Reader in Gender Archaeology

by Kelley Hays-Gilpin (Editor), David S. Whitley (Editor)

Reader in Gender Archaeology presents nineteen current, controversial and highly influential articles which confront and illuminate issues of gender in prehistory.

Genres: Archaeology

400 pages, Paperback

First published May 22, 1998

About the author

Dr. Kelley Hays-Gilpin is the Edward Bridge Danson, Jr. Chair of Anthropology at the Museum of Northern Arizona and also Professor of Anthropology at Northern Arizona University. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Arizona, and has nearly 40 years of experience studying rock art, pottery, and other visual arts in the Southwest. Her current research focuses on the long-term histories and arts of Hopi and Zuni communities and their relationships with land and water. She is investigating culturally appropriate museum curation techniques in collaboration with Indigenous scholars, and planning new exhibits for MNA’s galleries and publications about MNA’s collections.

Reviews

[Jonna Higgins-Freese · Rating 5 out of 5]

Got this for the essay to which I've seen so many references in my readings about Cahokia, Patricia Galloway's "Where have all the Menstrual Huts Gone?" That essay was the best of the book; some of the others were pretty light on content, in my view. "Spinning and Weaving as Female Gender Identity in Post-Classic Mexico" was one of the more substantive essays. Watson & Kennedy's essay on the development of horticulture in the eastern woodlands of North America" had a nice summary of Smith's theses in _Rivers of Change_ with a critique that posited that the horticulturalists were women and that (gasp) their domestication of crops was intentional and innovative. As a side note, there was also an interesting rebuttal to the Gimbutas/Eisler interpretation of the paleolithic "mother-goddess" cult, and another on "Women, Kinship, and the Basis of Power in the Norwegian Viking Age" that was interesting in light of Kristin Lavransdatter.

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fave quote (regarding androcentric patterns): "...there is a persistent and consistent linkage of certain activities with each sex, combined with a failure on the part of investigators to provide any supporting data to justify such associations" (Conkey and Spector, p 19).

Another: "If we consider all the innovations and changes we implicitly attribute to women, we have written into prehistory a time and energy crisis for women" (Sassaman, p 167).