ABSTRACT
This chapter examines illustration of the ambiguity of artifacts and the expression of gender at two different sites should clarify the nature of the challenge. The idea of a dominant ideology is useful here, but it requires some further refinement. It is also worth remembering that ideologies are not restricted to dominant groups. Hegemonic or non-vulgar ideologies as culturally embedded "common sense" constitute apparently objective knowledge thought to be beyond question. Muted groups have little choice but to express themselves through dominant groups' ideology and modes of expression or risk ostracism, condemnation, belittlement, or violence by embracing their own. The author has been able to do so because he has begun to see the people behind the artifacts as players in all scales of historical dramas. As we will see in several examples throughout this chapter historical archaeology contains particularly strong data with which to address strategies of coping with powerlessness and to discover the subtle expressions of mutedness.
