Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on Gender Transformations

Download or read book Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on Gender Transformations written by Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-09 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In many facets of Western culture, including archaeology, there remains a legacy of perceiving gender divisions as natural, innate, and biological in origin. This belief follows that men are naturally pre-disposed to public, intellectual pursuits, while women are innately designed to care for the home and take care of children. In the interpretation of material culture, accepted notions of gender roles are often applied to new findings: the dichotomy between the domestic sphere of women and the public sphere of men can color interpretations of new materials. In this innovative volume, the contributors focus explicitly on analyzing the materiality of historic changes in the domestic sphere around the world. Combining a global scope with great temporal depth, chapters in the volume explore how gender ideologies, identities, relationships, power dynamics, and practices were materially changed in the past, thus showing how they could be changed in the future.