Sinister and Righteous: Interpreting Left and Right in the Archaeological Record

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Gender in Historical Archaeology (General Sessions)" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Early anthropological studies established, without question, the pervasive importance of the cultural and gendered constructs of right/left in societies around the world as primary structuring elements behaviorally, socially, politically, and materially. Yet beyond Ira Wile’s 1934 and Rodney Needham’s 1973 volumes, we see very few explicit studies of the topic in recent anthropology, and virtually none in any area of archaeology. The purpose of this paper is to present the opportunity to think about these constructs and contemplate how they may assist archaeologists in understanding and interpreting right and left manifestations as intentional and meaningful occurrences within the sites they are investigating. Using various examples of right and left expression from different historical archaeological contexts, we will illustrate the widespread occurrence of these complex ideological and behavioral concepts.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Gender in Historical Archaeology (General Sessions)   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2021

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology