Gendered Grave Goods: Relationships between Gender-Associated Artifacts and Biological Sex in the Precontact San Francisco Bay Area

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Recent Archaeological Work by Chronicle Heritage" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Too often the identified biological sex of precontact human remains are assumed to represent the lived gender experience of the individual. At the same time, concepts of the gendered division of labor influence the association of classes of artifacts with genders. This paper reexamines data from excavations of burials in the San Francisco Bay Area conducted in consultation with members of the descendant communities designated as the Most Likely Descendant by the California Native American Heritage Commission. Using that existing data and framing it with ethnohistorical information, this paper investigates the relationship between osteologically estimated sex of individuals and artifacts traditionally associated with gender that were placed with burials as grave goods. These relationships are then used to examine how archaeologists interact with human remains and interpret the lives of past people. Specifically, portable mortars, pestles, bone awls, and projectile points and their occurrence with the burials of osteologically estimated male and female adults and children is analyzed and compared with ethnographic and ethnohistoric data. This research was undertaken without any direct analysis of human remains or artifacts, all of which were repatriated and reinterned. Members of descendant communities were consulted about appropriate use and approved access to the data.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Recent Archaeological Work by Chronicle Heritage   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 41662.0