in southeastern Europe; they are also found in the central Mediterranean and central Europe, particularly the Hungarian basin (Bailey 2005; Chapman and Palincaş 2013). In many traditions, most figurines unquestionably represent women.…”

Section: Gender In the European Neolithicmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In all of these, burial was increasingly characterized by consistent sets of gendered grave goods (Vander Linden 2015:610–611). This set the pattern: while it contained local variation and occasional exceptions that violated binary separations (e.g., Chapman and Palincaş 2013:425), Bronze Age burial reflected a straightforward, widespread set of differences between men and women. The contrast with the Neolithic pattern is unmistakable.…”

Section: Gender In the European Neolithicmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Becoming Gendered in European Prehistory: Was Neolithic Gender Fundamentally Different?

Robb

Harris

2017

Am. Antiq.

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It is notable how little gender archaeology has been written for the European Neolithic, in contrast to the following Bronze Age. We cannot blame this absence on a lack of empirical data or on archaeologists’ theoretical naïveté. Instead, we argue that this absence reflects the fact that gender in this period was qualitatively different in form from the types of gender that emerged in Europe from about 3000 cal BC onwards; the latter still form the norm in European and American contexts today, and our standard theories and methodologies are designed to uncover this specific form of gender. In Bronze Age gender systems, gender was mostly binary, associated with stable, lifelong identities expressed in recurrent complexes of gendered symbolism. In contrast, Neolithic gender appears to have been less firmly associated with personal identity and more contextually relevant; it slips easily through our methodological nets. In proposing this “contextual gender” model for Neolithic gender, we both open up new understandings of gender in the past and present and pose significant questions for our models of gender more widely.

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Section: The State Of Mainstream Gender Archaeologymentioning

confidence: 90%

Section: Gender In the European Neolithicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Gender In the European Neolithicmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Becoming Gendered in European Prehistory: Was Neolithic Gender Fundamentally Different?

Robb

Harris

2017

Am. Antiq.

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“…Studies of Bronze Age gender categorization (e.g. Chapman & Palincaş, 2013) reveal much more local variability than Robb and Harris have recognized. The combination of the expanding vigour of ideological emphasis on male dominance in key Copper Age/Bronze Age contexts with the increase in the number and spread of such contexts in which binary categorization was promoted suggests nuanced changes in a period in which personhood did not carry a gendered charge.…”

Section: The Relationship Between Gender and A Nested Identity: An Ap...mentioning

confidence: 99%

To Gender or not To Gender? Exploring Gender Variations through Time and Space

et al. 2023

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This article is based on an EAA session in Kiel in 2021, in which thirteen contributors provide their response to Robb and Harris's (2018) overview of studies of gender in the European Neolithic and Bronze Age, with a reply by Robb and Harris. The central premise of their 2018 article was the opposition of ‘contextual Neolithic gender’ to ‘cross-contextual Bronze Age gender’, which created uneasiness among the four co-organizers of the Kiel meeting. Reading Robb and Harris's original article leaves the impression that there is an essentialist ‘Neolithic’ and ‘Bronze Age’ gender, the former being under-theorized, unclear, and unstable, the latter binary, unchangeable, and ideological. While Robb and Harris have clearly advanced the discussion on gender, the perspectives and case studies presented here, while critical of their views, take the debate further, painting a more complex and diverse picture that strives to avoid essentialism.

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“…Several studies reviewing the archaeology of Hungary in general, and of Neolithic studies in particular, during the communist/ socialist period after the Second World War have recently been published. These studies also addressed issues regarding the extent to which research agendas and research methods were determined and influenced by the political situation and the ideology of the period (Laszlovszky and Siklódi 1991; Chapman 1997; Bartosiewicz et al 2011;Bánffy 2013a;Chapman and Palincaş 2013;Bartosiewicz 2017), although archaeology was probably the least politically committed discipline among the humanities (Bartosiewicz et al 2011, 287). The ideology of Marxism or, more accurately, its misinterpreted, vulgar-Marxist version, was not conducive to any discussion of theoretical issues because these were deemed politically subversive.…”

Section: General Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender Transformations in Prehistoric and Archaic Societies

Kirleis¹

2019

Scales of Transformation

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In which chronological, spatial, and social contexts is gender a relevant social category that is noticeable in the archaeological material? How can transformations in social gender relations and identity be recognized archaeologically? Is the identity of prehistoric people defined by gender? If so, what is the accompanying cultural context? What about gender equality among the scientists working in archaeology? In what degree are research teams, as well as their scientific approaches, biased today? These and other burning questions are intensively discussed in this volume, which comprises 25 contributions presented at the international workshop ‘Gender Transformations in Prehistoric and Archaic Societies’, organised by the Collaborative Research Centre 1266 of Kiel University funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The workshop offered a platform to discuss a broad range of approaches on the inter-dependencies between gender relations and socio-environmental transformation processes. Beyond a focus on the archaeology of women, gender archaeology offers a variety of possibilities to reconstruct the contribution of social groups differentiated e.g. by age, gender, and activities related to cultural transformation, based on the archaeological material. Thus, this volume includes papers dealing with different socio-economic units, from south-western Europe to Central Asia, between 15,000 and 1 BCE, paying particular attention to the scale of social reach. Since gender archaeology, and in particular feminist archaeology, also addresses the issue of scientific objectivity or bias, parts of this volume are dedicated to equal opportunity matters in archaeological academia across the globe. This is realised by bringing together feminist and female experiences from a range of countries, each with its own specific individual, cultural, and social perspectives and traditions. The papers are organised along three central topics: ‘Gendering fieldwork’, ‘Tracing gender transformations’, and ‘Gendering and shaping the environment’. By gendering the archaeological discussion on transformation processes, the contributions aim to more firmly embed gender-sensitive research in the archaeological agenda, not just in Europe, but world-wide.

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Gender in Eastern European Prehistory

Cited by 4 publications

References 26 publications

Becoming Gendered in European Prehistory: Was Neolithic Gender Fundamentally Different?

Becoming Gendered in European Prehistory: Was Neolithic Gender Fundamentally Different?

To Gender or not To Gender? Exploring Gender Variations through Time and Space

Gender Transformations in Prehistoric and Archaic Societies

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