Reevaluating Early Bronze Age Masculinities: Skeletal and Mortuary Analysis of Transgenderism at Ostojićevo, Serbia

Summary

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 orientation. Among the subset of adult (>18 years-at-death) biological males buried in a "female" orientation, several stand out for either their unique physical characteristics (e.g., tall stature, robusticity), or association with "female" prestige offerings (e.g., copper pins, beaded sashes). The relationship between "masculinity" and social status is further complicated by gendered differences in the social perception and embodiment of physical trauma. While there is an association between trauma, male orientation, and weaponry, most individuals with skeletal evidence of antemortem or perimortem trauma did not receive special funerary treatment. Through the examination of multiple lines of evidence, including grave goods, orientation, and evidence of trauma, this paper argues that transgenderism seems to have been as highly regarded as other elements of traditional "masculine" identities at Ostojićevo.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21074