This class introduces students to the Archaeology of Gender. It highlights both the theoretical and methodological innovations that resulted from an interest in the gendering of the past and material culture. It traces the development of both the archaeological awareness of gender and women, from an approach discussed as women, to the more nuanced embodied and encultured perspectives that inform feminist social theory and archaeology at the moment. This class also highlights the loci and modalities of women’s participation in society, from the household to workplaces and monumental ceremonial contexts. It explores women’s roles and the varying understanding of womanhood itself in these contexts that span the Bronze Age Aegean, Gold Rush Australia, plantations, and the West in early modern North America and South and Mesoamerica. Students will learn that gender and sexuality are social constructs that vary with cultural and political context and exhibit considerable dynamism in response to changing political and, at times, ecological conditions. Students will also learn to appreciate the different knowledge production modalities and epistemologies that taking gender seriously has afforded social scientists in general and anthropologists and archaeologists in particular. Students will also be encouraged to engage their own understanding of gender in response to its myriad framings presented in the class.
