Bioarchaeological Approaches to the Gendered Body

Sofaer, Joanna

doi:10.1002/9781118294291.ch11

Cited by 9 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 56 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Bioarchaeologists usually consider sex as a biological given, in contrast to culturally defined gender. We cannot assume a priori that in every society, gender is mapped directly onto biological variation (Geller 2017;Hollimon 2011;Sofaer 2013). However, in Classical society, gender was closely aligned with morphological sex; it was considered mostly binary; and it was accompanied by strong expectations about gendered work and comportment.…”

Section: Bodies Shaped By Work: Signs Of Labormentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Individual Lives: Using Comparative Osteobiography to Trace Social Patterns in Classical Italy

Robb

2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Osteobiographical studies have usually focused upon investigating an individual's life experience. However, we can also understand variation in the shape of the life course itself as an object of study: Are there common patterns for how lives unfold within a society? Are there events or experiences that channel life courses? This approach to the life course can be adopted for ancient as well as for modern lives. A key element here is developing new methodologies for characterizing and comparing how lives develop through time, for instance, by ordering biological data in sequence, looking for time-structured patterns in them both by eye and through multivariate statistics. This article presents an initial exploration of this problem, using skeletal and archaeological data on 47 adults from the fifth to third centuries B.C. at Pontecagnano, an urban site in Campania, Italy. The results show both the importance of gender in the life course and the effects of different kinds of physical stress, probably due to specialization in labor. The result is not discrete categories of people but fuzzy envelopes of life possibilities.

show abstract

Section: Bodies Shaped By Work: Signs Of Labormentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Individual Lives: Using Comparative Osteobiography to Trace Social Patterns in Classical Italy

Robb

2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This wave has also been connected to questions around power and how the intersectionality of overlapping identity categories coincides in and forms oppressive structures. Here, importantly, Sofaer (2006; 2013) has made use of performative gender theories such as those of Butler (1990; 1993) to bring change to osteological studies. What I would like to add to feminist gender studies in archaeology, drawing on van der Tuin (2014, 16), is that there are more routes to explore in order to expand the field of gender studies in archaeology.…”

Section: Critical Posthumanism and Gender In Archaeologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Bodily Entanglements: Gender, Archaeological Sciences and the More-than-ness of Archaeological Bodies

Fredengren

2021

CAJ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Critical feminist Posthumanism provides novel ways of dealing with bodies as material-discursive phenomena. As such, bodies come about, change and dissolve by re-workings of entangled relations. Such relationships are making human bodies more-than-human. Bodies can be understood as full of excesses—that will not be captured by, for example, gender or age categories alone—albeit occasionally materially shaped by them. Examples of such excessive relations are captured by DNA analysis or various isotope analyses—where diet as well as geological habitat gets imprinted into the body and become a part of the personhood—and can be discussed as the landscape within. This paper deals with some misunderstandings around Posthumanism, but also with how critical posthumanist feminist theory can breathe new life into archaeological gender studies and thereby also forge new relationships with the archaeological sciences.

show abstract

“…In mortuary and osteoarchaeological contexts, analytical focus has unsettled the confinement of gender to a masculine/feminine dyad, calling attention to the diversity of possible social configurations as well as the historicity of sex (Arnold 2002(Arnold , 2006(Arnold , 2016Arnold and Wicker2001a;Claassen 1992b;Geller 2005Geller , 2008Geller , 2009aHollimon 2011;Joyce 2008;Sofaer 2006Sofaer ,2013. Less essentialist approaches to material culture and identity have come into practice, pointing out that sex and gender might not have been the most prominent dimensions structuring the meaning of grave inclusions or burial attributes (Arnold 2016;Crass 2001;Jordan 2016;Stratton 2016;Weglian 2001: 142-153).…”

Section: Destabilizing the Binary Binds: Approaches To Differencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Do the binary binds doom us to a specific process of personhood, or can they be deployed to help reveal or point to terms of engagement that are markedly different from the binds' underlying premises? For example, in mortuary or bioarchaeological contexts, how do we reconcile the complexity of theory with dimorphic sex categories as a starting point (see, e.g., Geller 2005Geller , 2008Geller , 2009aSofaer 2006Sofaer , 2013Marshall and Alberti 2014)?…”

Section: Normative:non-normative Tensions In Practice-the Containmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction to “Binary Binds”: Deconstructing Sex and Gender Dichotomies in Archaeological Practice

Ghisleni

Jordan

Fioccoprile

2016

J Archaeol Method Theory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Gender archaeology has made significant strides toward deconstructing the hegemony of binary categorizations. Challenging dichotomies such as man/woman, sex/gender, and biology/culture, approaches informed by poststructuralist, feminist, and queer theories have moved beyond essentialist and universalist identity constructs to more nuanced configurations. Despite the theoretical emphasis on context, multiplicity, and fluidity, binary starting points continue to streamline the spectrum of variability that is recognized, often reproducing normative assumptions in the evidence. The contributors to this special issue confront how sex, gender, and sexuality categories condition analytical visibility, aiming to develop approaches that respond to the complexity of theory in archaeological practice. The papers push the ontological and epistemological boundaries of bodies, personhood, and archaeological possibility, challenging a priori assumptions that contain how sex, gender, and sexuality categories are constituted and related to each other. Foregrounding intersectional approaches that engage with ambiguity, variability, and difference, this special issue seeks to "de-contain" categories, assumptions, and practices from "binding" our analytical gaze toward only certain kinds of persons and knowledges, in interpretations of the past and practices in the present.The interpretation of sex and gender in archaeology has long been contained by the social polarity of "man" and "woman" as well as the confinement of sex in biology and gender in culture (Joyce 2008;Sofaer 2006;Yates 1993)-what we term the "binary binds." The aim of this special issue is to critically engage with and move beyond the limitations of sex and gender dichotomies in archaeological narratives, with an emphasis on developing approaches that respond to the complexity of theory in practices. The 2 articles emerged from the Archaeology and Gender in Europe 1 (Dommasnes and Montón-Subías 2012: 374, 382) sponsored session at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists in Istanbul, Turkey. Contributors were challenged to rethink the analytical categories that frame archaeological reconstructions of sex, gender, and sexuality, exploring how binary starting points and methodological practices condition and constrain interpretations of sex and gender variability.We recognize that a call to critically interrogate sex and gender dichotomies is not new. The binary binds and their hierarchical confinement of biological and social difference have been loci of contestation since the emergence of gender as an analytical category in archaeology (e.g., Claassen ). In the past three decades, gender archaeology has made significant strides toward deconstructing the imperatives of these dichotomies, informed by poststructuralist, feminist, and queer

show abstract

Bioarchaeological Approaches to the Gendered Body

Cited by 9 publications

References 56 publications

Beyond Individual Lives: Using Comparative Osteobiography to Trace Social Patterns in Classical Italy

Beyond Individual Lives: Using Comparative Osteobiography to Trace Social Patterns in Classical Italy

Bodily Entanglements: Gender, Archaeological Sciences and the More-than-ness of Archaeological Bodies

Introduction to “Binary Binds”: Deconstructing Sex and Gender Dichotomies in Archaeological Practice

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About