ABSTRACT
Gender may be understood as the cultural interpretation of sexual difference: its qualities can be conflicting, mutable and cumulative, contingent upon personal and historical circumstances. The archaeological study of gender in past societies has emerged over the last fifteen years, until today distinctive traditions can be discerned in the practice of gender archaeology. This book aims to assess the place of gender studies within archaeology, charting the changing definitions, concerns and methods of gender archaeology, and its impact on the wider discipline. Such a survey requires a critical consideration of the study of gender within the intellectual histories of both archaeology and feminist theory. While not all gender archaeology is allied with feminism (or conducted by feminists, or even by women), it has evolved symbiotically with feminist thinking. Together with many of the social sciences, archaeology is experiencing a paradigm shift that has resulted from feminism. This transition may be traced from the ungendered (or male-biased) narratives that characterised most archaeology up to the 1970s, through the greater concern for visibility of women in publications of the 1980s and early 1990s, to today’s focus on the feminine and masculine. Attention to equality of recognition, and representation of women and men in the past, is being replaced by an interest in gender differences between, and among, men and women.
