ABSTRACT
My interest in examining power relations via gender in archaeology began with a critique of traditional anthropological assumptions that all “power” was domination (Paynter and McGuire 1991). As was explained in the Introduction to this volume, traditional approaches tend to focus on formal institutions of power and authority as defining where power is located in any given society. This formulation of power confines the definition to domination and seriously circumscribes the possibilities for “who” can exercise it. These possibilities do not include anyone not directly associated with institutions of authority such as heads of state, governing bodies, or household rulers. Very often this perspective excludes women and other classes of people, such as the apparently poor and dispossessed, who have been historically subjugated within Western society (see Woodhouse-Beyer, Chapter 7 in this volume). As many have already pointed out, this is no coincidence (e.g. Engelstad 1991; Wylie 1992:56–57, 61) but demonstrates the attention needed in disentangling Western social constructions of power relations from interpretations of the social constructions of power relations in prehistoric societies that may not have been the same (see Kent, Chapter 2 in this volume).
