Gender and Childhood (Other Keyword)
76-100 (135 Records)
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. This paper builds on the author’s earlier research that documents previously unrecognized female rulers among the Aztec. Over the last 50 years, interest in elite women in other areas of Mesoamerica has grown, and the author presents the outcome of some of that research. Woman rulers from not only the Aztec area but also from the Valley of...
Micaceous Ceramics at Los Ojitos, New Mexico (2018)
Los Ojitos (LA 98907) is a Hispanic New Mexican site occupied between 1865 and 1950 on the Pecos River in eastern New Mexico. Excavators recovered micaceous brownware sherds alongside American goods in household deposits and refuse scatters surrounding historic structures. A single ceramic type encompasses all micaceous wares found in the region: Middle Pecos Micaceous Brownware, dating AD 800–1300. A lack of typological guidelines for distinguishing prehistoric and historic micaceous sherds...
MicroCT, Maternal Health, and Stress at the Beginning of Life (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Adventures in Spatial Archaeometry: A Survey of Recent High-Resolution Survey and Measurement Applications" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Winona LaDuke’s “All Our Relations,” the Mohawk midwife and environmental activist Katsi Cook declares that women are the first environment. Fetal growth and development correlate with the condition of that first environment. An infant skeleton with identifiable indicators of...
Moche Women: Multiple Realities and Alternative Powers (2018)
The growing breadth of data coming from scientific excavations of Moche sites in different valleys along the north coast of Peru has led to major advances in our understanding of the diverse ways of being Moche as well as the complex relationship between religious and political powers. How gender relations played into these Moche experiences however remains relatively understudied. Here, I specifically focus on the place of women in Moche society through time and space. Some women have now been...
Morir para renacer: Funerary Rituals of Pregnant Women in Chunhuayum, Yucatan (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The lives of women have been a focus of recent research in Maya Archaeology, finding that they fulfilled important roles as mothers, wives, priestesses, members of the elite and even as rulers. Within each social stratum, women lived diverse identities, however they shared similar biological processes, such as pregnancy, which was ruled by diverse beliefs and...
Mothers, Mentors, and Belonging in the Academy: The Unintentional Legacy of Patricia Richards (2024)
This is an abstract from the "There and Back Again: Celebrating the Career and Ongoing Contributions of Patricia B. Richards" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mothers in academia occupy the intersection of two demanding worlds: the rigors of scholarly pursuits and the responsibilities of childrearing. They face systemic barriers, including gender bias, limited access to resources, and inflexible tenure-track structures. Balancing research, teaching,...
Naked Huastecs, Anxious Aztecs: Male Nudity and Gender Identity in Aztec and Huastec Sculpture (2018)
The relationship between the Aztecs and the Huastecs is complicated and often defined by Aztec reaction to Huastec culture. The Aztecs have often dominated the landscape of Mesoamerica while the Huastecs have been seen as something somewhat separate. At first glance the difference in Aztec and Huastec sculptural tradition might seem to reaffirm this disconnect. By focusing on male figurative sculpture and how it reflects the construction of gender identity we see that despite clear differences...
No Country for Old Crones: Exploring the Presence of Grandmothers in the Ancient Greek Archaeological Record (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Motherhood" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In scholarship, there has been a past tendency to ignore and obfuscate mortal mothers; this also extends to the mothers who live to see their grandchildren. While there has been a sentiment in the past that motherhood is invisible in the archaeological record, there has been very little consideration given to the presence and roles of grandmothers in ancient...
Non-adult Dis/ability and Care in Early Medieval Britain (2018)
A child who is unwell or physically impaired naturally causes concern and anxiety for his or her parents/carers. For many in today’s modern society, accessible medical care means that the challenges associated with caring for a sick or disabled child can be overcome or, at least, minimized. But how did parents/carers respond and adapt to the demands of ill-health and physical impairment in children during the early medieval period? In seeking to address this question, this paper will explore...
Nā Wahine o nā ʻĀina Kuleana: Assessing the Impact of Colonization on Gender Experience in North Kohala, Hawaiʻi Island (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Rethinking Hinterlands in Polynesia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While pre-contact gender in Hawaiʻi has primarily been interpreted in terms of the kapu and its regulation on food, close analysis of multiple ethnographic sources reveal that gender was more complicated than originally realized. Therefore, examination of gender experience in Hawaiʻi needs to be location specific. My research highlights the value of...
Paleoindian Shellfishing and Feminist Agency at Quebrada Jaguay-280 (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Occupants of the southern Peruvian site of Quebrada Jaguay 280 (QJ-280) maintained consistent preferential resource procurement practices for 4,000 history, from ~12,000-8,000 cal yr BP. Site deposits demonstrated that hunter-gatherers focused on capturing two fish species and one mollusk, Mesodesma donacium. Such intense specificity conflicts with...
Papa’s Work Is Not Fathering (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Hood Archaeologies: Impacts of the School-to-Prison Pipeline on Archaeological Practice and Pedagogy" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stereotypes and concomitant expectations for priority setting in archaeological careerism exist in tension with deep anthropological drives to understand and embody family ideals. Archaeologists, long confronted with the idea that “engendering archaeology” (cf. Conkey and Gero 1991)...
