Beyond Complementarity and Hierarchy: New Definitions for Archaeological Gender Relations

GERO, JOAN M.; SCATTOLIN, MARÍA CRISTINA

In Pursuit of Gender: Worldwide Archaeological Perspectives

AltaMira Press

Lugar: Walnut Creek, CA, USA; Año: 2002; p. 155 - 171

In regard of archaeology of gender we argue that most satisfying results may come from concentrating on local manifestations of prehistoric gender, disentangling the various ways that gender organizes social life. Because gender is such a central organizational feature of all societies, it will be manifest in many areas; these might include: (1) the public roles or offices that must be filled, sometimes by specific genders, but always with more-or-less well-defined gender boundaries for these, complemented by opportunistic recruitment for such offices and roles based on other non-gender criteria such as birthright, kin relations, and experience; (2) the symbolic valuing of activities, as in what work is considered important and central, critical to the ongoing success of social / political / economic / ?meaningful? life, as opposed to undertakings that are routine, ?failsafe? or taken-for-granted; (3) the on-the-ground organization of work that focuses on caloric output or material production by gender, or that asks where gender activities are segregated by task or, alternatively, integrated across gender lines -- the degree to which specific tasks require gender integration / segregation. Any of these would yield a continuum of gender expressions and meanings rather than a dichotomy of classes of types of systems. Following our research in Argentina, we propose that the archaeological study of gender is best served by moving in this direction. So, in this paper, we reject generalizations about male or female ?status? (although the data could be used to construct such arguments) and avoid making the data speak to ?complementary? or ?hierarchical? gender relations. Instead, we consider the gendered labor required by specific household undertakings. Since much of the analysis for these materials has yet to be undertaken, we offer this example of non-categorical analysis in still rather general terms.