Engendering Social Dynamics: The Archaeology of Maintenance Activities 9781407303451, 9781407333687

Citation preview

BAR S1862 2008 MONTÓN-SUBÍAS & SÁNCHEZ-ROMERO (Eds)

Engendering Social Dynamics: The Archaeology of Maintenance Activities Edited by

Sandra Montón-Subías Margarita Sánchez-Romero

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS

BAR International Series 1862 2008 B A R

Engendering Social Dynamics: The Archaeology of Maintenance Activities Edited by

Sandra Montón-Subías Margarita Sánchez-Romero

BAR International Series 1862 2008

Published in 2017 by BAR Publishing, Oxford BAR International Series 1862 Engendering Social Dynamics: The Archaeology of Maintenance Activities © The editors and contributors severally and the Publisher 2008 The author's moral rights under the 1988 UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act are hereby expressly asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be copied, reproduced, stored, sold, distributed, scanned, saved in any form of digital format or transmitted in any form digitally, without the written permission of the Publisher.

ISBN 9781407303451 paperback ISBN 9781407333687 e-format DOI https://doi.org/10.30861/9781407303451 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library BAR Publishing is the trading name of British Archaeological Reports (Oxford) Ltd. British Archaeological Reports was first incorporated in 1974 to publish the BAR Series, International and British. In 1992 Hadrian Books Ltd became part of the BAR group. This volume was originally published by Archaeopress in conjunction with British Archaeological Reports (Oxford) Ltd / Hadrian Books Ltd, the Series principal publisher, in 2008. This present volume is published by BAR Publishing, 2017.

BAR

PUBLISHING BAR titles are available from:

E MAIL P HONE F AX

BAR Publishing 122 Banbury Rd, Oxford, OX2 7BP, UK [email protected] +44 (0)1865 310431 +44 (0)1865 316916 www.barpublishing.com

Contents Engendering social dynamics. The archaeology of maintenance activities. An introduction Paloma González-Marcén, Sandra Montón-Subías, Marina Picazo, and Margarita Sánchez-Romero

1

Section one. The archaeology of maintenance activities Chapter 1. Towards an archaeology of maintenance activities Paloma González-Marcén, Sandra Montón-Subías and Marina Picazo

3

Chapter 2. Why has history not appreciated maintenance activities? Almudena Hernando

9

Chapter 3. Thoughts on a method for zooarchaeological study of quotidian life Diane Gifford-González

15

Section two. Maintenance activities and social practices. Chapter 4. The technics of the American Home Francesca Bray

25

Chapter 5. Sun Disks and solar cycles: weaving and the down of solar cosmologies in Post-Classical Mexico Elisabeth Brumfiel

33

Chapter 6. Nurturing the dead: medieval women as family undertakers Roberta Gilchrist

41

Chapter 7. Maintenance activities in the funerary record. The case of Iberian cemeteries Antonia García-Luque and Carmen Risquez

49

Chapter 8. Greek terracota figurines: images and representations of everyday life Marina Picazo

57

Section three. Maintenance activities in times of change Chapter 9. Grinding to a Halt: Gender and the Changing Technology of Flour Production in Roman Galilee Carol Meyers

65

Chapter 10. Changing foodways: new strategies in food preparation, serving and consumption in the Bronze Age of the Iberian Peninsula Margarita Sánchez-Romero and Gonzalo Aranda

75

Chapter 11. “Spun on a wheel were women’s hearts”. Women between ideology and life in the Nordic past Liv Helga Dommasnes

87

i

Chapter 3 Figure 1. Schematic showing the relationship of ‘uniformitarian’ analogical materials and processes to the ‘interpretive space’ of the study of the past, given present knowledge of material properties, chaînes opératoires, and other forms of relational analogies. Chapter 5 Figure 1. The Valley of Mexico during the Aztec period, showing the locations of Xaltocan, Tenochtitlan and other important towns Figure 2a-b. Spindle whorls with flowers, above a simple flower, below a flower adorned with sun rays (drawings by Laura Jordan). Figure 3a-b. Spindle whorls with sun symbols, above an ihuitl, a day symbol (drawn by Laura Jordan), below a spindle whorl with a k’in, the Maya sun glyph (drawn by Elizabeth Brumfiel). Figure 4. Spindle whorl decorated with possible flower petals or plumes of the solar eagle (drawn by Laura Jordan). Figure 5a -b. Spindle whorls with four-part divisions, above the quincunx, below the four quarters of the universe (drawings by Laura Jordan). Figure 6. Spindle whorl with a cipactli, the first day of the ritual almanac (after Enciso 1971:19). Figure 7. Spindle whorl with the xicalcoliuhqui, step-fret spiral with rectangular sides, a symbol of cyclical movement (drawn by Laura Jordan). Chapter 7 Figure 1. Kourotrophos from Tomb 341 in the necropolis of Cabecico del Tesoro (García Cano and Page del Pozo, 2004; Olmos et alii, 1999). Figure 2. Roman spindles form different European sites (1), spindle with other indeterminate elements from Tomb 200 in El Cigarralejo (2) (Wild, 1988; Cuadrado, 1987). Figure 3. Grave goods related to textile production from Tomb 200 in El Cigarralejo (Cuadrado, 1987). Figure 4. Pottery grave goods from Tomb 200, El Cigarralejo (Cuadrado, 1987) Fig. 5. Red figures Kylix with figurative decoration from Tomb 200, El Cigarralejo (Cuadrado, 1987). Chapter 8 Figure 1. Kore Phrasikleia, National Museum, Athens. Figure 2. Kouros Anavyssos, National Museum, Athens. Figure 3. Ludovisi Throne, Aphrodite rising from the sea, c. 460 BC. Museo Nazionale Romano. Figure 4. Aphrodite of Cnidus, Roman copy. Musei Vaticani, Roma. ii

Figure 5. Woman sitting in front of an oven. Archaeological Museum, Polygyros. Figure 6. Woman and child cooking. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Figure 7. Nurse with child. Musée du Louvre. Chapter 10 Figure 1. Typical oval shape domestic structure from the Late Bronze Age site of Cabezuelos (Ubeda, Jaén) (After Contreras 1982). Figure 2. Serving/eating vessels from Late Bronze Age of southeast of Iberian Peninsula (After Molina 1978; Molina et al. 1983 and Aranda 2001). Figure 3. Carenated vessel decorated with hemispheric bronze buttons place over spool support. Chapter 11 Figure 1. Gold pendant from woman´s grave ca. 200 AD. © Bergen museum/Svein Skare. Figure 2. Grave mound, old Iron Age © Bergen museum/Liv Helga Dommasnes. Figure 3. Spinning whorl and keys from woman´s grave © Bergen museum/Ann-Mari Olsen. Figure 4. Oseberg embroidery © Kulturhistorisk mueum, University of Oslo/Eirik Irgens Johnsen. Figure 5. Reconstructed farm houses, Ullandhaug © Arkeologisk museum i Stavanger/Terje Tveit. Figure 6. Plan long house, Ullandhaug © Arkeologisk museum i Stavanger. Figure 7. Tapestry, Oseberg burial © Kulturhistorisk mueum, University of Oslo/Eirik Irgens Johnsen. Figure 8. Spindle whorl ©Arkeologisk museum i Stavanger/ Ragne Johnsrud.

iii

P.GONZALEZ-MARCÉN, S.MONTÓN-SUBIAS, M.PICAZO AND M.SANCHEZ-ROMERO: ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS…

Engendering social dynamics. The archaeology of maintenance activities. An introduction Paloma González-Marcén CEPAP, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain

Sandra Montón-Subías ICREA Research Professor. Departament d’Humanitats, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain

Marina Picazo Departament d’Humanitats, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain

Margarita Sánchez-Romero Departamento de Prehistoria y Arqueología, Universidad de Granada, Spain

The present volume, Engendering social dynamics. The archaeology of maintenance activities, results from a combination of some of the papers presented at two international workshops: Women and Maintenance activities in times of change and Interpreting household practices: reflections on the social and cultural roles of maintenance activities, which were held in Barcelona in November 2005 and November 2007. These two workshops were co-organised by the Centre d’Estudis del Patrimoni Arqueològic de la Prehistòria-CEPAP (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain) and by the Departament d’Humanitats (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain), with awards given by the Instituto de la Mujer and the Catalan and Spanish government Among its general objectives, the first workshop intended to promote and coordinate research related to the subject of maintenance activities on an international level. We had been working on the concept of maintenance activities for a number of years, along with other scholars, in an attempt to demonstrate how important tasks related with the management of daily life such as food processing, making clothing, carrying water, caring for others, raising and socializing children, preparing and administering remedies and medicines, cleaning, etc. were for the social cohesion, reproduction and welfare of human groups. When we contacted the contributors to the first seminar we wanted to draw attention to the fact that academic research had not usually attributed historical significance to them. Considered similar and monotonous, these set of activities had been left aside when it came to explaining change in History. The main challenge of the workshop was, thus, to demonstrate that maintenance activities were paramount in understanding life dynamics in any human community, that they constituted an integral part of human agency and that they had been related to the actions and decisions that have affected the development of human communities throughout history. In this sense, the different examples contributed demonstrated how maintenance activities,

far from being a constant variable, disconnected from the social, economic, political or ideological transformations that confer dynamism and creativity to changes in human societies, were paramount to our understanding of those moments regarded by academic research as social transitions. For the 2007 workshop, Interpreting household practices: reflections on the social and cultural roles of maintenance activities, we invited our speakers to discuss the role of maintenance activities within their wider social framework and to examine how they tie in with other social and economic activities and spheres such as food production, textile production, public health, identity mechanisms and funerary practices. On this occasion, as in the previous workshop, we received an enthusiastic and encouraging response from all of them. Needless to say, we could not have accomplished our goals without such conscientious commitment. As a result, the papers in this volume cover a wide range of topics and present a new set of cross-disciplinary approaches. Section one is devoted to those contributions reflecting on the very nature of maintenance activities. The first chapter summarizes some of our previous works on the concept of maintenance activities and its archaeological expression. The paper stresses the structural social character of all those daily tasks related to the sustenance and wellbeing of the members of a social group, and outlines the main criteria that, in our opinion, should guide archaeological practice sensitive to maintenance activities. Almudena Hernando explains in chapter two why mainstream History has left unconsidered maintenance activities. According to the author, human beings develop two main mechanisms to cope with their own ontological uncertainty. The first one consists of binding themselves to the group they belong to; the second, to generate legitimation discourses. In pre-modern times, when the legitimation discourse was Myth, both mechanisms were compatible. However, this compatibility was lost after the advent of Modernity, when legitimation discourse became History, which is based on individuality. In Modernity, our conscious and explicit discourse represented by History 1

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES denies our unconscious and implicit necessity to bind with others in order to feel secure. This is the reason that Hernando stresses as fundamental in understanding why History has denied the importance of maintenance activities and the practices developed by women since pre-modern times. In chapter 3 Diane GiffordGonzalez emphasizes how the emerging focus in the archaeological discipline on the structures and practices of everyday life allows us to envision the full range of occupations, activities, and actors involved in social and ecological maintenance and reproduction. From a methodological perspective and with regard to zooarchaeological analyses, she notices how, despite recent theoretical developments, a gap still exists between general theoretical models and what has been called middle-range theory, one which is most often bridged by compelling rhetoric rather than by systematically articulated methodology. Section two is aimed at discussing maintenance activities in their wider socio-symbolical context. Emphasizing the importance of technologies in embodying values and social relations, Francesca Bray analyses significant everyday technologies that together define women's roles and activities in twentyfirst century California, as a way to explore the evolving impact of globalization. Her contribution shows how these technologies underpin the American Way of Life and its values, while tying American households into global chains of production and consumption. In chapter five, Elizabeth Brumfiel shows how symbolism of household units, expressed in spindle whorls’ decorations, was appropriated by Azted rulers in their efforts to establish the legitimacy of their status. In this way, she makes clear that the "Little Tradition" in Mesoamerica was the source of the "Great Tradition", and not the other way around. Chapter six deals with burial practices in late Medieval England. Focusing on gendered agency in the very burial rite and analysing material culture deposited by women in tombs, Roberta Gilchrist shows how women extended their care of the family into the funerary world, through the addition of amulets and folk remedies to protect and heal the dead.

Also focusing on the analysis of the funerary record, Antonia García-Luque and Carmen Rísquez study the expression of maintenance activities during the Middle Iberian period. Analysing the funerary furnishing recovered from tombs belonging to some of the most relevant aristocratic women, they make clear how the control and involvement in some maintenance activities, mainly textile manufacture, conferred aristocratic women a place on their own among the Iberian social elite. Finally, in chapter eight, Marina Picazo explores the construction of the female image in the Greek terracota figurines, indeed a suitable realm to explore women’s social roles in Ancient Greece and the maintenance activities conducted in daily life. Importantly, the construction of this female image in terracotta figurines distances women from the overtly sexualised presentation of the large scale stone sculptures that have come to typify classical Greek art. Finally, our last section is entirely dedicated to explore the fundamental character of maintenance activities in those historical moments classified as transitional. Carol Meyers studies in chapter eight the changing technology of flour production between Roman Galilee and the preceding periods, and highlights the consequences that these changes had for women. In chapter nine, Margarita Sánchez-Romero and Gonzalo Aranda discuss how changes evidenced by food preparation, serving and consumption between the Late Bronze Age and Final Bronze Age in southeast Iberia illustrate us about other socio-economic behaviours during this transition. Finally, chapter 11 studies the roles of women in the Nordic Iron Age from approximately 200 AD through the Viking Age. Liv Helga Dommasnes focuses specifically on the association between women, long houses and long barrows and analyses this relationship through the concepts of change and maintenance. We hope that the variety of different approaches to the topic by the participating archaeologists and anthropologists continues stimulating new interpretive approaches to our understanding of maintenance activities. Barcelona, 1 August 2008.

2

1. Towards an archaeology of maintenance activities Paloma González-Marcén Centre d’Estudis del Patrimoni Arqueològic de la Prehistòria-CEPAP. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain.

