Gendered Figurine Iconography at Los Guachimontines, Jalisco, Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Gender is one of the primary identity categories that provides structure to the social organization of societies. It sets expectations for the activities, status, presentation, and spatial organization of individuals within a community. This study aims to interrogate the social role of gender in the Teuchitlán tradition of Jalisco, Mexico, through a survey of figurines from the large ceremonial site of Los Guachimontones. For each figurine, the survey will identify material objects and adornments depicted or implied by the representation. These would include vessels, jewelry, clothing, tools, and weapons. After using primary and secondary sexual characteristics to assign a gender to each figure, a statistical analysis will correlate different types of items and activities with gender. This provides a starting point in understanding gender specificity for material objects in the Teuchitlán tradition, which could then be compared in a future study against the material record of a household area at Los Guachimontones. Within this study, the traits used consistently to signal figurine gender can be used to interpret conceptions of masculinity, femininity, and/or androgyny that were prevalent at Los Guachimontones.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25857