Gender and Childhood (Other Keyword)
101-125 (135 Records)
This is an abstract from the "The Marking and Making of Social Persons: Embodied Understandings in the Archaeologies of Childhood and Adolescence" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent conversations about body modification demonstrate that alterations to human form are experiential and are not solely oriented towards a final product. In thinking of prehistoric head shaping practices—practices engaged in with the bodies of infants—archaeological...
Reconstructing Childhood Diet in the Aftermath of Wari Imperial Decline: Stable Carbon Isotope Analysis of Human Dentition from Huari-Monqachayoq-Solano, Peru (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stable isotope analysis can illuminate aspects about a population’s diet and migration patterns otherwise unavailable through skeletal analysis. The population for this study is a mass burial at the site of Huari-Mongachayoq, excavated by Francisco Solano in the 1980s. The skeletons date to the second half of the Andean Late Intermediate Period, ca. 1275 –...
Reevaluating Early Bronze Age Masculinities: Skeletal and Mortuary Analysis of Transgenderism at Ostojićevo, Serbia (2018)
The Early Bronze Age (EBA) is often characterized as a period of emerging social hierarchies dominated by high status warrior-males. Analysis of human skeletal remains in their mortuary context has the potential to challenge this assumption and inform more nuanced understandings of gender and social status. Individuals (n=285) at the EBA Maros cemetery at Ostojićevo, Serbia (ca. 1900-1500 B.C.E.) exhibit a strong correlation between biological sex and funerary treatment, specifically body...
The Relationship between Isotopic Evidence of Childhood Diet and Childhood Rickets in a Nineteenth-Century Jordanian Bedouin Population (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Tell Hisban offers a unique perspective on the history of metabolic disease among nineteenth-century Middle Eastern Bedouin populations. Compared to regional samples from the same period, Hisban has a high rate of childhood metabolic disease, including rickets. Many infants at the site died with active rickets, and analysis of interglobular...
Relationships and Connections through Breast Milk: An Examination of Ancient Egyptian Perspectives on Breastfeeding (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Motherhood" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. To understand the usage of breastfeeding in ancient Egyptian art and ritual it is necessary to examine and explore the ancient perspectives and beliefs which contextualized their creation. This includes the role of breastfeeding in a child’s upbringing and growth as well as the relationship between a child and its nurse (whether mother or wet-nurse) with my...
Resilience and Empowerment: 100 Years of Archaeological Mothers in the Field (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Gender in Archaeology over the Last 30+ Years" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While much has been written recently highlighting pioneering women’s contributions to archaeology, there has not been a systematic study of their roles as mothers and how they navigated their personal lives in a male-dominated field. In this paper I contextualize the role of motherhood in archaeology from an historical perspective,...
Resurrecting Mother Washington: The Dissonance of Washington’s Youth (2018)
Powerful messages concerning ideal gender roles feature prominently, if latently, in Washington biographies. Most contemporary narratives suggest that George succeeded despite the "selfish" efforts of his widowed mother. Archaeological investigations at Washington’s childhood home underscore the dissonance between the material culture of his youth and popular stories about his upbringing. This site was wrested from strip mall development thanks to the persistent efforts of preservationists....
Revisiting the Early Oaxacan Village: New Perspectives on Some of Mesoamerica’s First Settled Communities (2021)
This is an abstract from the "A Construir Puentes / Building Bridges: Diálogos en Oaxaca Archaeology a través de las Fronteras" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since its publication in 1976, *The Early Mesoamerican Village has been a landmark for the systematic study of early settled communities. Based on research in the Valley of Oaxaca, *EMV has helped many students of archaeology to better understand household and community organization and...
Rythm of Youth: Childhood in Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Liguria (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Marking and Making of Social Persons: Embodied Understandings in the Archaeologies of Childhood and Adolescence" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents a synthesis of recent research that illuminates the reality of forager childhoods at several sites dated to the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene in the region of Liguria (NW Italy). Indeed, recently published data from the sites of Arma di...
Seeing Gender Ambiguity in Moche Visual Culture (2018)
This paper explores the visual language of gender expression in Moche art, seeking to determine the relationships among ambiguous gender, social role, and status in Moche visual culture. The Moche are well-known for their representations of warriors and warfare, as well as the sacrificial rituals associated with the taking of prisoners. However, this martial focus was not consistent across Moche time and space, and regional variations indicate the existence of a potential field of expression...
Sex-Biased Differences in Infant Mortality and Life Expectancy at Síi Túupentak, an Ancestral Ohlone Village in Central California (ca. 540–145 cal BP) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Síi Túupentak (CA-SCA-565/H) is a late precontact ancestral Ohlone village/cemetery site in central California (ca. 540–145 cal BP). Integration of proteomic, genomic, and osteological analyses provided highly confident biological sex estimates for remains of most individuals at this site (65 of 76) spanning all age groups—from perinatal infants to aged...
Silenced Undertakers (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Silenced Rituals in Indigenous North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chumash undertakers were third gender persons and postmenopausal women. The Spanish Mission system significantly disrupted traditional practices, especially through sexual violence as a silencing tool. I examine the impacts of the Spanish colonial effort on Chumash mortuary rituals, with regard to the concept of gendercide.