Sandra Montón-Subías ICREA Research Professor. Departament d’Humanitats. Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain

Marina Picazo Departament d’Humanitats. Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain Introduction The concept of maintenance activities began to be used in the context of Spanish archaeology about ten years ago (Bardavio and González Marcén 1996; Picazo, 1997; Colomer, González Marcén and Montón, 1998). Its development has continued and expanded ever since (González Marcén, Montón and Picazo, 2005; Alarcón, 2006; García Luque, 2008; Hernando, this volume; Sánchez-Romero and Aranda, this volume) and has even begun to be used in other academic traditions (Dommasnes and Montón-Subías, 2007; GiffordGonzalez, this volume). Initially catalyzed by Gender archaeology challenges to correct ‘the appalling absence of concepts that tap women’s experience’ (Conkey and Gero: 1991: 3), the concept of maintenance activities encompasses a set of practices that involve the sustenance, welfare and effective reproduction of all the members of a social group. These comprise the basic tasks of daily life that regulate and stabilize social life. They mainly involve care giving, feeding and food processing, weaving and cloth manufacture, hygiene, public health and healing, socialization of children and the fitting out and organization of related spaces (for similar ideas, see Allison, 1999; Bray, 1997; Meyers, 2003). These activities always entail specialised knowledge and the ability to sustain networks of interpersonal relationships in which framework they take place. They are also associated with specific technological practices and with the existing values and norms operating socially. Their ultimate function is to guarantee the possible reiteration and recurrence of group activities and to channel any changes in the latter into new reiteration and recurrence patterns or, in other words, into new ways of everyday life management. When we decided to write this article we wanted to bring together the different papers we had presented at different forums since we began to deal with the subject of maintenance activities. Similarly, we wanted to address many of the issues put forward by colleagues and students over the years which hadn’t been sufficiently clarified. Consequently, in this article we will begin by focusing on the existing relationship, as we see it, between an archaeology of maintenance activities, an archaeology of female practices and an archaeology of what is normally grouped under the

rubric of “the domestic”. Secondly, we will present different examples which illustrate the structural nature of maintenance activities. Finally, we will outline the criteria that, in our opinion, should guide the archaeology of maintenance activities, with a special focus on the notions of time and space. Maintenance activities, female practices and the “domestic” sphere Maintenance activities have for centuries constituted an essential part of the everyday experiences of people’s lives and especially of women. We can reasonably assume that, in many societies, women have been responsible for carrying them out and above all for creating and maintaining their associated and necessary networks of relationships (as examples, Meyers, 2003; Hendon, 2005; Sánchez-Romero, 2007; Gilchrist, this volume). However, we are also aware that the attribution of certain activities to the daily practices of women is debatable and has tended to be linked with essentialist or conservative points of view that place women in a limited and limiting scope of social action (Magallón 1999). At the same time, recognition of the diversity of cultural formulae in the material organisation of gender systems invokes caution in relation to this aspect (Moore 1988). Consequently, these practices may have not been always carried out by women in prehistoric societies, as indicated for instance by studies of mortuary evidence related to gender roles (Hamlin, 2001: 132-3). In fact, we think that in the origins of humankind the whole group -men, women and children- would have been involved in most of these practices as they formed the core of social life. Progressively, and for reasons that are lateral to the argument of this paper, these set of practices became an integral part of women’s heritage in most traditional and historical societies (see, for instance, Hernando, this volume). Consequently, we really considerer that it is actually possible from a historical and ethnographic perspective to recognise certain basic patterns which associate women with this range of activities. On the other hand, where we referred (and refer) to maintenance activities as female activities we did (and do) not include all the activities potentially or effectively performed by women but only those, common to many women, that are related to the maintenance of the life cycle, from birth to death. This starting point does not seek to establish universals but to highlight the significance of the structural function of these activities in creating, recreating and transforming social forms.

3

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES Irrespective of how this set of tasks were carried out, what we also wished to emphasise was the fact that these practices have been overlooked by traditional archaeological accounts and considered non essential for historical interpretation because they were associated with women’s activities in the present. In this sense, the study of maintenance activities has followed along the lines initiated in the 70’s that sought to value female activities in historical -and archaeological- explanation (Rosaldo and Lamphere, 1974; Dahlberg, 1981; Conkey and Spector, 1984). This absence of archaeological discourse seems paradoxical because empirical evidence on these types of activities constitutes an important part (often the most important) of the archeological record in all cultures and historical periods. By disregarding them, archaeology has in fact generated little knowledge around forms of human work that are universal and generally closely related to the division of sexual roles. By overlooking them archaeology has also failed to focus on the social networks and forms of interaction they have generated; networks and mechanisms that have entailed important forms of communication and connection in social life, superimposed and interconnected with other forms of social relationships. This historical amnesia has weakened historical interpretation by leaving aside a whole series of practices which are inextricably linked to other spheres of social action and form an inseparable part of the complexity of human groups. Alongside the issue concerning maintenance activities and female activities we have frequently also been asked about the relationship between maintenance activities and the sphere of activities that are grouped under the term “domestic”. Although we shall come back to this subject later on, we would like to point out now that the maintenance activities category constituted an attempt to disassociate the characterisation of these activity patterns from the often used “domestic activities” category because of the limiting nature of this concept in that it is associated with a particular space. Maintenance dynamics

activities:

foregrounding

social

By using the term maintenance activities we seek to stress the fact that the common factor of this basic pattern of female activities lies in the structural function -both material and symbolic- that they have exercised and continue to exercise in all human groups. This structural function has taken on and takes on different forms. It encompasses a wide range of activities and may take on the form of distinct organisational combinations as regards the specific tasks that are associated with it and the spaces where these tasks are performed. Nevertheless, maintenance activities and their spaces show, both historically and

ethnographically, a constant set of similarities and are expressed in common forms of relationships and knowledge management. Different archaeological studies have already demonstrated how fundamental these set of activities are in foregrounding social dynamics in any community (Brumfiel, 1991; Hastorf, 1991; Gifford-González, 1993; Montón, 2002; Hendon 2007; Sánchez-Romero and Aranda, this volume; Aranda et al., forthcoming). Given that we consider them to be of central importance we decided to also seek them out in the historical discourse where they had been especially left aside. Hence, first in 2005 and more recently in 2007, we organised seminars (which gave rise to most of the contributions presented in this volume) to explore their structural character not only in processes of social continuance but also during periods academically regarded as times of historical change. Instead of considering them as similar and monotonous, as a constant rather than a variable, we wanted connect them with the social, economic, political and ideological transformations that confer dynamism and creativity to societies over time. And, in fact, most of the contributions to the seminars made clear that the rhythm and consequences of economic and social transformation could not be fully understood unless we take into account the crucial role played by changes affecting the every day forms of maintenance activities. Important archaeological research had already highlighted the fundamental role of activities such as cooking and weaving in social transitions. For instance, in 1991 Elizabeth Brumfiel brought to light how central these tasks were in the transition from pre-Aztec to Aztec society in Central Mexico (Brumfiel, 1991). Similarly, a recent study of the Northeast Iberian Peninsula found close links between these activities and the emergence of political inequality in Iberian societies (corresponding to Iron Age on the Iberian Peninsula) (Curià, Masvidal and Picazo, 2000). The majority of dwellings on the Iberian sites in this region have similar features as regards their size and form of construction. They appear to have been multifunctional spaces for everyday activities used for producing and transforming food products and for making essential tools for the maintenance and caring of the social groups that inhabited them. During the process of emerging social complexity certain changes were documented even in the smaller settlements. In some settlements, evidence showed an increase (possible centralisation) in cloth and food production inside certain architectural structures. Although the archeological artefacts found in these buildings are the same as those found in other dwellings (spindle whorls, loom weights, grinding stones) they are usually recovered in larger quantities. These evidences may be interpreted as proof of textile and food production intensification, surpassing the domestic scale of production characteristic of the previous period. It is now, during the period known as the Middle Iberian era, when elites emerged. These elites lived in large residences and they appear to have taken over parts of production as a strategy for establishing the social hierarchy.

4

P. GONZALEZ-MARCÉN, S. MONTÓN-SUBÍAS AND M. PICAZO: TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES At around the same time there is evidence of a greater number of war conflicts among communities (the construction of fortifications and more warrior tombs), of the control of ritual practices (in “public buildings”) and of the centralisation of certain production processes, starting with some forms of work related to maintenance activities. The presence of cloth and food production intensification in certain buildings is possibly due to the pressure that elites put on domestic groups, and most specifically on women. In doing so, they increased production and consumption linked to forms of control and exhibition of social wealth. In this respect, increased food production could have been linked to a form of redistribution in ritual feasts within specific contexts. Although it seems that the Iberian elites did not exercise complete control over textile and food production, the increase in productivity linked to these maintenance activities may have involved the existence of some form of dependent work, probably done by women. It therefore seems that in this case, as in other well known historical examples, the onset of stratification was based, at least in part, on the manipulation and control of that forms of social relationships imbricated in processes of creation and maintenance of social life. We were also convinced that maintenance activities also played a key role in structuring society’s symbolic resources and dynamics. In fact, some of our most recent studies have highlighted how artefacts employed in the management of everyday activities may be used as ideological resources in funerary rituals. This is what we discovered after studying the funerary records of the Bronze Age Argaric communities of Southeast Spain (c. 2250-1450 BC) (Montón-Subías 2007; Aranda et al. forthcoming). One of the most characteristic features of the Argaric world is the funerary ritual they adopted to bury their dead: the inhumation of corpses in urns, pits, cists and artificial caves called “covachas” under the floors of their dwellings. Some of the corpses were buried with a series of artefacts used as funerary offerings. After studying these grave goods, researchers came to the conclusion that there were clear social inequalities in the heart of these communities and unequal access to economic resources and politico-ideological power. In fact, some of these grave items were actually tools used to perform maintenance activities. Among them, our attention was drawn by the prominent and almost exclusive presence of awls in female tombs, something already noticed since the beginnings of Argaric research (Siret and Siret, 1886; Lull and Estévez, 1986; González-Marcén 1991). Unlike male exclusive tools, the presence of awls in female tombs cuts across age, social, space and time boundaries. After interpreting this phenomenon, we came to the conclusion that the presence of awls in female tombs was necessarily related to roles socially perceived as belonging to the female gender and to the activities –probably maintenance activities- that influenced this perception.

Given these findings we connected the presence of awls with the symbolical need to mark a mainstream female identity in funerary rituals. Maintenance activities, time and space Apart from the different forms of work they involve, maintenance activities require and at the same time create social relationships which have a dynamics, a time and spatial organisation of their own. This time we are referring to is quotidian time. Its predominant feature is that it is recurrent and as such involves a particular and differentiated form of temporality. The way textile activities were carried out in ancient Greece is a good example of the temporality we are referring to. In Ancient Greece spinning was a repetitive task that demanded a lot of time: several hours were needed to spin by hand a sufficient amount of thread to weave on a loom for an hour. Spinning and weaving were (and still are in many places) tasks that could be interrupted, which enabled women to do other tasks which were commonly assigned to them. So women spun while they did other things: look after the children, bring in the livestock, travel, share a moment of conversation, cook, etc. Considering this time and its practices also requires an analytical perspective sensitive to microscalar developments (Picazo 1997, Foxhall 2000). In fact, the focus on maintenance activities also stemmed from our discontent at some of the interpretations carried out to explain different prehistoric moments in the Iberian Peninsula. Irrespective of the different historical approaches adopted, they focused on a limited and recurrent number of subjects: population growth/ depletion, agricultural production, technological development and colonial presence. However, less attention has been given to evaluating how these factors are specifically reflected in the material evidence from archaeological records. For example, researchers have hardly touched on matters such as: Why and how agricultural production increases? In what terms can we refer to technological breakthroughs? How can a community increase its population? How did all these changes affect the restructuring of daily life within prehistoric communities and at the expense of what or of whom? As a result, the study of prehistory has basically centred on macrohistorical variables. This in turn has favoured to a type of discourse that is incompatible with the presentation of human actions, given that people are replaced by abstract social trends. In contrast to this, the time scale of the day to day is the scale of people’s experiences, concrete historical experience, which is transformed (recreated) throughout their lifetime. In our specific case, these questions, which seek to interpret social dynamics on a small scale, arose when we began a research programme on peasant communities in the Vallés region in the Northeast of the Iberian Peninsula (Colomer, González-Marcén and Montón 1998) during the Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. The main form of settlement throughout prehistory in the Vallés featured numerous pits 5

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES dug into the ground with no or very few specific remains of solid masonry dwellings. The majority of these pits were primarily used to store agricultural produce, although a few of them were used as work areas and as refuge and consumption areas. These pits were latter on used as rubbish dumps.

spaces are not therefore abstract spaces but lived in spaces that once contained human life and were created by it. Consequently, in order to determine the spatial relationships of the objects that comprise an ancient space of relationship (a hamlet, a village, etc.) we need to look at how they are related to the activities that were carried out inside them.

After analysing how the space was structured in relation to maintenance activities and the production processes of artefacts related to these activities in the Can Roqueta settlement we found that important changes had taken place between the Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. Whereas during the Bronze Age the entire settlement is structured around the maintenance infrastructures which are scattered indiscriminately anywhere in the village, during the Iron Age we found spatially differentiated, production, consumption and possibly rest areas. At the same time, the archeological findings pointed to an increase in cereal production during this transitional period. To our surprise we found that this increase was not associated with technological innovations related to maintenance practices, which had remained unchanged. This increase in agricultural production must have been brought on by a reorganisation of daily life and it could only have taken place at the expense of the people involved in maintenance activities. This agricultural intensification was probably accompanied by a demographic increase. If we assume that there was an increase in population during this transition it follows that this was brought about at the expense of women, either through a relaxation of birth control or due to improved conditions for infant survival. Either each woman had more children (with possible changes in family structures) or the maintenance activities related to the general health of the group managed to lower infant mortality.

Based on the certainty that maintenance activities are what effectively ensure the creation and day to day recreation of all human groups we need to look at how these activities generate material demands and conditions which are then reflected in the spatial distribution of archaeological sites.

In the case of the Vallés, the relative degree of resilience of these groups which had lasted since the Neolithic period was finally interrupted and this interruption was manifested in the growing social pressure on the way maintenance activities were organised.

