Domesticating gender: Neolithic patterns from the southern Levant

The changing Neolithic household: Household autonomy and social segmentation, Tell Halula, Syria

“…In some LPPNB houses the majority of people were buried with objects, and in other houses almost no one was buried with objects, suggests that select households may have had greater economic and social position over other households. Echoing other researches (Kuijt, 2008;Peterson, 2010), we do not see evidence for the emergence of elites or powerful families. At the same time select individuals were symbolically and physically identified over others in moments of death.…”

“…Studies by a number researchers (e.g., Banning, 2003Banning, , 2011BarYosef, 2001;Byrd, 1994;Flannery, 1972Flannery, , 2002Kuijt, 2001Kuijt, , 2008Peterson, 2010) allows us to build a more nuanced understanding of the changing Neolithic household. The emergence of Near Eastern Pre-Pottery Neolithic villages between 10,500 and 9500 BP embodies profound changes in social organization, ritual, and economic systems.…”

“…Clearly, future research is necessary to explore the extent to which social and biological age was interconnected in early Neolithic villages. As is highlighted by the research of Peterson (2010), additional research is necessary to understand gendered activities, such as what activities were performed by males and or females, within these villages.…”

Special Issue Entheseal Changes and Occupation: Technical and Theoretical Advances and Their Applications

“…EC have become the dominant method for studying activity due to the perception that they record specific muscle use, that recording them involves low levels of intra‐observer and inter‐observer error (Hawkey & Merbs, ), and the apparent idea that they do not have a multi‐factorial aetiology. This has led to their use to study many aspects (often more than one in each study) of life in the past, for example, the effect of subsistence strategy changes or differences (Hawkey, ; Churchill & Morris, ; Steen & Lane, ; Eshed et al , ; Papathanasiou, ; Clapper, ; Doying, ; Villotte et al , ; Stefanovic & Porcic, ), cultural changes or differences (Chapman, ; Al‐Oumaoui et al , ; Groves, ; Lieverse et al , ; Zabecki, ; Lieverse et al , ; Rojas‐Sepúlveda et al , ; Shuler et al , ), tool use, specific or habitual activities (Lai & Lovell, ; Peterson, ; Whittle et al , ; Lovell & Dublenko, ; Lukacs & Pal, ; Jordana et al , ; Molnar, ; Cope, ; Weiss, ; Molnar, ; Üstündağ & Deveci, ), sexual differences in labour (Jiménez‐Brobeil et al , ; Perry, ; Rodrigues, ; Aranda et al , ; Hagaman, ; Peterson, ), occupational differences (Villotte et al , ; Milella et al , ), social stratification (Rodrigues, ; Porčić & Stefanović, ; Havelková et al , ; Palmer, ) and disability (Hawkey, ). They have also been analysed in early hominids and non‐human primates (Belcastro et al , ; Drapeau, ; Cashmore, ; Mariotti & Belcastro, ) as well as other mammals (Bendrey, ).…”

Explaining the Past in 2010

“…Difference between genders is another kind of “egalitarian” inequality. Jane Peterson (2010) reviews a broad range of evidence (bioarchaeology, mortuary treatment, household spaces, and figural representations) from the Neolithic southern Levant to conclude that although women's and men's lives and work differed, they were not clearly ranked, and social status was not based on gender. Interestingly, the variability in gender systems in the Neolithic Levant suggests that the adoption of farming did not determine gender roles in any predictable fashion.…”