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

Abstract

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.

Early Chariots and Religion in South-East Europe and the Aegean During the Bronze Age: A Reappraisal of the Dupljaja Chariot in Context

“…Robb and Harris (2018: 132–34) argue that binary male–female identity was essentialized through ‘quite clear and explicit gender structures’ during the European Bronze Age. Acknowledging divergences, Robb and Harris’ core argument is that the use of material signs to differentiate male and female identity became widespread during the second millennium bc (but see Gaydarska et al, 2023). Even such binary symbolism accommodates the capacity for individuals to exercise choice or, as Matić (2010: 150–51) argues, to subvert norms in particular contexts.…”

Biological and substitute parents in Beaker period adult–child graves

“…The orientation of the woman at Altwies may be regarded as anomalous. In Continental European Beaker communities, women and girls were placed on their right side, with the head at the south, whereas men and boys were buried on their left side, with their head at the north-both sexes thus facing the eastern direction 61 . Conversely, in Altwies, the www.nature.com/scientificreports/ woman was placed with her head to the north, facing west.…”

Response to “Can women hunt? Yes, did women contribute much to human evolution through endurance hunting? Probably not.”

“…Such robusticity is only ever found among modern athletes (Macintosh et al., 2017). Groups emphasized by Martin and colleagues with an observed and pronounced sexual division of labor may serve as more useful models for understanding everything that comes after the Paleolithic—though there is plenty of reason to challenge these sexual divisions of labor in the Neolithic as well (e.g., Gaydarska et al., 2023). Strategies seen among foragers today are unlikely to be representative of the Paleolithic, especially since a variety of strategies and behavioral flexibility can take root when trying to keep offspring alive (Jones, 2009), which is observed among modern foragers today, even those with a strict sexual division of labor (Hill & Hurtado, 1991).…”

“…Such robusticity is only ever found among modern athletes (Macintosh et al, 2017). Groups emphasized by Martin and colleagues with an observed and pronounced sexual division of labor may serve as more useful models for understanding everything that comes after the Paleolithic-though there is plenty of reason to challenge these sexual divisions of labor in the Neolithic as well (e.g., Gaydarska et al, 2023).…”