But maintenance activity spaces cannot be identified a priori in archaeological analysis. The elasticity of the concept does not allow us to do so. Hence, the space of maintenance activities has to be a more open space than that which is traditional associated with the domestic domain. In fact, we have chosen to use the term maintenance activities in order to emphasise the fact that the common factor is this basic pattern of female activities does not stem from one space – the domestic space – which is culturally and historically dependent, but from its structural function both material and symbolic - which has existed and is to be found in all human groups. This structural function has taken on different forms for different ranges of activities. It may lead to different organisational combinations of the specific tasks associated with it as well as of the spaces in which they are carried out, although a continuum of similarities has existed between maintenance tasks and spaces, historically and ethnographically speaking. It is not the space as such that delimits the actions but the practices and the relationships of the maintenance activities that determine the location of the space. We need to study these spaces by looking at their internal organisation and compare and contrast them with spaces set aside for other social practices, which may or may not coincide with the spaces occupied by maintenance activities. It is in these spaces that a large part of the experiences and practices of the women of the past must have taken place. Spaces which determined the frameworks of their day to day relationships and which gave rise to the sets of tasks that sustained the dynamics of the group. Conclusion

The space of maintenance activities In archaeology, the characterization of the life styles of a community is inextricably linked to the methodological strategy that seeks to determine its spatial organisation. In fact, the space that is marked out and denoted by archaeological remains, the way its different elements are combined, the interconnections between one space and another, all these factors may be considered to be the material expression of a logical way of organising activities. They configurate a concrete (not an abstract) organisation which determines and is at the same time the outcome of the constant and changing relationships that were generated in the space in question. Archaeological

In this paper, we have briefly reviewed some of the most important aspects related to our maintenance activities approach. We have commented on its definition and on its relationship with related approaches, we have contributed archaeological examples to show its intertwined social nature and we have provided some notes about associated time and space. In doing so, we have tried to explain the specifics of such approach to the study of prehistoric and ancient societies and to demonstrate the structural social nature of maintenance activities, a sphere where specialised knowledge, expertise and essential technical skills converge with specific social norms and values to sustain the day to day functioning of human groups.

6

P. GONZALEZ-MARCÉN, S. MONTÓN-SUBÍAS AND M. PICAZO: TOWARDS AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES References Alarcón, E., 2006, “Aproximación a la vida cotidiana de las poblaciones argáricas: el caso de Peñalosa”. Arqueología y Territorio 3: http://www.ugr.es/local/arqueol/docencia/doctorado/Ar qyT/presents.htm Allison, P.M. (ed.), 1999, The Archaeology of Household Activities. London: Routledge.

Foxhall, L., 2000, “The running sands of time: archaeology and the short-term”. World Archaeology 31, 3, pp. 484498. García Luque, Antonia, 2008, Arqueología del género en la cultura ibera: una lectura desde la muerte, PhD dissertation, Centro Andaluz de Arqueología Ibérica, Universidad de Jaén.

Aranda, G., Montón-Subías, S., Sánchez-Romero, M. and García, E., forthcoming, “Death and everyday life. The Argaric communities of southeast Iberia”, Journal of Social Archaeology.

Gifford-Gonzalez, D., 1993, “Gaps in Zooarchaeological Analyses of Butchery; is Gender an Issue?”, in J. Hudson (ed) From Bones to Behaviour: Ethnoarchaeological and Experimental Contributions to the Interpretation of Faunal Remains (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University), pp. 181-199.

Bardavio, A. and González-Marcén, P., 1996, “La vida quotidiana a la prehistòria. L’estudi de les activitats de manteniment”, Balma 6 : 7-16. Bray, F., 1997, Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press).

González-Marcén, P., 1991, “Cronología del grupo Argárico”. PhD dissertation, Dept de Prehistòria, Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona. González-Marcén, P., Montón, S. and Picazo, M., 2005, (eds) Dones i Activitats de manteniment en temps de canvi (Bellaterra: Treballs d’Arqueologia 11).

Brumfiel, E., 1991, “Weaving and Cooking: Women’s Production in Aztec Mexico”, in J.M. Gero and M.W. Conkey (eds) Engendering Archaeology. Women and Prehistory, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell), pp. 224-251.

Hamlin, C., 2001, “Sharing the Load: Gender and Task Division at the Windover Site”, in B. Arnold and N.L. Wicker (eds) Gender and the Archaeology of Death (Walnut Creek: Altamira Press), pp.119-35.

Colomer. L., González-Marcén, P. and Montón, S., 1998, “Maintenance Activities, Technological Knowledge and Consumption Patterns: a View from a Prehistoric Iberian Site (Can Roqueta, 1200-500 cal BC)”, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 11, pp. 53-80.

Hendon, J., 2006, “Textile production as craft in Mesoamerica: Time, labor and knowledge”, Journal of Social Archaeology 6, pp. 354-378.

Conkey, M.W. and Gero, J.M., 1991, “Tensions, Pluralities, and Engendering Archaeology: An Introduction to Women and Prehistory”, in J.M. Gero and M.W. Conkey (eds) Engendering Archaeology. Women and Prehistory, (Oxford: Basil Blacwell ), pp. 3-30. Conkey, M.W and Spector, J., 1984, “Archaeology and the study of gender”, Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, 7, pp. 1-38. Curia, E., Masvidal, C. and Picazo, M., 2000, “Desigualdad política y prácticas de creación y mantenimiento de la vida en Iberia Septentrional”, in P. González Marcén (ed) Espacios de género en Arqueología (Arqueología Espacial 22), pp. 107-122. Dahlberg, F., 1981, Women the Gatherer (New Haven: Yale University Press). Dommasnes, L.H. and Montón-Subías, S., 2007, “Engendering historical change”, paper presented at the Engendering Historical Change workshop, Bergen.

Lull, V. and Estévez, J., 1986, “Propuesta metodológica para el estudio de las necrópolis argáricas”, in AA.VV. (eds) Homenaje a Luis Siret (1934-1984), pp. 441-452. Sevilla: Consejería de Cultura de la Junta de Andalucía. Magallón, C., 1999, “Privilegio epistémico, verdad y relaciones de poder. Un debate sobre la epistemología del feminist standpoint” in En M.J. Barral, C. Magallón, C. Miqueo and M.D. Sánchez (eds.), Interacciones ciencia y género. Discursos y prácticas científicas de mujeres. (Barcelona: Icaria), pp. 63-80. Meyers, C., 2003, “Material remains and social relations: women´s culture in agrarian households of the Iron Age” in S. Mitin (ed.) Symbiosis, symbolism, and the power of the past. Canaan, ancient Israel, and their neighbours from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palestina (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns), pp. 425-444. Montón, S., 2002, “Cooking in Zooarchaeology: Is this Issue Still Raw? “, in P. Miracle and N. Milner (eds) Consuming Passions and Patterns of Consumption (Cambridge: McDonald Institute Monographs), pp. 7-15. Montón-Subias, S., 2007, “Interpreting archaeological continuities: an approach to transversal equality in the Argaric Bronze Age of south-east Iberia”, World Archaeology 39:246 - 262.

7

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES Moore, H., 1988, Antropología y feminismo, Cátedra, Madrid. Picazo, M., 1997, “Hearth and Home: The Timing of Maintenance Activities”, in J. Moore and E. Scott (eds) Invisible People and Processes: Writing Gender and Childhood into European Archaeology (Leicester and New York: Leicester University Press), pp. 59-60. Rosaldo, M.Z. and Lamphere, L., 1974, Women, Culture and Society (Standford: Standford University Press). Sánchez-Romero, M., 2007, “Actividades de mantenimiento en la edad del bronce del sur peninsular: el cuidado y la socialización de individuos infantiles”, in M. Sánchez-Romero (ed) Arqueología de las mujeres y de las relaciones de género (Complutum 18), pp. 185-194. Siret, H. and Siret, L., 1886, Les Premiers Âges du Métal dans le Sud-Est de l’Espagne. Anvers.

8

2. Why did History not appreciate maintenance activities? Almudena Hernando Departamento de Prehistoria, Universidad Complutense, Madrid. All human groups think that they are the only ones who are going to survive, because they are protected by something known only to them, and only they have found the true secret of survival. There are two kinds of legitimating discourses: Myth and History.

Introduction Human beings use two mechanisms in order to feel secure in the vast world in which they live in. These mechanisms are: (1) to bind themselves to the group they belong to and (2) to establish a discourse of legitimation. These two mechanisms are compatible and coherent when the discourse of legitimation is Myth, which happens in pre-modern times. However, they become incompatible in times of Modernity, where the discourse of legitimation is History, which is based on individuality, thus, contradicting the need of binding with the group. In Modernity, our conscious and explicit discourse –History– denies our unconscious and implicit necessity to bind with others in order to feel secure. This is the reason why History has denied the importance of maintenance activities and the practices developed by women since pre-modern times. In doing so, History has not recognized the role of maintenance activities as the stabilizing element that has allowed for change to happen in society.

Whereas the two mechanisms (bonding with one’s own group and the discourse of legitimation) are completely coherent in groups with a low socioeconomic complexity –i.e., little division of functions and work specializationwhose discourse of legitimation is Myth, they are incompatible in Modernity, where the discourse of legitimation is History. This is so because Myth is constructed on the necessity of bonding with the group as the basis of identity and security, whereas, on the contrary, History is based on individuality as the form of identity, denying the importance of group bonding. Maintenance activities, as we shall proceed to explain, serve to strengthen the bonds, to construct networks of physical and psychological support within the group. They have nothing to do with individuality whatsoever. For that reason, despite being crucial, their importance is systematically denied by the historical discourse.

Maintenance activities, although essential for the continuity of any social group have neither been appreciated nor recognized in History and Archaeology. Because maintenance activities are performed generally by women, these are not given due recognition as History has systematically concealed women’s role in past societies. This marginalization has resulted in the invisibility of women

Coherence between the discourses of legitimation and bonding with the group Dating from the moment when the capacity of using symbols to represent the world was developed – probably in what we call the Upper Paleolithic – all human societies have constructed discourses of legitimation to justify their present situation. They do not only explain the genesis of society, but also how their way of living is superior to any other, They thus convert their members into the “chosen ones”, the only ones that are going to remain and survive when the others disappear.

Cognitive mechanisms to construct the fantasy of human power in the world In the Unconscious, human beings understand their own impotence and the fact that they are only another small phenomenon in the infinite universe. Apparently, this truth is denied as acknowledging it would be tantamount to the inability to survive, given the perception that our insignificance will make survival insurmountable. We have developed psychological, social and cultural mechanisms to deny the reality of our impotence. As a result, all human groups think they are able to not only survive, but to control reality to a sufficient degree as well. There are two main mechanisms which enable us to construct this fantasy:

As previously mentioned, there are two ways of constructing this discourse: Myth and History. Myth is the type of discourse that characterizes societies with a low level of division of functions and work specialization (Gotesky 1952, Eliade 1968). In these societies, men and women carry out complementary tasks, which are always recurrent, repetitive, characterized by lack of specialization, do not include writing systems and are both productive and maintenance activities. Maintenance activities refer to all those activities involving the maintenance of the group:–pregnancy, breeding, general care, hygiene and health- as well as the material culture and the means that are necessary for the survival of the group (Montón 2000: 52). In those societies, the only difference that can be found between work done by men

1. To create bonds with the group as a way to strengthen one’s identity and to feel more powerful than they would think themselves if alone and disconnected in the middle of the vast universe. 2. To elaborate a legitimating discourse to convince the member that only the group possesses the key to survival. 9

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES Thus, these societies are characterized by a rejection of change, a rejection which is based on the never-ending reproduction of the same activities and rites that have been passed down from generation to generation; by a perception of time as something cyclical where the future is only a repetition of the known past; a perception of space as something limited and known, where one stands for the center of the sacred and omnipotent universe of human dynamics, which has chosen us to be protected and thus give true meaning to our lives and help us survive.

and women is that the latter consists primarily of maintenance activities that concern child care, preparation of meals and, among the productive tasks, always those which involve the least displacement, and hence, the least risk (Hernando 2004). For these societies, change means risk, and this is something they do not want to face, as they do not feel confident about their technical capacity to dominate the surrounding world if the conditions of their life change. At the same time, because of the lack of socioeconomic complexity of these groups, there is no complex technological development, no development of a writing system that allows imagining scientific models to represent –and to explain- the world. For this reason, they explain the dynamics of Nature through the only behavior they know: human behavior.

The identity of the people who integrate these societies is based on the indissoluble bonding with their group. Given the impotence they feel towards the world, only by perceiving themselves as a part of a greater unit can they achieve the feeling of power necessary to face existential difficulties. In other words, there is no individuality in these groups. On the contrary, these groups can be characterized by what I have called “collective or relational identity” (Hernando 2000, 2002). M. Leenhart (1997: 153) clearly described this kind of identity when talking about the inhabitants of New Caledony. He explained how their sense of “who they are” is based on their relations with others; they are parents of their children, sons of their parents, nephews of their aunts and uncles, brothers of their sisters…The person knows who he is through the bonds that form the group’s web; they are unable to see themselves without these bonds. No one establishes who they are through being different or special with respect to others, but their identity is tied to all the things they have in common with the rest of the group. They know who they are because they do the same sort of things as the rest of the group, they dress in the same way or they eat the same food. Thus, the absence of technological development or work specialization -and, as a consequence, the absence of material control of the environment in which they live- is compensated by a very potent mechanism of identity reinforcement: each one of them is not an isolated unit of identity but a little piece of a much bigger unit, and therefore much more powerful. This sense of belonging puts them in a position to deal with the world they are living in and to survive.

They endow Nature with human behavior but consider it much more powerful than their own group, since clouds, rivers, animals or the earth can provide them with or deprive them of food, it can bring them abundance or shortage of supplies, make their life easy or take it away and determine the moment of their death. (e.g.,Douglas 1991: 97; Viveiros de Castro 1996). From this perspective, Nature resembles a sacred being of infinite power and human dynamics. As a consequence, because of the process of projecting their own human and social dynamics onto Nature, they believe that it is they who behave in the same way as Nature. They come to the conclusion that they have been chosen by Nature to show them –among all other human groups- the way of life that will let them survive, thus converting them into "the chosen group". In fact, the names that these groups call themselves always mean “the real human beings”, “the true people” (Viveiros de Castro 1996, Leenhart 1997, Eliade 1968)… because they believe that only they know the true world order, the one shown to them by divinity. On the other hand, as this stage of culture is characterized by the absence of writing, there are no maps to represent Nature, so it is only possible to order mentally that part of Nature in which life develops, where one walks, where activities take place. It is impossible to imagine anything else, because there is no way to represent this. In this manner, they perceive space as something very limited but totally filled with feelings and emotions –because everything that lives within it behaves in a human wayand is absolutely self-referential. Their security depends on the will of the sacred authority, which is guided by desires and human emotions. Nature offers them its protection under the condition that they maintain the way of life which is transmitted to them through Myth. This establishes a perfect symbolic correlation with their necessity for not changing their material conditions of life in order to feel safe. Myth is then a type of relationship with reality in which human features and sacred character are attributed to non-human nature. Reality has its limits within the personally known space and the key to survive is to avoid all changes (Hernando 2002).