A Spatial Analysis of Ceramics in Northwestern Alaska: Studying Pre-Contact Gendered Use of Space (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Activities and production among ethnographic Arctic peoples were primarily divided by gender. This research examines whether or not gendered division of labor extended to use of space in Birnirk and Thule era (1300-150 BP) houses through analysis of ceramic distribution patterns. We assumed that ceramics are an appropriate proxy for women’s activities within...
Thirty Years On, Considering Kelly’s 1988 "Three Sides of A Biface", and Why It Matters for Great Basin Archaeology (2018)
We argue that it is time to reconsider the use of the term biface in Great Basin archaeology and implement more heuristic terms in its place. In most instances, there is only one role or "one side of a biface" and that was to become a projectile point. It is time we recognize bifaces as such and acknowledge that preform morphology can be an indicator of temporal association and of social agents including children. Stage classification alone is limiting in terms of allowing us to broaden our...
Though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death: Co-Burials and Identity in Pre-Modern Northern Finland (2018)
This paper specifically addresses the cultural construction of children’s age and identity by examining the textiles and burial clothing from a series of pre-Modern mummified children’s burials recovered from beneath church floors in northern Finland. During the pre-modern era, children’s burials in pre-modern Finland take one of three forms: (1) alone, in individual coffins (2) in association with other burials but still in their own coffin (3) co-burial, in the same coffin as others. This...
Toying with Classic Maya Society: Ceramic Figurine Whistles and Children’s Socialization at Ceibal, Guatemala (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We analyze 253 Late and Terminal Classic (c. AD 600-950) Maya ceramic figurine whistles (ocarinas) and fragments excavated at Ceibal, Guatemala, as materials of socialization. The figurines are mold-made and represent repeating characters. Based on mortuary contexts and other evidence, we argue they were used in household performances and associated with...
Toys or Totems? Exploring Ritual and Play in the Middle Rio Grande (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Miniature vessels are generally placed into one of three categories by archaeologists; children’s toys, ritual offerings, or test pots to assess clay quality. Previous studies in the Southwest have explored these small bowls and jars as introductory entries to the potter’s craft, made by small hands under the tutelage – or in emulation – of their elders (Crown...
Trade, Professions and Education: Women in Puerta de Tierra, Puerto Rico, 1910 (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Primary Sources and the Design of Research Projects" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The purpose of this research is to identify the types of trade and professions carried out by women who lived on the Puerta de Tierra neighborhood of San Juan, Puerto Rico using data from the population census of 1910. The information contained in the census allows the study of women by looking at specific variables such as their age...
Traversing the Great Forest: Work and Mobility in Sweden’s Premodern Farmscape (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The State of the Art in Medieval European Archaeology: New Discoveries, Future Directions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Most of pre-modem Sweden comprised wooded uplands lying outside more densely populated 'civilized' regions. Often collectively called The Great Forest, this territory stretched from south-central to the high north, where Scandinavian, Finnish, and Sami people often lived in close proximity....
Un balance crítico del estudio del género en la arqueología peruana (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Gender in Archaeology over the Last 30+ Years" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. ¿Ha sido el estudio del género un campo de estudio sistemático dentro de la arqueología peruana? ¿Cuáles han sido los enfoques teóricos y metodológicos empleados? Y ¿qué tipos de contexto arqueológico se han empleado para dichos estudios? Por medio de la siguiente ponencia planteamos hacer un recorrido analítico sobre cómo ha sido abordado...
Ungendering Sex in Moche Ceramics (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Future Is Fluid...and So Was the Past: Challenging the 'Normative' in Archaeological Interpretations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Moche ceramic art (Peru, first millenium) is a corpus of veristic images including explicit depictions of sex acts and human genitalia. Because anatomical sex is so visible in these artifacts, the temptation to collapse sex and gender is strong – but what if we begin, instead, by...
"Us the Hunters”: Evaluating Shifting Gender Dynamics of North American Paleolithic Researchers and Scholarship (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Gender in Archaeology over the Last 30+ Years" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The number of women in Paleolithic archaeology has increased over the last 30 years, following the trend in the field in general. In the United States and Canada, the number of men and women in tenure track positions is nearly equivalent, yet this equality masks considerable imbalance when considering the seniority of these professors. Male...
The Value of Children in Ancient Egypt (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Children have long been considered one of the "invisible" communities of the ancient world. As they are infrequently mentioned in texts and incapable of constructing their own mortuary narratives, Egyptologists and archaeologists have contented themselves with only a basic understanding of the position of children in ancient Egyptian society; however, through...
Victims or Venerated? A Bioarchaeological Examination of Gendered Ritual Violence and Social Identity of the Possible Aqlla at Túcume, Peru (2018)
Human sacrifices are frequently referred to as ‘victims’ of ritual violence, which presupposes that the sacrificed had no control over their fate or were unjustly harmed. Many examples of human sacrifice have been identified recently across the north coast of Peru involving a range of time periods and bodily treatment to suggest that there was incredible variation in practice, including in the identity of those sacrificed. Both males and females have been identified as sacrifices, but rarely are...
Warrior, Priestess, Queen: Scythian Women & Their Roles (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Scythians were a group of people originating in Central Asia that migrated to what is now Ukraine and Southern Russia from the 8th to the 7th centuries BCE. They are well-known for their nomadic way of life, horseback warfare, and apparent lack of a patriarchal society. There is significant evidence that Scythian women were treated as equals to...