Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on Gender Transformations—From Private to Public

In many facets of Western culture, including archaeology, there remains a legacy of perceiving gender divisions as natural, innate, and biological in origin. This belief follows that men are naturally pre-disposed to public, intellectual pursuits, while women are innately designed to care for the home and take care of children. In the interpretation of material culture, accepted notions of gender roles are often applied to new findings: the dichotomy between the domestic sphere of women and the public sphere of men can color interpretations of new materials. In this innovative volume, the contributors focus explicitly on analyzing the materiality of historic changes in the domestic sphere around the world. Combining a global scope with great temporal depth, chapters in the volume explore how gender ideologies, identities, relationships, power dynamics, and practices were materially changed in the past, thus showing how they could be changed in the future.

Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood is a Professor in Anthropology at Oakland University and an Associate at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. She organized the first two symposia on gender research in historical archaeology at the Chacmool conference and the Society for Historical Archaeology conference in 1989, and subsequently published numerous book chapters, and articles in the following journals: Archaeologies, Historical Archaeology, International Journal of Historical Archaeology, Northeast Historical Archaeology, and the Landscape Journal.