Therefore, what we could call “success” of these people, has nothing to do with accumulation of features and personal belongings in greater measure than others, which only occurs among individualized people. On the contrary, this is connected with the ability of maintaining the bonding with one’s own group, collaborating in keeping the group without conflicts or divisions, because only by staying united will they survive. The development of this ability produces a great narcissistic compensation, as those who develop this know that their collaboration is absolutely essential for the group’s survival, whereas there are many mechanisms to neutralize, and actually provoke the feeling of guilt in those who could develop ways of behavior slightly different and/or against the group’s solidarity.

10

A. HERNANDO: WHY DID HISTORY NOT APPRECIATE MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES? the seventeenth century when a generic word meaning “risk” appears (even though the concept had been suggested already by Machiavelli) (Giddens 1997: 143). Only then did society start to have a sensation of command over the conditions of its existence and, consequently, of the capacity of survival even if conditions changed. It is not until modernity -when division of functions and work specialization brought about by the Industrial Revolution reached a very high level- that this process affected a male majority of European population. Only in this moment, History replaced Myth as the legitimation discourse of society. Unlike Myth, History conceives change and technological control as the keys to survival and security, thus replacing divine protection (Hernando 2006). Survival no longer depends on maintaining the way of life that sacred authority imposed on us, but from transforming it, showing that we can improve living conditions by using technology. History is the legitimation discourse of groups that consider the universe can be dominated and understood through science. Change is considered to be the key to survival and so the present begins to be interpreted as a result of the changes that occurred in the past. Evolution, which characterizes the scientific discourse, is the reason to make us now feel the chosen group. History is a narrative of changes which show the growth of technical ability of our own group to materially control the world. For this reason, unlike Myth, History is a discourse which is organized in time. The persons who performed these changes, and not a god, are the subjects and agents of their own survival. And these persons were the men from the social group.

All these features were initially characteristic of maintenance and productive activities, and defined the people who were in charge of them, which were all the men and women of the social group. However, whereas maintenance activities always follow the same guidelines and, consequently, are always associated to the same type of world perception and relational identity, productive activities started diversifying proportionally to the advancing division of functions and work specialization. This is how a double process was established. On the one hand, one related to the rural world, which was recurrent, limited in space and disconnected from technological specialization and systems of writing. All members of the group could be defined by the lack of power, the necessity for protective authorities and relational identity. On the other hand, one implicating the use of writing and complex technology, which was developed only by men defined by power and individuality. History, as a narrative, takes into account only this second process, because this is the discourse of legitimation associated with a society constructed upon individuality and socioeconomic complexity. History has not contemplated the recurrent unspecialized productive activities which are not associated with power –so excluding all men and women who developed them in all the pre-modern societies. It has not consider either maintenance activities, which were only women’s responsibility and an essential means of securing the group’s existence. As a result, History has never contemplated the function of women and has only considered the functions of some men: those defined by an increasing individuality, occupying specialized working posts, and therefore power related ones.

Thus, as socioeconomic complexity increased, the identity of men in specialized positions tended to be defined by individuality. This was especially the case when men of those positions began to use writing and abstract systems to describe and explain the world. These men began to find a sense of security in their own ability to understand and control the world, as opposed to group bonding. Gradually, the core of their identity came to reside in an inward and encapsulated “I”, concretized in the seventeenth century, when the concept of “individual” started to designate people (Elías 1990: 184; Weintraub 1993: 49). Only at that moment, the number of men who began to define their identity in this manner reached a sufficient level to be considered as representing a significant majority of society. Men who performed recurrent and not specialized activities, and continued constructing their identities in a relational way, became a clear minority, in opposition to the dominant group of specialized men enjoying the sense of power. However, women continued constructing their identities in a relational manner and performing maintenance activities. As men were developing more power and a capacity to control the world, women were seeking in men the protection previously granted by sacred authorities.

Human societies were increasing their level of socioeconomic complexity -division between the functions and work specialization-, in a process associated to the generalization of writing (Elías 1993; Ong 1996). Even though I will not analyze the reasons for the divergence between the identity and social development of men and women (cf. Hernando 2004), gradually certain men of the social group began to occupy positions that distinguished them from the others. They began to understand Nature’s dynamics using abstract thinking, and consequently desacralizing some of its phenomena. In other words, the change that favored technological development and scientific approaches was proportional to individuality development, with the perception of time as a linear concept which included the unpredictability of what was to come, and the perception of space as an unlimited and, in its majority, unknown environment. The development of transport and communication systems and the design of maps led to the construction of an image of a world full of remote and unknown corners. The world’s dynamics stopped being interpreted through a projection of the social order, once scientific mechanisms became understood (Hernando 2002).

While women maintained the type of identity that had earlier characterized all members of the social group, an increasing number of men became more and more

This changing process was very slow and gradual in Europe. It is important to bear in mind that it is only in 11

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES group. Maintenance activities have nothing to do with material control or power over human or non-human Nature, while History specializes in transmitting the idea to us that we are a group with more possibilities of survival than others because we have increased that control and power to an extent that others do not know. To sum up, we could say that History has not valued maintenance activities because it is a discourse constructed on opposed grounds to those in which maintenance activities lay.

individualized. Individuality assumes that each one constitutes the last instance of identity, has an independent existence and the power to confront the world. But this is a fantasy which tries to conceal the smallness and impotence of each one of us in contrast to the incommensurable world in which we live. If men were able to construct and maintain this fantasy, it was only by a hidden and deceitful mechanism, since by no means they ceased to bond with the group in order to feel safe in the world. But they stopped recognizing its importance: the bond with the group was denied and concealed because it contradicted the pretension of security and power of their individuality. And this pretension was possible because women continue securing the bonding in the group. If we take a look at our own society, we will see that those in the highest power positions and with greatest emotional distance with respect to others, still need to feel family support because without it they would feel, in general, disoriented and lost. Solitude is not, indeed, a state in which men know how to behave, in spite of their supposed independence and prominent individuality.

Denial of the importance of maintenance activities History is a legitimation discourse patriarchal in character because it is constructed on the values that have characterized masculine individuality. It is a discourse built on the values of change, individuality, and increase of control and capacity of objectification (or rationalization) of the world. It is a discourse that tries to convince us that these are the values that have provided our group with more possibilities of survival than any other group. This is partly true, but only partly, because as we said, individuality is a fantasy that can only be maintained to a certain point. Beyond this, our impotence and smallness would become evident, and the anguish that it would provoke in us would prevent us from surviving. Individuality is associated with creativity, consciousness of one’s own desires, specialization, leading abilities, and technical control of the world... But it also generates solitude and this can unveil the real impotence of each human being and his/her insignificance in the world. Life is not satisfactory if one is only related to the world through control, reason and emotional distance, because then one discovers the entire burden, the difficulty and the effort that living implies and the absolute impotence towards the world of that individual human being. Consequently, in order for men to maintain the fantasy of individuality it was necessary for somebody to be in charge of guaranteeing the existence of emotional bonds that men needed -though denied. I believe that this is a primordial function that women have had in history and which maintenance activities represent. Apart from their participation in productive tasks, complementing men’s work, women have developed one function that men did not perform, and which has been fundamental to the group: they have maintained the bonds within the group, and, in spite of the individuality that men were developing, have made it possible that men did not lose the sense of belonging to a unit greater than themselves, thus avoiding the anguish that awareness of their smallness would have generated. They have guaranteed the viability of the group, the possibility for socioeconomic complexity to increase without the group dismantling itself in the process. Women have made change possible by giving stability to those who carried these changes out. They have allowed masculine individuality to develop and, consequently, the group to increase material control over the world, without this implying the loss of sense of life for those who maintain control.

History and maintenance activities Maintenance activities represent all the structural characteristics of activities linked to the relational identity developed by the entire social group in the origins of history. They are unspecialized activities -not associated to change, but to recurrence; they are performed in a well known place -domestic space- and they are completely filled with sense and emotions. They do not imply a development of individuality, but are associated to supporting the bonds and cohesion of the group, to a world of inter-subjective relations and not to one of objectifying rationalizations. They do not express a personal vocation, nor the creativity or particularity of an author. They are impersonal, anonymous activities that characterize the group’s manner of performing them, but not the individualities within the group. History, however, is the legitimation discourse that corresponds to individualized identity, to a society of individuals that believe they can control the world and need no gods. That is to say, it is a discourse that begins to be used by individualized men within the social group, thus overlapping with the mythical discourse that continues to legitimize and explain the presence of the other, not individualized members of the group. Also, it expresses a way to understand the world that is contrary to the one which maintenance activities represent: these imply a cyclic, nonlinear perception, whereas History is a narrative of never repeated changes, linearly ordered in time; maintenance activities are associated to a perception of the significant space limited to that territory where life is developed, while History is constructed on inexperienced spaces, known only through maps. The first does not require technological specialization, whereas History is a narrative dedicated precisely, to its growth; the first are connected to taking care of the group and its reproduction, whereas History refers to the increase of capacities of production and interchange of a 12

A. HERNANDO: WHY DID HISTORY NOT APPRECIATE MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES? their structural character and the values they represent, not because they are performed by people of certain sex.

The function that women have fulfilled could not become explicit, since it would disassemble the legitimation discourse on which our society is based. It would make evident that the type of individuality constructed by men is not independent, nor therefore, operative without aid. It would also make evident that individuality has to be constructed as women of Modernity are doing -without denying the necessity of bonding and belonging to the group-, because otherwise, it leads to emptiness and loss of the sense of life.

3. To vindicate the importance that maintenance activities have had for the support and viability of our social group, and the fact that they have been in almost exclusively feminine hands in most of societies. Understanding this implies accepting that they cannot be valued from patriarchal values, as doing so will take them back to a position of little historical relevance. For instance, if we try to analyze how and when maintenance activities have changed, we would be assuming that change is, as such, a positive value, when, in fact, if there had been only change, the group would not have survived. Or if we try to prove that the technology to which they are associated is just another technology, comparable to the ones used in specialized productive activities, then we will never reach an understanding of the essential function that they have fulfilled and fulfill in society, guaranteeing bonds instead of the individualizing fragmentation with which technological specialization is associated.

Therefore, I believe that paying attention to maintenance activities is something of much greater importance than it seems, since it implies completing the account of the key factors that have allowed and allow our group to survive. It means escaping positivism, to consider not only the disintegrating forces -change, individuality, intra-social and society-Nature emotional distance- that have represented the process of socioeconomic complexity increase, but also the integrating forces that have allowed society to continue being a coherent and functional set. Thanks to them, human beings could keep the feeling of belonging to their group, facing a reality that is always more powerful than themselves.

Conclusion Maintenance activities are vital for the support of the group, but they are structurally opposite to activities that are associated with individuality and power. Because of this, they have not been recognized by History. History is the legitimation discourse of Modernity, coherent with understanding reality through change, time and the use of science to interpret the world, whereas maintenance activities are coherent with understanding reality through recurrence, space and the use of emotion to interpret the reality in which they are inserted. History gives us security, making us feel different from any other human group among other things because we are "individual" agents of force and power, whereas maintenance activities are the mechanism through which we remain bonded and united, an essential condition to maintain the fantasy on which individuality is based. As a Modern society, we cannot give up either of these mechanisms if we want to continue feeling safe, but we can transform its association to specific sexes, diluting with it the foundation on which patriarchal society is based.

How to recover the presence of women in our past? In this sense, I believe that the type of historical claim that we women of the present should make with respect to those of the past deserves a deep reflection. I would say that there are three ways of vindicating feminine presence in History: 1. To search for and vindicate women´s presence in those activities normally carried out by men: queens, abbesses, writers, travelers... This is necessary, among other things, to show that individuality has not been an exclusively masculine feature in pre-modern times, and to reflect on the constructed and not biological character of identity. But it is necessary to act with caution, because under the pretext of rescuing certain women from historical oblivion, we run the risk of reaffirming patriarchal values as the only important ones for social success, insisting in this way on the negation of group bonding as essential to that.

As we all know women began to be a part of the division of functions and work specialization with the advent of Modernity. Through the popularization of writing, women gained individuality, they began to know the mechanics of the world, and thus feel able to control it. They stopped feeling the necessity of men’s and gods’ protection, and, in coherence with their individuality, they started exploring unknown spaces, designing futures in accordance with desires which they began to be aware of and carrying out specialized activities, other than maintenance activities. But unlike men, women could not abandon these latter activities completely, because then nobody would be available to perform them and without maintenance activities the group could not survive. And in addition, women are aware of the importance of bonds.

2. To claim the participation of women in the non specialized productive tasks, and not only in maintenance tasks. This is also necessary because History has ignored the fact that in the hunter-gatherer and farmer societies women have a fundamental role in productive tasks, always complementing the functions performed by men. In this respect, it should be recognized that History has also denied the importance of this type of productive tasks carried out by men, because these tasks represent the cyclical and recurrent time structure, are developed in limited and known spaces and are resistant to changes; in other words, because they do not represent the values that give History its meaning. This confirms that History denies the importance of certain activities because of 13

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES Gotesky, R., 1952, “The nature of Myth and Society”, American Anthropologist 54, pp. 523-531.

Thus, the individualized women of Modernity –and those men who start to recognize the importance of bonds– face a contradiction implicit in the simultaneous development of both mechanisms of survival: to organize the world through time and change in their professional activities, and through space and recurrence in their maintenance activities; to give priority to reason in their specialized tasks and to emotion in those of maintenance; to promote individuality in the first, and bonding with their group in the second. I believe that society will be much more healthy, and of course egalitarian, when men and women are able to embody both mechanisms in a conscious and explicit way. Although, due to the structural contradiction that both represent, it seems inevitable that this will lead to higher levels of intra-psychic conflict than those which characterize pre-modern societies. In my opinion, the internal contradiction that both mechanisms imply when the same person carries them out will be the price to pay for a viable society, more conscious of its real necessities, of its authentic limits, of the reality of its position in the world and of human limitations. If this egalitarian society came into existence, then men and women would recognize that History (as we know it now) is a deceitful legitimation discourse, which denies the base on which it is built: maintenance activities that in the beginning men and women and later only women, have been carrying out. This will give women back the recognition of the function they have developed to make the survival of our group possible.

