ABSTRACT
Voss’s chapter especially shows how the intersection between different identities has to be acknowledged. Here the concern is with gender and sex, but in many other ways identities obviously interrelate and to look at one in isolation is perhaps to only gain a partial view. The different strands of the archaeology of identities function together to create the person (see Conlin Casella and Fowler 2005). Definitional and interpretive complexity is again demanded by Voss because an equivalence between sexuality as an extension of gender is rightly questioned and sexuality in all its manifestations, rather than a simplistic heterosexual model, is explored. Thus the development and application of the term ‘queer’ is considered and interesting points are made, again through drawing upon the work of Judith Butler (1993a, 1993b), that the ‘normative’ – essentially what is challenged in Voss’s contribution – is created through reference to deviance and in so doing the latter becomes foundational and the normative the ‘unstable’ edifice. Although the universal aspect of this can be questioned (see my introductory chapter), it further underscores the necessity of at least questioning all our assumptions when it comes to configuring identities within the archaeological record.