Parental Investment in a High-Stress Environment: Weaning Age and Early Childhood Diet at Uraca, Lower Majes Valley, Peru (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Human behavioral ecology predicts that individuals alter reproductive strategies to maximize reproductive success in response to environmental and social conditions. We employ stable isotope measures (δ15N and δ13C) of weaning age and early childhood diet from serial micro-samples of first molar dentin from 10 individuals as proxies for the reproductive...
Parents, Infants and Material Culture (2018)
A study of over 50 U.S. parents of infants that included interviews and the recording of toys and living spaces shows that material culture does provide clues to both parental beliefs and behaviors, but, not surprisingly, the reflection is imperfect. The material presence of infants is considerable, but even in relatively affluent households much of it is often second hand and gifted, so may not directly reflect the espoused beliefs of parents. This is especially true of objects reflecting...
Perspectives on Deviance: Exploring Sex-Variance from Bioarchaeological and Contemporary Standpoints (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Thinking with, through, and against Archaeology’s Politics of Knowledge" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this talk, we discuss the visible effects of sex-variance on skeletal material and in the modern politico-ethical world, drawing on bioarchaeological, historical, and medical sources. Here, sex-variance includes the overlapping categories of castrates (such as castrati and eunuchs), transgender people, and...
Picturing the Written, Read, and Spoken Prayers to Zell: Devotional Therapeutics for (In)Fertility and Motherhood at Mariazell (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Motherhood" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the mountains of the Austrian province of Styria, the Catholic pilgrimage shrine of Mariazell claimed many healing miracles during the later Middle Ages (ca. 1200–1550). Notably, many of these miracles address ailments of fertility and parenthood, including infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant death. Early sixteenth century visual culture of...
The Political Agency of Pre-Modern State Royal Women (2018)
Royal women—queen consorts and princesses—were pawns in rulers’ marriage game. But once established in their husbands’ courts, they exhibited political agency through several means, e.g., spying, ruling in their husbands’ or sons’ stead, participating in the usurpation of the throne, etc. They were able to do so partly because of their position, which gave them access to power, and partly because of their ability to accumulate wealth, which enabled them to become patrons in their own right. This...
Porcelain Dolls and Marble Balls: The Role of Toys and Play in the Gendered Socialization of Enslaved Children (2018)
Children comprised a large portion of the enslaved population on plantations in the American South, but their lives are often overlooked or ignored in archaeological studies of plantation life and discussions of changes in how children were viewed in American society. Over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, there was a shift in how children and play were viewed, from miniature adults for whom play was utilitarian, to a separate life-stage where play was children’s primary purpose and...
Power or Privilege? Parallel Gender Hierarchies in the American Southwest (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster explores the concept of parallel gender hierarchies as applied to the Hohokam culture of the American Southwest. Bioarchaeological work in regions adjacent to the Hohokam area has revealed evidence of sexual inequality within multiple sites, presenting as poor health and less elaborate burial treatment for females compared to males. More...
Precious People: Indigenous Medical-Spiritual Relations in the Archaeology of Maya Childhood (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. Previous studies of bodily ornaments from burial contexts have often fixated on notions of wealth, social inequality, and prestige. Although we consider analyses focused on economic wealth, we turn, in particular, to Indigenous and ladino (mestizo) medical-spiritual...
Producing and Stretching Identity: Earspools and Childhood in the Maya Area (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. Iconographic sources indicate that the wearing of earspools by ancient Maya peoples was so ubiquitous that it was an essential part of personhood, a status put into jeopardy when earspools were removed and replaced with paper in scenes of almost naked captives or of...
Proteomic Sex Estimation of a Gendered Sacrificial Context in Pampa la Cruz, North Coast of Peru (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Ritual Violence and Human Sacrifice in the Ancient Andes: New Directions in the Field" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Protocols of ritual violence result from an interplay of political structures with multiple social factors, including roles of gender and age. These patterns often manifest as a biological sex-bias in sacrificial bioarchaeological contexts. In the Chimu Pampala Cruz site (AD 1050–1520), 86 individuals...
Pubertal Development among Pre-Hispanic Moquegua Valley Populations (Southern Peru, 800-1500 CE) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As a temporally bounded bio-social process, puberty offers a compelling topic to explore the lived experiences of past people. The onset and pace of pubertal development are shaped by nutritional, environmental, and social factors that reflect long and short-term childhood experiences. We investigate puberty as a flexible process shaped by multiple...
Puberty in Precontact Illinois: An Evaluation of Pubertal Timing in Middle and Late Woodland Native American Adolescents (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The timing of life-cycle stages in ancient populations has important implications for population dynamics and social identity; it may also serve as an indicator of broader health and social processes. This study of Woodland adolescents is the first assessment of pubertal development in precontact Native Americans and demonstrates that Shapland and Lewis’s...
Queer Eye for the Dead Guy: The Influence of Debra Martin on a Bioarchaeological Investigation of Gender beyond the Binary (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Debra L. Martin" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Any aspect of human social life worth studying, whether in the past or present, is a complex product of history, biology, culture, and agency. Gender is a prime and important example of just such a topic. It requires a high degree of nuance to understand and describe gender constructs in a contemporary society, and studies of...