Gender archaeology
Gender archaeologists examine the relative positions in society of men, women, and children through identifying and studying the differences in power and authority they held, as they are manifested in material (and skeletal) remains.
This new perspective that focused on feminist viewpoint in archaeology was initiated by the rapid evolution in the 20th century, of the Western Societies outlook and interpretation of gender.
This modern structure for theoretical perspective addressed many of the patriarchal biases instilled in the interpretation and excavation of past archaeology.
Due to this lack of technology, scientists made assumptions about a variety of topics including the division of labor between the sexes and past societies' views of sexual anatomy and desires.
[8] Additionally, it provides research of the women in prehistoric societies and analyzes the gendered activities that portray female agency and social engagement.
[8] Furthermore, feminist archaeology pushes a social and political agenda of female representation and the advancement of women in modern society.
[8] However, the social justice aspect of feminist archaeology tends to not be inclusive of race and class which can differentiate the experiences of a woman.
[9] The concept of gender was not traditionally explored in early archaeology because most research was male-centered and there was little representation of female archaeologists.
[5] Archaeology students were not satisfied with the limited information available about past women's roles and experiences, and the assumptions that were made for decades.
[1] Margaret Conkey and Janet D. Spector (1984) are considered the first in the Anglo-American field to examine the application of feminist approaches and insights to archaeological practice and theory.
[10][11] However, Scandinavian, and specifically Norwegian, archaeologists had already in the early seventies started to follow a processual recipe for studying gender relations both within (pre)history and the profession itself.
Prominent archaeologists Margaret W. Conkey and Joan M. Gero detail the various ways gender is shaped in archaeological research.
One of those responsible was Paul Bahn, who in 1992 published a statement declaring that: It has been argued that gender is not genetically inherited but a process of structuring subjectivities, whereas sex is biologically determinate and static (Claassen 1992, Gilchrist 1991, Nelson 1997).
This approach of sexual fluidity, meaning that sex is not a cross-cultural concept and it is mostly culturally assigned, has been undermined by the wide application of DNA analysis to skeletal remains in Western archaeology.
The conclusions drawn from such studies performed by Western archaeologists, will be biased by their cultural influences and concepts of sex, biology and DNA.
Another way in which the fieldwork has challenged the usual study of gender archaeology is by analyzing more material culture like objects, activities and spatial arrangements in the landscape (Nelson 1997).
