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Women in Ancient America: Second Edition
This new edition of "Women in Ancient America" draws on recent advances in the archaeology of gender to reexamine the activities, roles, and relationships of women in the prehistoric Native societies of North, Central, and South America.
Women--and women's work--have been crucial to the survival and success of American peoples since ancient times. And as hunting and foraging societies developed farming techniques and eventually created permanent settlements, women's roles changed. Karen Olsen Bruhns and Karen E. Stothert consider the various economic adaptations that followed, as well as the ways in which women participated in food production and the specialized industries of their societies. They also look at women's access to power, both political and religious, paying particular attention to the place of priestesses and goddesses in the spiritual life of ancient peoples.
The narrative that unfolds in "Women in Ancient America" is based on the most recent research, using evidence and examples from a wide range of cultures dating from the Paleoindian period to European invasion. This book, unlike others, treats many different types of societies, as the authors develop arguments sure to provoke thinking about the lives of women who inhabited the Americas in the distant past.
312 pages, ebook
First published November 1, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 3, 2020
Although focused on North and South American examples, 'Women in Ancient America' has relevance to old world studies, particularly as regards prehistoric periods. Authors Bruhns and Stothert, feminist anthropologists affiliated with San Francisco State University and the University of Texas, San Antonio, respectively, have as their aim the “repopulation” of antiquity by a reexamination of case studies for evidences of female roles in ancient America.
The problems addressed stem from the sexism of traditional scholarship, much of it short-sighted and inadvertent. Writing from the perspective of male-dominated societies and disciplines, researchers have had a tendency to retroject themselves, their experiences and values, into the past. Their elites, economic, social, political and religious, being predominately male, so too must have been those of ancient cultures. Warfare and the hunt being honored male occupations, so too must they have been in the past.
So pervasive have been these cultural blinders that evidences to the contrary have been overlooked, ignored or misinterpreted. As Bruhns and Stothert show, again and again, evidences ranging both Americas, evidences to the contrary, exist in abundance. Women did, at least occasionally, act in high-status roles, fight in battle, participate in the hunt. Although “women as a group did not rule over men in any society” (p. 241), there being no clear evidence of original matriarchy, “social life was not very hierarchical in deep prehistory, where women and men sometimes held power together in systems characterized by complementarity (pp. 243f). So, today, those “with the utopian goal of giving greater self-confidence and wider opportunity to both female and male children will be supported by a vision of the past in which women and men participate as creative agents of change in all areas of social, economic, and intellectual life” (p. 242).
The problems addressed stem from the sexism of traditional scholarship, much of it short-sighted and inadvertent. Writing from the perspective of male-dominated societies and disciplines, researchers have had a tendency to retroject themselves, their experiences and values, into the past. Their elites, economic, social, political and religious, being predominately male, so too must have been those of ancient cultures. Warfare and the hunt being honored male occupations, so too must they have been in the past.
So pervasive have been these cultural blinders that evidences to the contrary have been overlooked, ignored or misinterpreted. As Bruhns and Stothert show, again and again, evidences ranging both Americas, evidences to the contrary, exist in abundance. Women did, at least occasionally, act in high-status roles, fight in battle, participate in the hunt. Although “women as a group did not rule over men in any society” (p. 241), there being no clear evidence of original matriarchy, “social life was not very hierarchical in deep prehistory, where women and men sometimes held power together in systems characterized by complementarity (pp. 243f). So, today, those “with the utopian goal of giving greater self-confidence and wider opportunity to both female and male children will be supported by a vision of the past in which women and men participate as creative agents of change in all areas of social, economic, and intellectual life” (p. 242).
May 12, 2015
This was a fascinating read. I narrated the audiobook version and even after reading and re-reading the material I still found it interesting. A well written and thoroughly researched history of early American life (prehistory to the European conquest) that goes above and beyond to picture how societies and households involve not just women, but families as well. And how women helped to shape the world we live in today.
October 10, 2023
An amazing read! I’ve just started to read more around ancient America and pre-hispanic societies and this book was exceptionally clear and well written. Bruhns is truly an expert in her field.
November 9, 2012
From prehistory to early colonial times, this books tries to paint a clearer picture of the lives of women in America in order to counteract previous archeological studies that either erased or severely undervalued women's contributions to early societies.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews