ABSTRACT
This paper argues for an understanding of gender archaeology as a particular approach concerned with the involvement of objects and action in the construction of gender. The argument includes consideration of some of the recent developments within gender archaeology and the place of material culture in these. The argued position is based on the recognition that while the early focus upon the recovery and location of women’s role and importance in past societies initiated an essential change in our understanding of gender, it nonetheless also had serious limitations. In particular, this focus furthered an understanding of gender as an essential identity—ie, an understanding that basically sees male and female as universal identities. One consequence of this is that little attention has been paid to the processes through which gender is expressed and experienced as well as to its status as construction. So, while we have been looking for gender as a social construction or practice, we have paid scant attention to the implications of this argument. We have ignored the question of how gender is constructed. This means that the practice through which gender is constructed, maintained, and given physical reality, and the relevance of this to people’s lives, have been downplayed or sometimes even erased from our analyses. In response to such limitations, this paper focusses upon ways of adding to and expanding the theoretical frameworks which currently direct gender research. In essence, the paper aims to add to discussions about how we, as archaeologists, understand and investigate gender.
