Queer Eye for the Cave Guy: Exploring Non-Normativity in Upper Paleolithic Burials

Summary

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.

Studies of Upper Paleolithic burials in Europe have illuminated several aspects of Upper Paleolithic lifeways, from health and diet, to status and social organization. These studies, while recognizing the rarity of Upper Paleolithic burials, interpret the Upper Paleolithic burial record as inherently normative. However, the intentional burial of people within cave and rockshelters was a non-normative practice. To date, fewer than 100 burials are known from the Upper Paleolithic in Europe. This practice, and the individuals contained within these burials, were not only rare, they were non-normative – they were queer. These buried individuals lived outside what was likely considered "normative" in the Upper Paleolithic, and it is for this reason they were singled out for burial. In this paper, I argue that analyzing these Upper Paleolithic burials through an explicitly queer lens will enhance our understanding of these burials, the individuals contained within them, and issues of Upper Paleolithic identity and embodiment more broadly. These buried individuals were challenging the norms of the Upper Paleolithic, and by analyzing them as radically queer, rather than the more politically and analytically inert "rare", we can begin to push against our normative understandings of the past.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Future Is Fluid...and So Was the Past: Challenging the 'Normative' in Archaeological Interpretations   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24115