Theme:
4. Persisting with Change: Theory and Archaeological Scrutiny
Session format:
Round table (without formal abstracts, only list of confirmed discussants / session co-organisers to be provided)
Title:
Essential or Essentialist: Sex and Gender Categories in Archaeological Interpretation
Content:
In Europe, gender archaeology has tended to operate by differentiating between the concepts of biological sex – male/female as the basis of our reproductive system, and gender - the cultural elaboration of sex-based differences between men and women. It has long been recognized that neither sex nor gender are strictly binary, and archaeological evidence has demonstrated decisively that non-binary gender variation was present in many past human societies. However, an emerging trend to negate the existence of biological sex and conflate it with gender has called archaeological and bioanthropological practice into question. In a recent case two major professional organizations in the US and Canada have argued that archaeologically recovered bodies should not be assigned a biological sex based on morphological or genetic characteristics, and studies of past identity that distinguish between sex and gender should no longer be undertaken or presented in academic conference settings. In this roundtable, we would like to discuss methodological, theoretical and societal shifts in the meaning(s) of sex and gender, and debate how we can constructively advance gender archaeology under these complex and often contentious conditions.
Keywords:
Sex, gender, bioarchaeology, bioanthropology, mortuary archaeology
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
AGE
Main organiser:
Bettina Arnold (United States) 1
Co-organisers:
Katharina Rebay Salisbury (Austria) 2
Affiliations:
1. University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
2. University of Vienna
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