From Stones to Gendered Bodies

Regional Differences in the Production of the Body and Gender on the Copper Age Statue-Menhirs of Northern Italy and the Swiss Valais

Bibliographic Data

ID7175657
AuthorsHarri (0000-0001-9373-289X, University College London, corresponding author), Susanna Harris, Kerstin P Hofmann (0000-0003-4405-5751, Freie Universität Berlin)
Year2014
Volume17
Issue2
Pages264-285
Publication date2014-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of Archaeology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1461-9571 • E-ISSN: 1741-2722
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1179/1461957114y.0000000054
OpenAlexW1980910081
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited27

Much research has been carried out on identifying gendered iconography on statue-menhirs. This paper seeks to develop this perspective by considering the broader body concepts. Body concepts are of interest to archaeologists because they are closely connected to issues of sex, gender, and age. By investigating stone sculptures, however, we are looking at an ideological view of the body that was produced by reducing the stone from its natural form into a statue-menhir. The presence of bodily features on the statue-menhirs suggests that it was important to construct a body, and that certain aspects of the body were chosen to be represented, either through the size and shape of the stone or iconography, while others were neglected. We propose this is a significant means by which stones were made into bodies and gendered beings. To investigate body concepts, we pose two questions: how was a statue-menhir body made, and how was it gendered? By following the reduction sequence of the stone as the technique of production, we investigate which bodily features were important in constructing a body and in gendering it. We do this through analysing and comparing three regional examples of anthropomorphic statue-menhirs: (1) The Lunigiana groups A and B in northwestern Tuscany and eastern-most Liguria, (2) the Atesino group in Trentino-Alto Adige, and (3) the Sion Type A in the Swiss Valais and the Aosta Style I in northern Italy. Although there is a shared statue-menhir tradition in the three regions and beyond, the observations in this paper suggest that the bodily gender categories were negotiated regionally

Archaeology · Art · Art history · Geography · Iconography · Ideology · Northern italy · Political science · Politics · Sculpture · Statue · Style (visual arts · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies · History · Law · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology