ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the materiality of gender complexity, complicating the notion that gender can be expressed in a singular or distinct way. The question of gender aptly demonstrates a need to carry archaeology beyond empirical approaches into ideational realms, which impact, and are impacted by, material culture in complex ways that cannot be understood through functional categorization or statistical modelling. The importance of looking beyond proxy approaches has been articulated in literature surrounding ethnicity in archaeology. Archaeologists have been plagued by the tendency to interpret anything unusual or difficult to explain as being part of ritual activity. The chapter discusses some potential avenues that archaeologists might take to exploring nonbinary gender materially in precontact Inuit contexts. It explores some potential approaches that have thus far gone untested. These approaches include looking at the mixing and amalgamation of gendered symbolism in material culture and explorations of ritual spaces that might have acted as sites for gender mediation.
