Painted genders: the construction of gender roles throught the display of body painting by the Selk'nam and the Yámana from Tierra del Fuego (southern South America).

FIORE, DANAE

Women and Archaeology.

Left Coast Press

Lugar: California; Año: 2007; p. 373 - 404

This paper focuses on the analysis of the uses of body painting in the construction of gender by the Selk'nam and Yámana societies of Tierra del Fuego. Body painting was worn by these aborigines in very specific situations throughout different stages of a person's life and according to the social roles he/she was playing, most of which were directly related to the gender of the wearer. It is argued that the display of body painting was actively involved in the creation and reproduction of these genders, both through the wearing and the viewing of the designs painted on the wearer's body. The results obtained through the analysis of written and visual records about these paintings show that the important gender differences that existed in the Selk'nam and Yámana societies, which were partly based on the display of body painting, were a factor of internal social division in these hunter-gatherer societies. This is particularly relevant for the discussion of the dynamics of the social structures of these societies, given that they are usually considered as fundamentally egalitarian, disregarding the issue of gender differences. Finally, at an epistemological level, it is noted that even a non-specialist in gender studies can perceive and therefore analyse the importance of gender as a fundamental structuring factor in the development of Yámana and Selk'nam social life in general and of their body painting display in particular. This is a clear example of the dialectical relationship between the data and the theoretical framework and analytical questions to study them, in which not only the theory dictates the questions to analyse a case, but sometimes the features of the case themselves indicate some of the questions to be asked - and answered.