dear all,
in september 2004, the Xth EAA symposium will be held in Lyon
(France). i would like to organize a session about gender and sex roles
within neolithic and bronze societies, mainly in continental Europe.
please read the project below and just answer me if you're interested in
this session project.
sincerely yours,
m. bailly
Gender and Neolithic/Bronze age societies : trends, critics and issues in
continental Europe
Escaping from an exclusively english-speaking academic audience, the
category of Gender in archaeological discourse spread over continental
Europe in recent years. This is a quite remarkable fact indeed. While
archaeology is traditionally embedded within social sciences in Britain,
academic gaps remain clearly maintained elsewhere. Even earlier
works from historians had very little impact on professional
archaeologists’ community. These recent studies underline that a
growing number of scholars pay attention to an anthropologically
informed archaeology. It also deserves the production of a deeper
archaeological knowledge, « thick descriptions » far from cross-dating,
and cultural diagnosis.
The Gender topic outbreak might be seen as a correlate of a widening
academic field or a methodological renewal ; it is undoubtly linked to a
data re-examination and a new way of asking from scholars facing
ancient material cultures. Epistemological relationships between
Gender and technique (production, know-how, innovation) or Gender
and social processes (negociations of status and identity, cultural
transmission) do become key issues. One might venture they actually
constitute the main interpretation frame for Neolithic and Bronze age
studies.
It is also the opportunity to challenge the most common stereotypes
–often androcentric ones– we can hardly check-out : denied social
complexity, equal social status prior copper metallurgy, equal status
between men and women in Neolithic societies, material culture
irrelevance for gender inquiry, etc.
Technology, material culture, grave analysis, dwelling analysis, rock art
… It is time to get rid of that « invisibility of women ». Let’s compare
approaches and fieldworks and define for archaeology, what has
remained one of the most paradigmatic data of Cultural Anthropology for
more than a century.
________________________________________
Maxence Bailly
ESEP UMR 6636 CNRS
Maison Méditerranéenne des Sciences de l'Homme
5, rue du Château de l'Horloge - B.P. 647
13094 AIX-EN-PROVENCE CEDEX 2
France
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