Mollusk Foraging and Gendered Labor in Seventeenth-Century Guam, Mariana Islands

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Coastal Environments in Archaeology: Ancient Life, Lore, and Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The archaeological investigation of gendered labor in traditional households in the Mariana Islands is still in a nascent stage of development. Archaeological field school excavations by the University of Guam Micronesian Area Research Center and the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa yielded a rich assemblage of cultural materials (e.g., marine shell, ceramics, beads, fishbone). Such materials offered an opportunity to advance research on gendered labor in coastal households. Previous analyses of excavated materials from a multibuilding household offered a new perspective on the spatial dimensions of gendered labor. Activities practiced by women, such as ceramic production, were conducted at a building that was adjacent to a separate (and contemporaneous) structure that was a nexus of activities undertaken by men, such as fishhook-making and woodworking. This presentation summarizes new insights on gendered labor as it was enacted through the foraging, cooking, and consumption of mollusks at a multibuilding household where the labor of men and women was spatially segregated.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Coastal Environments in Archaeology: Ancient Life, Lore, and Landscapes   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35722.0