Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehistory - Tapa dura

Human social structures in prehistory have been a subject of great interest to feminist scholars, who have sought in them an understanding of the origins of inequality between the sexes and of the part women have played in the rise of societies and states. This book brings issues of gender to bear on archaeology. Archaeologists from around the world contribute analyses of prehistoric data with a view to discovering how gender systems operated in the distant past. The subjects include hunter-gatherer societies and early agricultural societies in Asia, Europe, and Americas. Within these societies areas such as art, the domestication of plants, shellfishing, acorn processing, stone-tool and ceramics production, and the arrangement of residential space are examined in order to bring out the significance of the role of women in these primitive societies.