Deviations: Archaeologies of Sexuality Beyond the Heteronormative

Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Deviations: Archaeologies of Sexuality Beyond the Heteronormative," at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Sexuality is an essential part of human experience, connected to identity, behavior, social organization, and beliefs. Heteronormativity, the assumption of heterosexuality as the typical or normative relationship style, is a fairly recent conceptualization – even the term “heterosexuality” was coined in the 20th century. While sexuality and gender are sometimes considered separately by scholars, the notion of heteronormativity draws in assumptions of bodies as fitting into two discrete sex categories, and implies a connection between ideas of biological sex, social roles, and personality traits. Ideas of heteronormativity are tied to whiteness and respectability politics, presenting not just the heterosexual and cisgendered, but the white and middle-class couple as the assumed norm from which all other familial arrangements and sexual practices deviate. In this session, we lean into and focus on these deviations, recognizing heteronormativity as a constraining and biased construction that limits our understandings of past people’s relationships and identities

Other Keywords
Queer Theory • Sexuality • Queer Archaeology • sex work • bioarchaeology • Material Culture • Ethics • Archives • Cemeteries • Gender

Geographic Keywords
Mountain West • Oklahoma • US Southeast • Maryland • United States • Arctic • Maya, Mesoamerica

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-8 of 8)

  • Documents (8)
Documents
  • Decoding the Sepulchral Closet: Reading Between the Lines of Heteronormativity in Graveyards (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian D Crane.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Deviations: Archaeologies of Sexuality Beyond the Heteronormative", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This paper will explore LGBTQ grieving within tangible, temporary, and virtual spaces through examples from Montgomery County Maryland and the larger Washington, DC metropolitan area. Historical burial grounds are heteronormative landscapes, most visibly true in family graveyards and in biological family...

  • A "Lost and Found Culture:" An Ethnographic Archaeology of 20th and 21st Century Queerness in Oklahoma (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Meghan J. Dudley.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Deviations: Archaeologies of Sexuality Beyond the Heteronormative", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. An unfortunate result of heteronormativity in the field of archaeology has been to reinforce Western binary categories onto the archaeological record, which scholars have been unpacking now for over twenty years (e.g., Blackmore 2011; Klembara 2021; Schmidt and Voss 2000). Building on their critiques, I argue...

  • Othering Spaces: The Creation of "Deviant" Community Spaces in 19th- and Early-20th Century Brothels in Central City, CO (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jade W. Luiz.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Deviations: Archaeologies of Sexuality Beyond the Heteronormative", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Sex work occupied a liminal space in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century heteronormative American culture. Sex workers were often perceived as outsiders within the “polite” society of their own communities. In the mining town of Central City, Colorado, there is historical evidence that further restrictions...

  • "Queer People Anywhere are Responsible for Queer People Everywhere": Incorporating a Queer Ethic of Care into Queer-Community Archaeology (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Caylee N Dzurka.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Deviations: Archaeologies of Sexuality Beyond the Heteronormative", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Given that queer theory was born out of queer activism, queer archaeologists have often challenged heteronormative biases in the discipline because of how they reinforce racist, homophobic, and transphobic opinions in the contemporary world. However, few studies have tackled the struggles of living queer...

  • A queer phenomenology of the penis: Disorienting Sex and Gender in Maya Archaeology (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Zachary Nissen.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Deviations: Archaeologies of Sexuality Beyond the Heteronormative", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. How do representations of the body and the penis orient understandings of sex and gender? This paper utilizes queer theoretical perspectives on bodies and phenomenology to reconsider archaeological orientations to the penis. Phenomenological perspectives investigate the experience of living in a body and how...

  • The Queering of the Brothel Space through Personal Adornment (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sequoia A. Stark.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Deviations: Archaeologies of Sexuality Beyond the Heteronormative", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Sex workers exist outside of the heteronormative expectations of society by not conforming to the traditional structure of relationships such as monogamy and non-deviant sexual practices. This deviation from societal norms can manifest in the way they present themselves and behave, such as types of clothing...

  • Queerness and Blackness: Reimagining Bioarchaeological Paradigms (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Aja M. Lans.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Deviations: Archaeologies of Sexuality Beyond the Heteronormative", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Broadly, Black feminism is based on the notion that Black women and our knowledge matter. Our positionality, being Black and female within a patriarchal white supremacist society, subjects us to unique experiences that give us insight into the many forms that oppression can take. Sexuality emerges as a core...

  • Sexualities and Textualities: An Archaeological Perspective (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna S. Agbe-Davies.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Deviations: Archaeologies of Sexuality Beyond the Heteronormative", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. As researchers become more critical about the distinctions among phenomena we call "sexuality," "gender," "sex," etc., we are better equipped to reflect on what precisely can be known or learned about any and all of them. This paper asks what archaeological analysis might contribute to an understanding of life...