Hernando, A., 2000a, “Factores estructurales asociados a la identidad de género femenina. La no-inocencia de una construcción socio-cultural” in A. Hernando (ed.) La construcción de la subjetividad femenina (Madrid: Instituto de Investigaciones Feministas), pp. 101-142. Hernando, A., 2000b, “Hombres del Tiempo y Mujeres del Espacio: individualidad, poder y relaciones de género”, in P. González (ed.) Espacios de Género en Arqueología, Número monográfico de Arqueología Espacial 22, pp. 23-44. Hernando, A., 2002, Arqueología de la Identidad. (Madrid: Akal). Hernando, A., 2003, “Poder, individualidad e identidad de género femenina” in A. Hernando (ed.) ¿Desean las mujeres el poder? Cinco reflexiones en torno a un deseo conflictive, (Madrid: Minerva), pp. 71-136. Hernando, A., 2004, “Mujeres y Prehistoria: en torno a la cuestión del origen del Patriarcado”, in M. SánchezRomero (ed.) Arqueología y Género, (Granada: Universidad de Granada), pp. 73-108. Hernando, A., 2006, “Arqueología y Globalización. El problema de la definición del “otro” en la Modernidad”, Complutum 16, pp. 221-234.

References Burín, M., 1996, “Género y psicoanálisis: subjetividades femeninas vulnerables” in M. Burín & Dío Bleichmar, E. (eds) Género, Psicoanálisis, Subjetividad, (Buenos Aires: Paidós), pp. 61-79.

Leenhardt, M., 1997 [1947], Do kamo. La persona y el mito en el mundo melanesio (Barcelona: Paidós). Montón, S., 2000, “Las mujeres y su espacio: Una historia de los espacios sin historia” in P. González (ed.) Espacios de Género en Arqueología, Número monográfico de Arqueología Espacial 22, pp. 45-59.

Burín, M., 2003, “El deseo de poder en la construcción de la subjetividad femenina. El “techo de cristal” en la carrera laboral de las mujeres” in A. Hernando (ed.) ¿Desean las mujeres el poder? Cinco reflexiones en torno a un deseo conflictivo (Madrid: Minerva).

Oong, W., 1996 [1982], Oralidad y escritura. Tecnologías de la palabra (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica).

Douglas, M., 1991[1970], Pureza y peligro. Un análisis de los conceptos de contaminación y tabú (Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno de España Editores).

Viveiros de Castro, E., 1996, “Os pronomes cosmológicos e o perspectivismo ameríndio”, Mana 2(2), pp.115-144.

Eliade, M., 1968, Mito y realidad (Barcelona: Labor). Weintraub, K., 1993, La formación de la individualidad. Autobiografía e Historia (Madrid: Megazul-Endymion).

Elías, N., 1990, La sociedad de los individuos (Barcelona: Península). Elías, N., 1993, El proceso de la civilización. Investigaciones sociogenéticas y sociogenéticas (Madrid: Siglo XXI). Giddens, A., 1997, Modernidad e identidad del yo. El yo y la sociedad en la época Contemporánea (Barcelona: Península).

14

3. Thoughts on a method for zooarchaeological study of daily life Diane Gifford-Gonzalez Department of Anthropology, University of California Santa Cruz, USA By ‘interpretable evidence upon which there is some agreement’, I mean those meanings of the evidence (counting here both interpretations of objects and of patterning in data drawn from objects as evidence) that most archaeologists are willing to accept as strongly warranted ‘givens’. By ‘plausible’, I mean commonly agreed upon touchstones to which we can resort when developing arguments that account for changes (or lack of them) over time in the human lives we wish to study. This area of evaluating plausibility pertains to what David Clarke (1973) called ‘archaeological metaphysics’. I believe we are still in the process of developing a clear understanding of how we evaluate the archaeological data and interpretations embedded in arguments, that is, how and why we believe some to be plausible and others less so. This area of inquiry has largely been overshadowed by debates over processual versus postprocessual theory. However, as archaeology moves onward from this confrontation – or in the case of much of Europe – in parallel with it, it becomes clear that, when archaeologists of any theoretical persuasion make arguments about what went on in the past, the plausibility, or ‘truth claims’, of specific evidence is absolutely essential to the process. The intention of this essay is to focus on such issues, with respect to studying households, social relations, and gender.

Henry James repeats an incident which the writer Prosper Mériméé described, of how, while he was living with George Sand, he once opened his eyes, in the raw winter dawn, to see his companion in a dressing-gown, on her knees before the domestic hearth, a candle-stick beside her and her red madras round her head, making bravely, with her own hands the fire that was to enable her to sit down betimes to urgent pen and paper. The story represents him as having felt that the spectacle chilled his ardor and tried his taste, her appearance unfortunate, her occupation an inconsequence, and her industry a reproof, the result of all which was a lively irritation and an early rupture (James in Shapira (ed.) 1963:157-158). Adrienne Rich On Lies, Secrets, and Silence 1979, p. 37 Introduction Household maintenance activities are intrinsically social, involving various divisions of labor and supporting relationships among the members of domestic groups and the larger communities of which they are part. Moreover, only a little reflection will indicate that the small maintenance practices of daily life – making the morning cup of coffee or tea, collecting and reading the daily newspaper, or logging on to the online version, feeding a pet, feeding children – are themselves rituals, which make our quotidian lives feel safe and secure. As Bourdieu would have it, we structure our new day through these small acts that arise from the structures of everyday life as lived in our past. The dislocation of these small practices, their prevention or postponement, is one of the aims of terrorism, in its mission to destabilize the sense of security and normalcy people possess and thereby to discredit the power of states of ensure such conditions for their citizens. We see about us, regardless of pronouncements and grand gestures by heads of state, that the common person’s resistance to terrorism is to continue those everyday practices in the face of heightened risk in doing so.

It may be good to specify a bit more about my own theoretical leanings, and why I have felt the need to draw from several theoretical and methodological sources. I write and speak from the position of a zooarchaeologist with strong interests in building theory and method in my own subfield for studying social relations, including gender. If only because I view human subsistence as intrinsically social, I have long believed that animals and their use by people must be viewed in a social matrix. For some thirty-five years, I have analyzed faunas from African sites with early pastoral livestock (GiffordGonzalez et al. 1980; Gifford-Gonzalez 1998, 2000). I also have spent time with contemporary pastoralists, and have read widely on pastoral peoples in various settings. In the process, I have assessed a range of theoretical perspectives for their utility in thinking about the issues. My own personal experience compels me to view pastoralists in the context of regional ecosystems and the non-negotiable demands that the weather and the herd animals make upon these people. Likewise, my own experience compels me to see pastoral people as actors in complex political, economic, and ideological webs that both mediate and clash with environmental trends, and that structure their choices in managing their livestock, households, and social relationships. Finally, I have seen firsthand and read about how men and women negotiate

This paper is an essay, in the sense of ‘un ensayo’, an attempt, to explore conceptual linkages within archaeological method and theory. My attempt here begins with my fundamental belief that archaeological interpretation must be based in a verifiable body of evidence from which plausible interpretations are made. By ‘evidence’, I do not mean a positivist view of ‘facts speaking for themselves’, but rather, as Wylie (1992) has insisted, that arguments for the occurrence of past events, everything from the collapse of an economy to instances of spousal abuse, must be based upon the existence of interpretable evidence upon which there is some agreement among observers. 15

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES communities. The most banal and pervasive construal of zooarchaeology in the general archaeological literature is that it deals with a kind of ‘natural’ evidence, parallel to pollen rain and geological sediments, intrinsically nonartifactual and germane only to environment or subsistence. According to this time-honored model for archaeological interpretation, shared by members of culture-historic, processual, and postprocessual camps, only artifacts, architecture, and space-use can shed light on social and symbolic worlds past.

their lives from very different social positions in pastoralist groups, where age as well as gender delegates to a person specific rights, responsibilities, and limitations. Sometimes these theoretical worlds are remarkably compatible, for example, as when behavioral ecological and Marxist paradigms take a fundamentally economic approach. Both share a concern with the costs and benefits of efforts humans exert to achieve goals within a social context, albeit viewed from very different standpoints and calibrated with different currencies. Likewise, feminist and Marxist theory share preoccupations with power, ideology, and the position of the viewer/investigator, but their commitments sometimes diverge. These approaches occasionally contradict each other in troublesome but interesting ways. I believe that the friction itself is a context for defining in more detail what is needed to work productively with archaeological materials.

However, it has been stressed by several workshop participants (Gifford-Gonzalez 1993; Montón 2002, 2005) and by others (e. g. Claassen 1991; Hendon 1996; Moss 1993), to conceptualize household maintenance and subsistence activities as outside the social and the cultural realm alienates a central part of human endeavor from society and culture. Thirty years ago, in a very different register and from a very different perspective, feminist poet and essayist Adrienne Rich (1979), addressed the ideological underpinnings of a view of ‘significant’ history which excludes the activities normally assigned to women in Western cultures – childcare and maintenance activities. Archaeological frameworks that relegate faunal and floral evidence solely to ‘subsistence and environment' reveal a particular, and I would argue unconsciously androcentric, political economy of archaeology, which reflects the depreciation of such activities by Western societies as a whole.

However, when I resort to these bodies of theory, what is consistent is drawing expectations from them and assigning meaning to actual archaeological materials, with which to confront and assess those expectations. This process involves the application of what Clarke (1973) called ‘interpretive theory’ and is essential to all archaeological analysis. I believe this process is more complex than the term ‘middle range theory’ would imply. This essay seeks to explore possible links in a system of theory and method for understanding ‘maintenance activities’ and other socially mediated activities, and for addressing the difficult problem of how to study gender in the absence of cultural or historic continuities with textually documented groups. I am not here suggesting new theory and method. Rather, I am bringing into juxtaposition extant ones that thus far, to the best of my knowledge, have not been explicitly related to one another. My hope is that this thought-experiment might provoke others to consider the possibilities of multiple approaches to investigating this vital area of archaeological research.

In reality, the anthropological literature shows that animals are both food and, to paraphrase Lévi-Strauss (1963), food for thought. Animals nearly invariably possess high symbolic and economic value in human societies and are the foci of much human attention and energy. They are either highly desired as living creatures and food, or avoided as both (Tambiah 1969). Among human foragers, farmers, pastoralists, and members of complex societies, animals and their products are pivot points of conflict as well as a major means of mediating it. In documented human societies, access to animals and animal foods is intensely socially mediated, subject to economic manipulation and, often, asymmetrical access, according to age, gender, or social standing. Ingold (1980) has delineated the differences in the extension of humans’ allocative power over animals, depending upon whether they are wild, when power of allocation commences at the death of the animal, or domestic, when it begins at the birth of the animal. Given ethnographic documentation of wide variations in the gender of those holding control over animals in both contexts, we may imagine that in the past similar variability would have existed. For example, among the Navajo, women own and allocate living herds of sheep, and among the Nunamiut, once the carcasses of prey reach the residential camp, the senior women of households control the distribution of their parts (Waugespack 2002).

Zooarchaeology and Domestic Maintenance Activities A brief note is necessary here regarding my use of the word, ‘zooarchaeology’ This increasingly favored in U.K. (Mulville and Outram 2005), North America, and segments of Latin America (Mengoni Goñalons 2004), rather than ‘archaeozoology’, to refer to the archaeological study of animals remains. I am most accustomed to use this phrase, and I am in agreement with the argument, advanced by other Anglophone authors, that ‘zooarchaeology’ more clearly implies the archaeologically focused nature of our research with animal remains. In any case, I will use this term as interchangeable with the continental European ‘archaeozoology’ here.

For zooarchaeologists the problem is not whether animals are woven into human social relations in important ways, but how we might obtain information about their places

The use of animals obviously articulates with the physical and social reproduction of domestic groups and of 16

D. GIFFORD-GONZALEZ: THOUGHTS ON A METHOD FOR ZOOARCHAEOLOGICAL STUDY OF DAILY LIFE archaeology? This section discusses the first question, while reserving brief remarks on the second for a later section.

in past social contexts from the archaeological evidence. Although we can expect that differential control of animals, their effort, and their products existed in the past as it does now, specifying who exercised that control is not a simple matter of applying uniformitarian principles. What faces us, now that we have opened up the hitherto closed door to the kitchen and house yard, is how to write human history using the archaeological documents relevant to the structures of everyday life. The next section addresses some aspects of theory and method relevant to this endeavor. I seek to maintain a delicate balancing act in this essay. On the one hand, I will explore ways to push the limits in giving agency, and perhaps gender, to persons who lived in archaeologically documented pasts, while at the same seeking to remain conservative and self-conscious in the application of plausible ‘middle-range,’ interpretive theory.

Middle range theory, as defined by Binford (1977, 1981), focuses on specific, redundant sets of evidence that are considered ‘uniformitarian’ in the sense that they are produced by known processes which have consistent outcomes, or ‘signatures’, in many times and places. According to this perspective, middle range theory is essential for archaeologically addressing general level research questions, because it permits reliable assignment of meaning to archaeological evidence. Such meanings may implicate natural processes, human activities, or specific emergent processes, such as ‘population growth’. It can certainly be argued that, before Binford’s articulation of the distinction between middle range and general theory, archaeologists were implicitly or explicitly assigning meaning to patterning in archaeological evidence that readily falls under the heading of middle range theory. For example, many argued and more accepted that an increase in the number and/or size of sites per unit time in a specific area reflects population growth. However, explicit recognition and construction of middle range theory has permitted a more critical evaluation of the ‘terms of engagement’ of archaeological data with such generalizations, as well as specification of the relative strength of the interpretive linkages.

Practice Theory and Middle Range Theory: Is there a Relationship? Bourdieu’s theory of practice offers archaeologists valuable conceptual tools for understanding the material outcomes of everyday life that form the preponderance of archaeological deposits. The concept of habitus provides a way of understanding the redundancies, or ‘patterning’, of evidence in archaeological sites and samples as the outcomes of the activities of everyday life. We suppose that repetitions of acts, either as intentional, evocative gestures or as unselfconscious, everyday activities, create the traits ‘constantly recurring together’ (Childe 1929) that archaeologists have long studied.

Several researchers (e.g. Gifford-Gonzalez 1991) have stressed that middle range stipulations of meaning are most powerful when they include strong relational analogies between modern ‘source-side’ contexts (Wylie 1989) and the archaeological evidence. Animal bodies and their constituent elements have been viewed by Binford and many zooarchaeologists as supremely useful ‘uniformitarian materials’ (e.g. Gifford-Gonzalez 1981; Lyman 1987) that permit us to access the deep past because they have not altered in their physical properties over many millennia.

