Session: #1168

Content:

Masculinity is as social constructed, negociated and performed as Femininity. However, it tends to be more naturalised that its “counterpart” (in a binary system thinking) due to being under-studied. This issue stems from the general lack of interest on Feminism and Gender Theory by male archaeologists, and a major focus on Femininity by the female ones. Also,a lot of the studies on masculinities have been based on the good graves found with bodies estimated as biologically males, such as weapons and personal adornment, and analysed by patriarchal values such as power, violence and social status. Thus, presenting these interpretations as neutral and forgetting the social aspects of the gender. The European Prehistory is a good context to see what have happened and the new direction these studies could take. Not only is interesting the emergence of the warriors elite (and beauty) during the Bronze Age, but also the ways of life of the Mesolithic “men”, the impact of the concept on gender from the Neolithic groups that expanded into this wide region, and how the appearance of metallurgy may changed those societies.
In this session, as we aim to rethink the masculinit(ies)y in Prehistoric Europe from a feminist and constructivist approach. First, interpreting the past: How can the masculinit(ies)y be identifiyed in the archaeological record? Which signs and material culture should we look for? And second, studying the masculinit(ies) within the(ir) specific context(s): how was it socially constructed and performed? What kind of impact had in the daily life of those groups? Which values could it be associated with? We welcome different contributions: from case studies, reinterpretations of previous works, new theoretical frameworks. The topics may include: analysis on skeletal remains (osteobiography, isotopical analysis, palaeopathology…), grave goods (e.g. weapons), monuments (mounds, megaliths…) and graphical expressións, such as funerary stelae.

Session: #1168

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