Sexual Division of Labor and Technological Change at the Pleistocene to Holocene Transition in the Great Basin.

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

A recent reinterpretation of global ethnography challenges the "men hunt, women gather" stereotype, finding cross-cultural evidence that women regularly hunted in foraging societies. Another study finds bioarchaeological evidence of women's role in hunting large game during the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition in the Americas. Although provocative, these findings provide no theoretical context for understanding variability in sexual division of labor or for anticipating consequent effects on the archaeological record. They do resonate with earlier studies of contemporary foragers based on Human Behavioral Ecology. While reliable higher energy resource availability aligns men's and women's prey choice, unreliability causes their foraging objectives to diverge. Shifts in the reliability of resource procurement prompt gender-based labor shifts that further influence technological investment. When large game is secure, both genders invest in technology that reduces the costs of hunting and processing larger prey. Conversely, divergent subsistence strategies lead women to invest more in technology that reduces the handling costs of low yield, but reliably acquired resources. These dynamics shed light on pivotal technological shifts in ground stone, bone, and basketry technology during the Early Holocene in the Great Basin.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39554.0