A sexual division of labour at the start of agriculture? A multi-proxy comparison through grave good stone tool technological and use-wear analysis

Abstract

This work demonstrates the importance of integrating sexual division of labour into the research of the transition to the Neolithic and its social implications. During the spread of the Neolithic in Europe, when migration led to the dispersal of domesticated plants and animals, novel tasks and tools, appear in the archaeological record. By examining the use-wear traces from over 400 stone tools from funerary contexts of the earliest Neolithic in central Europe we provide insights into what tasks could have been carried out by women and men. The results of this analysis are then examined for statistically significant correlations with the osteological, isotopic and other grave good data, informing on sexed-based differences in diet, mobility and symbolism. Our data demonstrate males were buried with stone tools used for woodwork, and butchery, hunting or interpersonal violence, while women with those for the working of animal skins, expanding the range of tasks known to have been carried out. The results also show variation along an east-west cline from Slovakia to eastern France, suggesting that the sexual division of labour (or at least its representation in death) changed as farming spread westwards.

Sex differences in the human brain: a roadmap for more careful analysis and interpretation of a biological reality

“…While hypothetical evolutionary causes are hard to empirically assess, sexual selection has provided a powerful explanatory framework for additional sex-biased traits in humans, including facial hair [ 27 ], fat distribution [ 28 ], aggression [ 29 ], and spatial ability [ 30 ]. For example: i) mate competition among males may contribute to male-biased rates of aggression across human cultures [ 29 ]; ii) sex differences in foraging throughout early human evolution (and after transitions to agriculture in some populations [ 31 ]) may partially explain sex-biased spatial abilities (e.g., labor division: females gather from spatially stable but seasonally variable food sites; males hunt across long distances spanning various routes; modern performance patterns: females outperform on object location memory and navigation by landmark tasks; males outperform on mental rotation tasks, which are associated with throwing accuracy and navigation by orientation) [ 32 , 33 ]; and (iii) effective mate choice may require behavioral inhibition and contribute to female outperformance on inhibitory tasks [ 34 ]. If sexual selection did, in fact, shape adult human behavior over evolutionary time, then this will have necessarily been achieved through sex differences in neurodevelopment and adult brain organization.…”

Transmission of lithic and ceramic technical know-how in the Early Neolithic of central-western Europe: Shedding Light on the Social Mechanisms underlying Cultural Transition

“…Technological analyses relating to ceramic apprenticeships have so far concentrated on the LBK of the Paris Basin, Belgium and Eastern France, whereas for lithic industries, it is rather the post-LBK assemblages from Belgium and the Rhineland that have been the main focus. Yet this observation may also reflect differing social dynamics depending on the technical subsystem, linked to a gendered distribution of technical labour (see e.g., Bickle, 2020;Masclans Latorre et al, 2020;Masclans et al, 2021). It is thus tempting to assume that the intensity of influxes (without visible hybridisation) observed in the ceramic subsystem during the LBK could be the reflection of a strong mobility of women, for instance in the case of matrimonial movements (as suggested by a number of bioarchaeological studies: e.g., Bentley et al, 2002;Price et al, 2001) -women settling where they marry with their own ceramic technical traditions (Gomart et al, 2015(Gomart et al, , 2017…”

To Gender or not To Gender? Exploring Gender Variations through Time and Space

“…adzes. In terms of gender roles, osteological data and use-wear analysis of tools found in burials (Villotte & Knüsel, 2014;Macintosh et al, 2017;Masclans et al, 2021) suggest that men participated in hunting, woodworking, and butchering, while women were engaged in skin-processing and fibre-working. However, such a postulated division of labour assumes that objects included in graves were representative of the individuals' practices.…”