The Representation of Gender: Homology or Propaganda

Abstract

This paper 'engenders' the prehistory of south-eastem Europe for the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods. It discusses theoretical aspects of a gender archaeology, including three prehistoric case studies, and applies the 'theory of mutedness' and the 'theory of sexual insult' - subordinate groups using alternative methods of expression - to the female figurines of the fifth-millennium south-eastern Europe. Archaeology reveals that males were dominant in the public sphere of funerary ritual, expressed in the amount and types of grave-goods; females dominated the domestic sphere, where figurines abound. An engendered tension existed between domestic and mortuary spaces. A third, asexual gender also existed at this time (documented by asexual figurines and cenotaph burials). The third gender transcended the existing bi-gender tension and strategies of spatial restriction. The sexual imagery in the figurines is interpreted as evidence of gender tensions, rather than as evidence of matriarchical societies.

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