With specific reference to the archaeology of household and community maintenance activities, practice theory is especially useful. As Hendon (1996:46) puts it, ‘it is the practice [in Bourdieu’s … sense of the term] of the household – what people do as members of a domestic group and the meaning assigned to their actions – that is critical to an understanding of household dynamics’. An ever-growing number of archaeological studies have deployed aspects of Bourdieu’s work, while remaining attentive to the dynamic nature of structure and agency (Joyce 2003; Lightfoot et al. 1998; Stahl and Das Dores Cruz 1998). Several sophisticated archaeological discussions have reminded archaeologists that the structuration of everyday life is flexible, subject to improvisation, and symbolic renegotiations through the very practices ‘set up’ by the structures of prior experience (Dietler and Herbich 1998; Stahl 2001; Joyce and Lopiparo 2005).

Middle range theory encompasses evidence produced by non-human actors and processes, such as carnivore gnawing or subaerial weathering. However, the purview of middle range theory also includes evidence produced by people that are certainly the products of habitus. To give a zooarchaeological example, Binford’s detailed descriptions of Nunamiut butchery and meal preparation in Nunamiut Ethnoarchaeology (1978) describe repetitive actions which are in part driven by regularities in the anatomy of the prey species but which are also embedded in Nunamiut expectations and practices of everyday life. Thus, these are simultaneously functionally and culturally structured activities.

From my point of view, two issues emerge from this broad acceptance of practice theory as a conceptual tool for understanding archaeological sites and materials. These may be phrased as questions. First, what is the relation of the view of archaeological materials produced by habitus and the body of theory normally called middle range theory? Second, does the perspective on archaeological materials enabled by practice theory have implications for the construction of historic narratives in

Herein, I believe, is a linkage between these two disparately derived types of theory. Despite the widely different notions of agency in processual and postprocessual writings, the value of analogical sets is accepted, as much in Shanks and Hodder’s (1995) 17

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES ‘universal material processes’ as in Binford’s (e.g.1981) ‘uniformitarian relationships’, but the specific utility of these has seldom been highlighted through specific arguments. The plausible meanings given in middle range theory, the sequences of actions laid out in descriptions of chaînes opératoires (Lemonier 1986), in Schiffer’s (1987) ‘behavioral chains’ or in the analyses of sequences of actions at a greater temporal and landscape scale, chaînes de travail (Joyce and Lopiparo 2005) are ‘anchor points’ that allow archaeologists explore the more subjective aspects of culturally specific practices we encounter archaeologically. Why are these ‘anchor points’? Although all practice is culturally and psychologically embedded, some practices are more determined by the exigencies of the materials than others. Some materials – clays, metal ores, animal bodies, plant structures, etc. - require specific types and sequences of handling to produce desired outcomes. These determinative relationships of practice – when materials dictate human action to one extent or another, and sometimes to a specifiable degree – are important because they permit us to delimit other outcomes of habitual practice which are not, in any obvious way, driven by the same ‘uniformitarian’ constraints. In the process, what we can plausibly know about the deep past – the challenges any human being would face in handling certain materials, regardless of the details how they rise to those challenges – allow us to construct a more densely textured ‘lived past’ (cf. Stahl 2001:19-40).

FIGURE 1. Schematic showing the relationship of ‘uniformitarian’ analogical materials and processes to the ‘interpretive space’ of the study of the past, given present knowledge of material properties, chaînes opératoires, and other forms of relational analogies.

Interpretation is thus not dictated by uniformitarian relationships, it is enabled by them. Understanding that some such relations are the enacted outcomes of everyday practice further enriches our interpretation. From such a standpoint, as Joyce and Lopiparo (2005:369) state, ‘recording and analysis [of archaeological materials] are transformed from a description of products of unexamined action to sequences of action that can be recognized as traditional or innovative, intentional or unreflective’. Lacking the direct historic analogies mobilized by Joyce and Lopiparo in their Maya research, many archaeologists may feel themselves to be a considerable distance from the engagements with material and meanings. However, I believe that the synthetic study of the Vallès region of Catalonia by Colomer et al. (1998) represents a permutation of the strategy advocated here, in which various forms of evidence are first analyzed from a chaîne opératoire perspective, then monitored over time, when certain classes of evidence (settlements, levels of agricultural production) are seen to change radically, while others remain consistent from Early Bronze Age to Early Iron Age times. These diachronic trends are then interpreted with an approach that incorporates aspects of theories of production and gender.

One might, for example, seek to more closely stipulate the material parameters of each aspect of culinary practices, as outlined by Montón (2005), to specify the ‘material worlds’ inhabited by persons engaged in the procurement, processing, preparation, preservation, and presentation of foods. While no one can ever pretend to inhabit a culturally mediated world identical to that of ancient persons, some of the material considerations of the everyday lives they experienced can be appreciated in some detail. This opens our eyes to the possible trade-offs that members of households must have had to make in their quotidian existence, between satisfying basic demands of the human body, of the animals and plants under management, and of materials manipulated, on the one hand, and personal or corporate social projects requiring an investment of energy and time, on the other.

I stress that I am not advocating the use of the formal characteristics of productive activities to generalize about their social and economic associations, which would be a misuse of analogy. As has been stressed by Brumfiel (2006), it is entirely unwarranted to assume that a given activity, Mesoamerican weaving in her discussion, is either ‘timeless’ in its gender associations or always in the same structural position in a political economy. As Brumfiel elegantly demonstrates, the physical act of producing cloth has varied historically in terms of the relation of weavers to economic and political power, and weavers have used it differently in response to the varied demands of those structural contexts.

Figure 1 attempts to portray in simple form the ‘interpretive space’ enriched by inferences based upon such relational analogies. The denser such certifiably ‘middle-range’ sets of analogical relationships are, the richer is our sense of the practical environment in which past persons experienced their lives. Equipped with a web of such analogic relationships, we mobilize bodies of theory to explore the possibilities of the ‘interpretive space’ (Wylie 1985).

18

D. GIFFORD-GONZALEZ: THOUGHTS ON A METHOD FOR ZOOARCHAEOLOGICAL STUDY OF DAILY LIFE versus those in the documented past (Crown 2000; Habicht-Mauche 2000).

To sum up, middle range theory includes some types of evidence that can be assumed to also fall within the realm of habitus. The advantage that such ‘uniformitarian’ properties offer to archaeologists is simply that they help us to think creatively about the choices that past people would have had to make in coping with the demands of certain materials as they handled them, and to ask further questions of the evidence. What kinds of energetic demands, human, animal, other, does fabrication or use of a specific material impose? How many person-hours are needed? Can the energy and time invested be broken up into installments, or must they all be invested at one time? Is there a better or worse time of the year to do so? Is there an age below which persons cannot reliably or safely accomplish these tasks? These are only a few of many questions that implicate age, gender, the timing and social organization of labor, and so forth, which follow from thinking through chaînes opératoires.

For those of us dealing with times beyond the reach of ethnography, historic sources, visual representations, and other sources of meaning for archaeological sites and materials, the problem is how to explore gender without falling into the trap of essentializing gendered social roles and everyday practices. Conkey and Gero (1997) note that, after twenty years’ gender research in archaeology, some ‘archaeology of women’ has produced equally unjustified associations of women with certain occupations, activities, and social roles as produced by earlier, and equally suspect, androcentric interpretations. Assuming that women were always potters, weavers, and so forth flies in the face of a key precept of feminist theory: gender is social constructed and, as such, it is nearly infinitely mutable. This point was also raised by Díaz-Andreu (2005) concerning the assignment of tasks and activities to specific genders. Having just returned from a visit to cousins in a small village in northern Spain, it is all the more clear to me that ‘maintenance activities’ are assigned to both genders in complex ways in ‘traditional’ settings. Archaeologists’ common association of household maintenance with women may be more the product of a 20th Century European and American view of both ‘households’ and gender roles than a realistic one to impose on the past.

The Problem of Studying Gender in Deeper Time Archaeologists interested in the study of gender in the lived past encounter special challenges in the use of analogy. As Hendon (1996: 56-57) has put it: ‘Modeling the relationship between material culture and social construction, however, represents the most serious challenge for archaeology. Where should we look for analogies to help us interpret out archaeological remains? Archaeologists able to draw on visual imagery or historically specific written documentation have been readiest to talk about social actors such as male and female, adult and child, and to interpret the cultural system of value that informs domestic relations… The benefits of these sources are not unalloyed, however, and must not discourage archaeologists from dealing with issues of practice and meaning’.

Archaeologists who accept that all societies of anatomically modern humans structure their social lives by age and gender but who reject gender essentialism face a profound challenge. Rather than assume that any activity, even the cooking of daily meals, is an intrinsic property of one gender, we must treat any such assertion as a research question to be studied. The problem is how to proceed systematically, with the aim, to paraphrase Sarah Milledge Nelson (1998:287), not of ‘finding women’ but rather of ‘discussing gender’.

The richest and most detailed archaeological studies of gender have indeed been carried out within a ‘direct historic’ context, in which ethnographic, ethnohistoric, or other textual sources provide a rich web of associations of children, women, men, and, occasionally, other genders, such as among the Chumash Indians (e.g. Hollimon 2001) with specific social roles and occupations. Brumfiel’s (e.g. 1991) elegant study of changes in the nature of gendered work, and its impacts of household activities, in Huexotla under Aztec rule rests upon Spanish-sponsored accounts of such gendered labor, written only a century after the Aztec takeover of this outlying area. Stahl and Das Dores Cruz’s (1998) analysis changes in the lives of women and men in the Banda chieftancy as this polity was affected first by the Asante kingdom, and then by British colonial rule, makes artful use of evidence to demonstrate shifts in gender roles, yet it relies on many continuities of practice to make their well-grounded arguments for social change. Likewise, archaeologists of the southwestern United States have used colonial and ethnographic sources to apprehend what was different in ancient Puebloan gender relations,

In this connection, the approach that has been variously called ‘contextual’ (Hodder 1986), epistemological ‘tacking’ (Wylie 1993, 1989), ‘multiple frames of reference’ (Binford 2001, 1987), or simply, ‘multiple independent lines of evidence’ (Gifford-Gonzalez 1991; Lyman 1994) may be of special utility. To frame this as a question, are there lines of evidence that, independently of one another, point to similar associations of a given gender with an activity? Rather than assume these associations, we must stipulate them and make an evidence-based argument. A major but largely untapped source of ‘middle-range’ or uniformitarian lines of evidence pertaining to gender, and especially to female persons, is evolutionary and reproductive ecology. Simply because archaeologists who take a constructionist view of gender find reductionist behavioral ecological ‘explanations’ as applied by some archaeological colleagues to be distasteful, they should not ignore the rich potential of the original studies. Many such studies permit archaeologists to consider factors 19

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES most archaeologists have previously, a simplified narrative of ‘prime movers’, at the most general level, processes such as climate change or commodity market collapse, or – in the case of some postprocessual narratives – enduring cultural mindsets that work themselves through human agents over long spans of time? Is history as qualified in our present archaeological analyses still about large-scale causes? Is it ‘thick description’ at the local level? What is its narrative structure? What does ‘continuity’ in material practices mean? Is it actively produced or unconsciously enacted? Certainly, one probably does not wish to write narratives that resemble Andy Warhol’s film of the Empire State Building through twenty-four hours, the film itself being twenty-four hours long. However, how do we sort out the relations of describing everyday practice and developing narrative?

affecting women’s lives, such as the positive and negative sides of increasing numbers of children on childcare, time allocation, and work schedules in different of subsistence economies (e.g. Bird and Bird 2005, 2000; Homewood and Rogers 1991; Kramer 2004; Vitzhum 1994; Wienpahl 1984). Because the day has twenty-four hours, because specific tasks (viz. chaîne opératoire) take time, because a pregnancy lasts nine months, because children need a minimal level of nutrition to grow and thrive, because certain types of food can only be consumed if intensively processed and cooked, this literature on workload, reproduction, and household constitution can provide archaeologists with at least general uniformitarian parameters for studying the lives of children, women, and men in past times. My advocacy that archaeologists seriously consider this literature should in no way be interpreted as a statement that, for women, ‘biology is destiny’. The ethnographic and historical literature show that women negotiate the physiological constraints of childbearing and childrearing quite variably in different societies, in concert with a wider circle of cooperating persons. However, archaeologists must appreciate these arrangements as well as energetic and workload demands, to construct textured narratives of change or continuity at the household and community level.

Conclusion On the surface, the study of maintenance activities appears to be a straightforward enterprise. Archaeological animal bones, plant remains, hearths, broken pots, discarded tools for processing daily meals and keeping the household abound, as sometimes does architecture. However, even the term ‘household’ should be qualified and used with circumspection (cf. Hendon 1996; Wilk 1989; Yanagisako 1979). Likewise, facile linking of specific tasks with age and gender classes may say more about modern cultural contexts than it does about the lives of the ancient people.

Agency, Narrative Structure, and an Archaeology of Everyday Life Having raised a number of issues of method and theory already, I will only lightly touch on one final topic that I must confess is not an area of expertise for me, but one of considerable concern. This is the implications of notions of agency grounded in practice theory for writing archaeological narratives. As stressed by Joyce and Lopiparo (2005), many archaeological narratives now focus at multiple scales, beginning with the individual or the household and moving outward or vice-versa. Such ‘multiscalar’ approaches acknowledge that in human affairs, causality - both that which supports continuity in practices and that which encourages change - may reside at any of several levels of scale (Joyce and Lopiparo 2005; Lightfoot et al. 1998). Toward the end of his life, James Deetz noted that only by studying a second colonial enterprise in South Africa, separated by time as well as space from the North American colonies he had initially researched, did he apprehend the role of globalscale processes in both contexts (Deetz and Scott 1995).

