Women and (in)visibilization of work: insights from bioarchaeology

VARGAS, GISELA; DANGELO DEL CAMPO, MANUEL DOMINGO; SALEGA, SOLEDAD

Congreso; 4th Virtual Conference of Women Archaeologists and Paleontologists; 2024

In the study of past societies, both the analysis of work and sexual division of labor have traditionally been approached from an androcentric vision, which has led to interpretations that minimize the role of women, even resulting in their invisibility as subjects of historical processes. Understanding work as a social practice and not only as an economic phenomenon, we can expand this notion to apply it to bioarchaeological studies, where the assignment of fixed and dichotomous roles is still observed, which is in turn associated with contemporary notions regarding the activities carried out by men and women that are extrapolated to the past. However, these roles are under debate today within the contributions of feminist archaeology, in order to make women and their role in different social practices visible from a gender perspective. Thus, the aim of the present work is to summarize the contributions from three bioarchaeological analyzes that address problems related to work and daily tasks. More specifically, we address three past populations in Argentina and Germany from archaeological and historical contexts and we highlight the role played by women in each analyzed case. Likewise, we present possible limitations of inferring daily tasks from the bioarchaeological record (mostly derived from the non-specificity of bone changes) as well as the bias that historical documents can display when acknowledging women’s occupations. Finally, we consider possibilities of including the analyses of other sources (such as archaeological and ethnographic records) that provide us with additional ways to approach the activities developed by women in the past.