The Representation of Gender

Homology or Propaganda

Bibliographic Data

ID19448384
AuthorsDouglass W Bailey, Doug Bailey (0000-0002-1304-8762, corresponding author)
Year1994
Volume2
Issue2
Pages215-228
Publication date1994-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of European Archaeology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0965-7665 • E-ISSN: 2057-7869
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1179/096576694800719139
OpenAlexW1965034597
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited6

This paper 'engenders' the prehistory of south-eastem Europe for the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods. It discusses theoretical aspects of a gender archaeology, including three prehistoric case studies, and applies the 'theory of mutedness' and the 'theory of sexual insult' - subordinate groups using alternative methods of expression - to the female figurines of the fifth-millennium south-eastern Europe. Archaeology reveals that males were dominant in the public sphere of funerary ritual, expressed in the amount and types of grave-goods; females dominated the domestic sphere, where figurines abound. An engendered tension existed between domestic and mortuary spaces. A third, asexual gender also existed at this time (documented by asexual figurines and cenotaph burials). The third gender transcended the existing bi-gender tension and strategies of spatial restriction. The sexual imagery in the figurines is interpreted as evidence of gender tensions, rather than as evidence of matriarchical societies

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Biology · Bronze Age · Chalcolithic · Geography · Grave goods · Political science · Prehistory · Sexual difference · Sociology · Anthropology · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies · History · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Law · Psychology

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