Archaeologists lacking direct historic analogies based on documentary sources, representations, and the like confront special challenges, but they are also usually more aware of the dangers of over-extended and simplistic formal analogies. The problem of imputing gender to specific activities, chaínes opératoires, or social roles is especially difficult in situations that lack cultural continuities with documented groups. I have argued that the conceptual and methodological tools exist for approaching such challenges in the study of social relations in the past. I have advocated constructing research frameworks that acknowledge that humans’ maintenance activities are structured within habitual yet variable practices, and that some of these involve materials that respond to manipulation in uniformitarian ways. Moreover, I have endorsed the view that aspects of human physiology structure human action but that, far from biology uniformly dictating destiny, these constraints are negotiated variably in different societies. When practiced from a critically self-conscious viewpoint, I think the interpretive moves outlined here can be considered a form of the archaeological hermeneutic advocated by Hodder (1991). The more or less uniformitarian aspects of materials and biology serve as the guarantors of the ‘guarded objectivity’ Hodder delineates as part of the self-conscious process of interpretation. This process is precisely the terrain

A metaphysical question, in David Clarke’s (1973) sense of the term, emerges: what constitutes a satisfying narrative, once one acknowledges that so much archaeological evidence is constituted by repeated acts of quotidian living? In developing our multiscalar narratives, does one skip over the sameness and look for disjunctures, because that is what history has been about, traditionally? Does one feature the micro-scale account of past lives and underplay the effects of regional or globalscale processes on local lives? Does one privilege, as 20

D. GIFFORD-GONZALEZ: THOUGHTS ON A METHOD FOR ZOOARCHAEOLOGICAL STUDY OF DAILY LIFE Binford, L. R., 2001, Constructing Frames of Reference: An Analytical Method for Archaeological Theory Building Using Hunter-Gatherer and Environmental Data Sets (Berkeley: University of California Press). Bird, D. W. and Bird, R. B., 2000, “The ethnoarchaeology of juvenile foragers: shellfishing strategies among Meriam children (Eastern Torres Strait)”, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 19, pp. 461-476.

described by Wylie in her 1992 discussion of the role of ‘evidential constraints’ in archaeological interpretation. I have also suggested that, as archaeologists work through these issues, they attend to the implications of approaches focused on ‘the structures of everyday life’ (Braudel 1981) for the nature of historical narrative, as has Stahl (2001, 1999). As a final point, I suggest that, in attending to the role and study of maintenance activities, it is well to recall the other part of Braudel’s book title, ‘le possible et l’impossible’. By this, and departing from Braudel’s original meaning, I refer to archaeologists and their projects. When exploring the possibilities of studying the lived past, we must honestly accept ‘the limits of the possible’ with archaeological data. I do not advocate a defeatist position, but rather echo the point that Bruce Trigger raised in several chapters of his recent book (2006): if the information needed to answer a certain question is lacking, archaeologists should admit the problem and move on to other questions that they can answer. As we approach these challenges, may we have the insight and the courage to do so.

Bird, D. W. and Bird, R. B., 2005, “Martu children’s hunting strategies in the Western Desert, Australia”, in M. Lamb and B. Hewlet (eds) Hunter-gatherer Childhoods: Evolutionary, Developmental, & Cultural Perspectives, (New Brunswick, N.J, Aldine), pp. 129146. Braudel, F., 1981, The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible (New York: Harper & Row). Brumfiel, E. M., 1991, “Weaving and cooking: women’s production in Aztec Mexico”, in J. Gero and M. Conkey (eds) Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehistory, (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 224-251. Brumfiel, E. M., 2006, “Cloth, gender, continuity, and change: fabricating unity in anthropology”, American Anthropologist 108, pp. 862-877.

Acknowledgments It was an honor to be asked to participate in a conversation among distinguished scholars of several intellectual traditions in the workshop, ‘Interpreting household practices: reflections on the social and cultural roles of maintenance activities’, and I wish to thank the organizers Sandra Montón Subías, Paloma Gonzalez Marcén, and Marina Picazo Gurina, as well as the sponsors of the event for their generous invitation. I thank as well all participants for a fascinating and enjoyable set of sessions. I am especially grateful to Liz Brumfiel for suggesting that I read her paper on weaving and also to Margarita Sánchez Romero for sending me her articles and book, Arqueología y Género, after the conference.

Claasen, C. P., 1991, “Gender, shellfishing, and the Shell Mound Archaic”, in J. Gero and M. Conkey (eds) Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehistory, (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 276-300. Clarke, D. L., 1973, “Archaeology: loss of innocence”, Antiquity 47, pp.6-18. Colomer, L., González-Marcén, P., and Montón, S., 1998, “Maintenance activities, technological knowledge and consumption patterns: a view of northeast Iberia (2000-500 Cal BC)”, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 11, pp 53-80.

References

Conkey, M. W. and Gero, J. M., 1997, “Programme to practice: gender and feminism in archaeology”, Annual Review of Anthropology 26, pp. 411-437.

Binford, L. R., 1977, For Theory Building in Archaeology: Essays on Faunal Remains, Aquatic Resources, Spatial Analysis, and Systemic Modeling (New York: Academic Press).

Crown, P. L., (ed.) 2000, Women and Men in the Prehispanic Southwest: Labor, Power & Prestige (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press).

Binford, L. R., 1978, Nunamiut Ethnoarchaeology (New York: Academic Press).

Deetz, J. and Scott, P., 1995, “Documents, historiography, and material culture in historical archaeology” in The Written and the Wrought: Complementary Sources in Historical Anthropology. Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers 79, pp.110-115.

Binford, L. R., 1981, Bones: Ancient Men and Modern Myths (New York: Academic Press). Binford, L. R., 1987, “Researching ambiguity: frames of reference and site structure”, in L. R. Binford (ed.) Method and Theory for Area Research. An Ethnoarchaeological Approach. (New York: Columbia University Press), pp. 448-512.

Díaz-Andreu, M., 2005, “Género y arqueología: una nueva síntesis”, in M. Sánchez-Romero (ed.) Arqueología y Género, (Granada: Universidad de Granada).

21

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES Homewood, K. M. and Rogers, W. A., 1991, Maasailand Ecology. Pastoralist Development and Wildlife Conservation in Ngorongoro, Tanzania, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Dietler, M. and Herbich, I., 1998, “Habitus, techniques, style: an integrated approach to the social understanding of material culture and boundaries”, in M. T. Stark (ed.) The Archaeology of Social Boundaries, (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press), pp. 232-263.

Ingold, T., 1980, Hunters, Pastoralists, and Ranchers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Gifford, D. P., 1981, “Taphonomy and paleoecology: A critical review of archaeology’s sister disciplines”, in M. Schiffer (ed.) Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, (San Francisco: Academic Press), pp. 365-438.

James, H., 1963, “Notes on novelists”, in M. Shapira (ed.), Selected Literary Criticism of Henry James, (London: Heinemann).

Gifford, D. P., Isaac, G. L., Nelson, C. M. 1980, “Evidence for predation and pastoralism at Prolonged Drift, a Pastoral Neolithic site in Kenya”, Azania 15, pp. 57-108.

Joyce, R. A., 2003, “Making something of herself: embodiment in life and death at Playa de los Muertos, Honduras”, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 13, pp. 248-261.

Gifford-Gonzalez, D., 1991, “Bones are not enough: analogues, knowledge, and interpretive strategies in zooarchaeology”, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 10, pp. 215-254.

Joyce, R. A. and Lopiparo, J., 2005, “PostScript: doing agency in archaeology”, Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 12, pp. 365-374.

Gifford-Gonzalez, D., 1993, “Gaps in zooarchaeological analyses of butchery. Is gender an issue?”, in J. Hudson (ed.) From Bones to Behavior: Ethnoarchaeological and Experimental Contributions to the Interpretation of Faunal Remains, (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press), pp. 181-199.

Kramer, K. L., 2004, “Reconsidering the cost of childbearing: the timing of children’s helping behavior across the life cycle of Maya families”, Research in Economic Anthropology 23, pp. 335-353. Lemonnier, P., 1986, “The study of material culture today: Toward an anthropology of technical systems”, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 5, pp. 147-186.

Gifford-Gonzalez, D., 1998, “Early pastoralists in East Africa: ecological and social dimensions”, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 17, pp. 166-200.

Lévi-Strauss, C., 1963, Totemism (Boston: Beacon Press).

Gifford-Gonzalez, D., 2000, “Animal disease challenges to the emergence of pastoralism in sub-Saharan Africa”, African Archaeological Review 18, pp. 95-139.

Lightfoot, K.G., Martínez, A. and Schiff, A.M., 1998, “Daily practice and material culture in pluralistic social settings: an archaeological study of culture change and persistence from Fort Ross, California”, American Antiquity 63, pp. 199-222.

Habicht-Mauche, J. A., 2000, “Pottery, food, hides, and women: labor, production, and exchange across the protohistoric Plains-Pueblo frontier”, in M. Hegmon (ed.) Archaeology of Regional Interaction: Religion, Warfare, and Exchange across the American Southwest and Beyond. (Boulder: University Press of Colorado), pp. 209-231.

Lyman, R. L., 1987, “Zooarchaeology and taphonomy: a general consideration”, Journal of Ethnobiology 7, pp. 93-117. Lyman, R. L., 1994, Vertebrate Taphonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Hendon, J. A., 1996, “Archaeological approaches to the organization of domestic labor: household practice and domestic relations”, Annual Review of Anthropology 25, pp. 45-63.

Mengoni Goñalons, G. L., 2004, “Introduction: An overview of South American zooarchaeology”, in G.L. Mengoni Goñalons (ed.) Zooarchaeology of South America, BAR International Series 1298, pp. 1-9.

Hodder, I., 1986, Reading the Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Montón, S., 2002, “Cooking in zooarchaeology: is this issue still raw?”, in P. Miracle and N. Milner (eds) Consuming Passions and Patterns of Consumption, (Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research), pp. 7-15.

Hodder, I., 1991, “Interpretive archaeology and its role”, American Antiquity 56, pp. 7-18. Hollimon, S. E., 2001, “Death, gender, and the Chumash peoples: mourning ceremonialism as an integrative mechanism”, Social Memory, Identity, and Death: Anthropological Perspectives on Mortuary Rituals, Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 10, pp 41-55.

Montón, S., 2005, “Las prácticas de alimentación: cocina y arqueología”, in M. Sánchez-Romero (ed.) Arqueología y Género, (Granada: Universidad de Granada)

22

D. GIFFORD-GONZALEZ: THOUGHTS ON A METHOD FOR ZOOARCHAEOLOGICAL STUDY OF DAILY LIFE Wienpahl, J., 1984, “Women’s roles in livestock production among the Turkana of Kenya”, Research in Economic Anthropology 6, pp. 193-215. Wilk, R. R., 1989, (ed), Household Economy: Reconsidering the Domestic Mode of Production (Boulder: Westview Press).

Moss, M. L., 1993, “Shellfish, gender, and status on the Northwest Coast: reconciling archaeological, ethnographic, and ethnohistorical records”, American Anthropologist 95, pp. 631-652. Mulville, J. and Outram, A., 2005, (eds), The Zooarchaeology of Fats, Oils, Milk and Dairying. Proceedings of the 9th Conference of the International Council of Archaeozoology, Durham, August, 2002 (Oxford: Oxbow Books).

Wylie, A., 1985, “The reaction against analogy”, Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 8, pp. 63-111.

Nelson, S. M., 1998, “Reflections on gender studies in African and Asian archaeology”, in S. Kent (ed.) Gender in African Prehistory, (Walnut Creek: Altamira Press), pp. 285-294.

Wylie, A., 1989, “Archaeological cables and tacking: the implications for practice for Bernstein’s ‘Options beyond objectivism and relativism”, Philosophy of Social Science 19, pp.1-18.

Rich, A. 1979, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence. Selected Prose 1966-1978 (New York: Norton).

Wylie, A., 1992, “The interplay of evidential constraints and political interests: recent archaeological research on gender”, American Anthropologist 57, pp. 15-35.

Schiffer, M. B., 1987, Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record (Albuquerque NM: University of New Mexico Press).

Wylie, A., 1993, “A proliferation of new archaeologies”, in N. Yoffee and A. Sherratt (eds) Archaeological Theory: Who Sets the Agenda, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 20-26.

Shanks, M. and Hodder, I., 1995, “Processual, postprocessual, and interpretive archaeologies”, in M. Shanks et al. (eds) Interpreting archaeology: finding meaning in the past, (New York: Routledge), pp. 3-33.

Yanagisako, S. J., 1979, “Family and household: the analysis of domestic groups”, Annual Review of Anthropology 8, pp. 61-205.

Stahl, A. B., 1999, “Perceiving variability in time and space: the evolutionary mapping of African societies”. in S. Keech McIntosh (ed.) Beyond Chiefdoms: Pathways to Complexity in Africa, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 39-55. Stahl, A. B., 2001, Making History in Banda (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Stahl, A. B. and Das Dores Cruz, M., 1998, “Men and women in a market economy: gender and craft production in West-Central Ghana c 1775-1995”, in S. Kent (ed.) Gender in African Prehistory, (Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press), pp. 205-226. Tambiah, S. J., 1969, “Animals are good to think and good to prohibit”, Ethnology 8, pp. 423-459. Trigger, B. G., 2006, A History of Archaeological Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Vitzthum, V., 1994, “Causes and consequences of heterogeneity in infant feeding practices among indigenous Andean women”, in K.L Campbell and J.W. Wood (eds) Human Reproductive Ecology: Interactions of Environment, Fertility, and Behavior, (New York: New York Academy of Sciences), pp. 221-224. Waugespack, N., 2002, “Caribou sharing and storage: refitting the Palagana Site”, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 21, pp. 396-417.

23

4. The technics of the American home Francesca Bray Department of Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh, U.K. butter-churning in India, for example, is revealed as an indispensable daily renewal of the cosmic order (Mahias 2002).

Introduction Emphasizing the importance of everyday technologies in embodying values and social relations, in earlier research on late imperial China I proposed the concept of gynotechnics, a set of significant everyday technologies that together defined women’s roles and activities, and translated moral and social principles into a web of material forms and bodily practices. Now I am trying to develop similar historical-anthropological approaches to everyday domestic technologies in twenty-first century California, as a way to explore the evolving impact of globalization. These technologies underpin the American Way of Life and its values, while tying American households into global chains of production and consumption. I am especially interested in exploring in how technology mediates the moral contradictions between mass-consumer power and the exploitation of producers.

By significant technologies, then, I denoted material technologies that were represented as important within the discourses of that society, or that could be shown to play a key role in embodying the values or achieving the goals of some or all of its members. From this perspective the criteria for judging the success or efficiency of technologies are quite different. Two arguments were at the core of my book on gynotechnics in China. The first (commonplace now in material culture studies, but at that point only rather schematically explored within the history of technology) is that technology is a form of cultural expression, and as such plays a key role in the creation and transmission of ideology and in the evolution of social formations. The second (in tune with several path-breaking works by feminist sociologists and historians of technology organised around studies of “the domestication of technology”, such as Mackenzie and Wajcman 1985; Cockburn and Ormrod 1993; Lie and Sørensen 1996) is that the technologies that define women’s place and roles are not marginal but integral to these historical processes.

