Gender and the archaeological sciences: Gender, mobility, and kinship in European prehistory

TY - CHAP

T1 - Gender and the archaeological sciences

T2 - Gender, mobility, and kinship in European prehistory

AU - Bickle, Penny

PY - 2024/12/2

Y1 - 2024/12/2

N2 - The last three decades have seen a rapid expansion in the number of biomolecular techniques that can be applied to the human skeleton, revealing detailed accounts of past diets, mobilities, and increasingly, biological kinship. Much of this data has been interpreted through the lens of gender, suggesting that through time, males and females experienced distinctly different lifeways. While the scientific techniques have developed at a pace, the theoretical framework to understand this data in its archaeological context is only now developing. This has resulted in critiques of the interpretation of archaeological science data, particularly that it has not sufficiently taken on board the fluidity and flexibility of sex, gender, and kinship, attested globally and through time. At times, interpretations have been based on modern assumptions and biases, reflecting modern experience of gender, and have confused interpretative models further. Hence, androcentrism, with men active in the past and women subject to the wishes of their husbands and fathers, can often be repeated without further consideration. Focusing on the evidence for mobility from strontium isotope analysis and aDNA, this contribution considers how these influential studies impact on our view of gender and relatedness in the past, drawing on case studies from European prehistory. In this region, women are thought to have moved more than men, usually interpreted as a result of specific marriage relations within a patrilocal framework. Whether this was the case through much of European prehistory is questioned. A framework for interpretation of gender from scientific data is proposed, arguing that greater attention should be given to the variability in the datasets arising from these different techniques, rather than the average result.

AB - The last three decades have seen a rapid expansion in the number of biomolecular techniques that can be applied to the human skeleton, revealing detailed accounts of past diets, mobilities, and increasingly, biological kinship. Much of this data has been interpreted through the lens of gender, suggesting that through time, males and females experienced distinctly different lifeways. While the scientific techniques have developed at a pace, the theoretical framework to understand this data in its archaeological context is only now developing. This has resulted in critiques of the interpretation of archaeological science data, particularly that it has not sufficiently taken on board the fluidity and flexibility of sex, gender, and kinship, attested globally and through time. At times, interpretations have been based on modern assumptions and biases, reflecting modern experience of gender, and have confused interpretative models further. Hence, androcentrism, with men active in the past and women subject to the wishes of their husbands and fathers, can often be repeated without further consideration. Focusing on the evidence for mobility from strontium isotope analysis and aDNA, this contribution considers how these influential studies impact on our view of gender and relatedness in the past, drawing on case studies from European prehistory. In this region, women are thought to have moved more than men, usually interpreted as a result of specific marriage relations within a patrilocal framework. Whether this was the case through much of European prehistory is questioned. A framework for interpretation of gender from scientific data is proposed, arguing that greater attention should be given to the variability in the datasets arising from these different techniques, rather than the average result.

U2 - 10.4324/9781003257530

DO - 10.4324/9781003257530

M3 - Chapter

BT - The Routledge Handbook of Gender Archaeology

A2 - Moen, Marianne

A2 - Pedersen, Unn

PB - Routledge

CY - London

ER -