Using the past to serve the present? I developed the concept of significant technologies as a tool to critique conventional histories of technology, especially comparative histories, which usually focus on the Big Technologies that have shaped the emergence of industrial capitalism. This is a fine game for many historians of the West: seen from this perspective their region’s technologies must have been successful, since they culminated in the Industrial Revolution, the science of engineering and the building of the modern world as we know it. It’s not so good for any other region, which by comparison emerges as a “blocked” or “involutionary system”, or quite simply as a failure. It was not so good for non-whites or non-males either, both of whom were largely excluded from any active part in such narratives. (Recently, of course, feminist and post-colonialist historians of technology have worked hard to remedy this shortsightedness; Gero and Conkey 1991; Stanley 1993; Hafter 1995; and Lerman, Mohun and Oldenziel 1997 are among the key works that catalysed the new approaches.) But as a historian of China it was not simply the damning comparisons that irritated me. More to the point, such a perspective seemed to me to ignore the huge importance that technology actually played in shaping Chinese civilisation. It seemed to me that anthropological (or archaeological) approaches had much more to offer than those of the history of technology for analysing the true roles of technology within a given society, for the anthropologies tries to identify the techniques considered important within the culture, and pays as much attention to the social and symbolic efficacy of a technique as to its material efficiency. Thus the humble female task of

Like any other cultural expression, technology both divides and unites; the forms it takes seldom hold the same meaning for all, and struggles over the forms and meanings of technology are as significant for cultural as for economic history. Changes in technology create social tensions, requiring a reconfiguration or renegotiation of such complex, interlocking patterns of difference as class or gender relations. But at the same time technology is a powerful force for cultural stability, since it creates material forms that embody shared values and beliefs, tying people into orthodoxy through their everyday practices. Such embodied forms of knowledge are by their nature polysemic and flexible, and may therefore convey values and ideas even more powerfully than words or texts. Technology is not interesting or successful only when it produces social or epistemological ruptures; though the energy generated by changes in technology is by nature, as Marx noted, disruptive, it may be successfully contained and channeled. No less energy goes into continuity and cohesion than into revolution, and no less careful explanation is required. To those acquainted only with stereotypical images of “traditional” Chinese women as dependent victims of patriarchy cut off from the significant male stage, it may 25

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES production of well-educated people essential to the civil and cosmological order). By adducing cross-cutting perspectives, the gynotechnic analysis highlighted women and aspects of femininity but did not yield a monolithic or static image. Instead it emphasised ambivalences, contradictions, inequalities, transitions and trends. It also demonstrated how closely family routines and affairs of state were intertwined.

seem paradoxical to claim that a “gynotechics”, a focus on “technologies of femininity”, could illuminate the complex processes by which Chinese society met the challenges of the late imperial period – including the tripling of the population; rebellions and conquests; a “print revolution”; and the continuous development of what was for several centuries the world’s most powerful manufacturing economy. This, however, is to misunderstand the nature of Chinese domesticity and how inner and outer worlds related in Chinese thought and practice. Gender was an absolutely fundamental organizing principle in the social structure of late imperial China, as of any other society. As amply reflected in the texts, institutions and social practices of the era, the core social bond was that between husband and wife, ideally represented as an active partnership in which the wife, through her work in the inner quarters, contributed material, social and moral goods to the world outside as well as to her family. Chinese social theory did not draw a line between private and public spheres, but held explicitly that the household was at one end of a political and moral continuum, at the other end of which was the state. Women were thus closely tied into the polity, both by the goods they contributed and by their own behaviour - the roots of a well-ordered state were planted in the inner chambers.

The success of the Chinese gynotechnics project convinced me that an analogous study of the micro- and macro-politics of domestic technologies in today’s California would be very rewarding. For several years previous to my move earlier this year to Edinburgh I taught an anthropology undergraduate class, first at UCLA and then at UCSB, entitled “Technology and culture”. In it I explored and developed ideas about the politics of everyday technologies in California. Most students were first surprised, then intrigued and engaged by the notion that everyday objects and familiar material routines “have politics”, or that one can usefully think of photography, or bathroom design, or even the genetic modification of foods, as “family technologies”. I was pleased to find that it was not only dedicated anthropology majors who entered into my enthusiasms: those who were specialising in development or global studies also found the approach a useful counterpoint to more familiar analyses of world systems. What follows is a sketch of work in progress, a project still at the draft stage, based on the experiences of several years living a Californian brand of domesticity myself, on materials collected myself or donated by kindly students and friends, and on the many insights I was offered by the sharp-sighted, creative and generous students, neighbours and friends with whom it was my pleasure and privilege to work during my years in California.

The technologies I identified as most significant for the formation of gender relations in late imperial China included technologies of space (the construction and spatial practices of the house), of work (the production of textiles, which was iconically female work in premodern China yet became increasingly masculinised throughout this period), and of reproduction (the nexus of medical, social and legal techniques through which reproductive strategies were pursued). This set of technologies, I argued, not only defined women’s lives, but also provided the basis for a distinctively Chinese ideology of social order. A combined analysis of these technical domains threw new light not only on evolving relations between women and men in late imperial China, but also on evolving relations between women and the state, and on female hierarchies of class, generation or status. Consideration of historical developments in one technology alone (for example the new gender divisions of labour in the textile industry that accompanied the introduction of cotton and the commercialisation of production) might have suggested a trend in one direction (the progressive marginalisation of women in commercial textile production leading to a degradation of their social status). But if the technologies of commodity production are analysed as one element in an interactive set, one can show how those changes may be absorbed , counterbalanced or reinforced in another technological domain (the spread throughout the lower social ranks of elite gendered spatial practices compensated for the ruptures in work-defined gender complementarity, while trends in medical and legal discourses both contributed to shifting the political centre of gravity of the wifely role from work to motherhood, from the production of the material goods essential to the state economy, to the

What really counts? Do the concepts of significant technologies or gynotechnics really translate usefully into the contemporary world? They certainly suggest some mischievous alternatives to the usual tales told about technology in our society. A Californian asked to name the most significant technology in the world today would probably fix on the computer industry or biotechnology, space capsules or nanotechnology. Yet from the viewpoint of an anthropologist the flush toilet immediately suggests itself as the technological object that best encapsulates the modern American (or indeed Western European) way of being-in-the-world (see also Dutton, Seth and Gandhi 2002). It keeps us clean and fragrant and spares us all direct confrontation with the unpleasant by-products of our consumption. Defecation is taken for granted as the most private of activities, yet individual privacy depends on a vast infrastructure of water and sewage networks maintained at huge public cost. Male and female have separate public toilets with different hardware, different toilet practices – and (as quickly became apparent in seminar discussions) very different views of how toilets need to be cleaned. When 26

F. BRAY: THE TECHNICS OF THE AMERICAN HOME Critics of the high-tech lifestyle often argue that it is unsustainable. Yet however negative its long-term effects on environment and natural resources or on global equity might be, I would argue that in political, social and cultural terms it is highly cohesive and sustainable. One reason is that one very influential group of actors both in global networks of production and consumption and in the national politics of the world’s greatest powers, namely middle-class consumers, experience their hightech domestic life not just as efficient but as personally fulfilling, democratic, and an essential tool-kit for maintaining American family values. American presidents are able to declare that “the American Way of Life is non-negotiable” (first stated by President George H. Bush at the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Summit on the Environment, and reiterated by Dick Cheney shortly after the New York terrorist attacks of 9/11) only because a goodly proportion of American citizens are convinced through daily experience that their lifestyle is not just comfortable, not just enviable, but also inherently virtuous.

Americans venture abroad the perceived inadequacy of foreign toilets (German toilet bowls designed to allow inspection of the results, or Japanese Toto toilets that draw attention to unmentionable body parts by washing and blow-drying them) reaffirms a sense of civilisational superiority. American travel stores are full of devices and booklets for coping with foreign toilets or lack thereof, and one nationally syndicated radio series devoted ten minutes each week to horror-filled anecdotes of “going abroad”. A technological history of modern American society that took the bathroom as its key focus would not invalidate the interpretations that studies of electrification or the rocket industry suggest, yet I contend that it would tell us as much if not more about ordinary, everyday life and people’s deep-rooted but seldom examined values. Technology, values and worldview are inseparably interwoven in American domestic life. For its beneficiaries, and for its admirers around the world, this high-tech lifestyle intertwines efficiency and democracy, innovation and affluence, family values and independence. For young people having the newest technological gear means being cool, connected and free. For their parents it signifies comfort, convenience, responsibility, and the high-tech efficiency needed to lead a modern and productive social and professional life. For old people it means continued independence and mobility, new devices to overcome the physical challenges of ageing, better control over their lives than their grandparents ever dreamed of and new ways to keep in touch with their children and grandchildren even if they live thousands of miles away.

If we wish to understand the full strength and resilience of such views at the macro-political level, in my opinion we need to trace them to the level of the micro-politics of everyday life, in particular to the material expression of values through mundane household routines. If we look at how technical “luxuries” make the transition into “necessities”, for example, we observe that typically a new technology designed for business, for industry, or even for the military, really starts to earn its keep once it is “domesticated”, once its potential as a “family technology” is recognised. It then becomes incorporated into a repertory of technical devices and practices that are regarded as essential to the well-being and security of the family – and women, as the chief purchasers of domestic goods and guardians of family values, are frequently the key actors in these processes of appropriation. Mothers buy Humvees (originally developed as an armoured vehicle) as defensive weapons to protect their children from injury. They purchase cell-phones (originally targeted at the business community) for every family member because they feel the need to be in touch with their children at all times.

The comforts, efficiency and convenience of high-tech American homes are the envy of millions of people around the world. Economists and governments encourage the adoption of this high-tech lifestyle and its material apparatus as a vehicle of economic growth and as a catalyst for the development of modern and democratic values (Fehérváry 2002). With its emphasis on labour-saving devices and ever more effortless access to goods and to other people, the high-tech lifestyle is indeed experienced by its beneficiaries as personally liberating and fulfilling, and in historical terms, its development in the United States was instrumental in bringing the majority of wage-earners into the affluent middle-class majority. If we look at the global networks of production and supply upon which the high-tech home depends, however, it is easy to see that the convenience, abundance and affordability that are taken for granted in a typical middle-class household in the United States (and increasingly in other affluent countries like the U.K., France or Japan) often translate into negative effects at other points of the network, including exploitation and insecurity for producers and suppliers. Yet very few ordinary people in the United States make such connections – one contributing factor being, I would argue, the ever-increasing efficiency of technologies that cut down consumer awareness of the conditions of production (air-freighting, bar-codes, on-line shopping, plastic-wrapped de-boned meat, etc).

Technological innovations from hip replacements to IVF (In Vitro Fertilisation) or nanotechnology undoubtedly drive the economy forward. They also propel us into the future by offering us the possibility of formerly unimaginable modes of being – an aspect which has attracted much attention from social scientists and especially from anthropologists (e.g. Turkle 1995; Franklin 2003). Yet the forms in which technological innovations are domesticated suggests that ordinary people value them most, not for the radical transformations of human experience and identity that they offer, but rather for the possibilities of giving fuller expression to existing values and relationships.

27

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES maternal responsibility, as are organising and cooking Thanksgiving dinner.

The Californian mother’s technological kit Sometimes I would assign my students to select a social role and then identify and discuss the technological kit required to fulfil the role, as suggested by advertisements, interviews, etc. Several of my students chose to write on motherhood. Among the wide range of specialised technical artefacts targeted at the mothers of infants, young children or teenagers that they identified were: breast-pumps; Huggies; convenience foods (always presented as quick to prepare yet requiring a small personal touch like chopped parsley “to show you care”); hygienic wipes for kitchen counters; credit cards; cars marketed as reliable, capacious and safe; family cellphone programmes; software for controlling access to the Internet; computers and software sold as educational tools; computers, software and printers sold as organisers for family photos.

As a concise illustration of how new technologies may be enrolled to reinforce “traditional” family ideals and values, I shall briefly discuss some of the new information and communications technologies that have so rapidly and thoroughly permeated domestic life. There have been numerous studies recently of the effects of the new communications technologies in the private sphere, looking at how people use them to connect into global networks for political or economic purposes (Castells 1996; Harvey 1996; Freeman 2000), to cultivate new circles of solidarity or to create and project new images of the self/selves through webpages and chatrooms (e.g. Rabinow 1996; Stone 1991; Turkle 1995). My primary interest, however, is in how new technologies are adopted and adapted by women to maintain the domestic group and its networks: keeping in touch with family and friends, managing household activities; and creating and circulating family images and narratives (for example the Christmas family letter and photo, the wedding album, or contemporary versions of the holiday snaps).

These peripherals, I would add, all plug into the indispensable motherboard of the physical house, which serves – in California as elsewhere – as a device for plumbing its occupants into the utilities. It also defines spaces designed for family activities and well-being: a master-bedroom for the parents and separate, private, lockable rooms for each child; ideally, a bathroom apiece; a kitchen – invariably seen as the warm heart of family life even if the toaster and the microwave see more use than the oven; somewhere to do laundry; a den for relaxing together as a family; a study with a computer where household management is done. Homeless mothers can’t fulfil their maternal roles adequately: they can’t cook for their children or do their laundry properly, nor can they provide them with the cheap cell-phone programs or the Internet access they need to connect with friends and to further their education. Women who rent a home can (literally) plug their children into these essential networks, but in California home-owners operate at considerable advantage when it comes to providing all the “Stuff” that a family needs, because a house, among its many other technical functions, is a machine for making money, bringing the owner generous tax benefits on the mortgage and serving as collateral for credit, especially refinancing.

These days it is hard to run a family without a computer. Banks and phone companies urge clients to conduct their transactions online. Internet shopping has taken off. More and more people are booking travel tickets, hotel rooms and theatre seats by internet, and the Internal Revenue Service has gone online. PCs bought for domestic use usually come equipped with home-management software. The digital divide between wired and unwired Americans, those who get online rebates, advice and information and those who do not, is an increasing concern. IT companies target older people (often imagined as unable to “get” computers) with special equipment that will allow them just to write e-mail, or to print out photos without using a computer. “Mothers”, conceived as somehow cut off from normal computer use – usually by virtue of being marooned in the kitchen, perhaps struggling to shovel peas into a baby’s mouth, or hunting around among all the photos and shopping lists on the fridge door for this week’s list of soccer practice and ballet classes to update – are often targeted by electronics companies with special devices that will provide convenient and simple online access. These dedicated devices for women seldom seem to catch on, however. I would suggest this is because any woman who uses IT at all for family purposes quickly finds that she wishes or needs to use a whole spectrum of digitalised services.

The set of significant technologies that I have chosen as the organising framework for my project on Californian gynotechnics comprises four technical domains characteristic of domesticity in any society, which despite all the changes in gender relations in US society are still generally coded female: (1) the house itself; (2) the preparation of food; (3) communicating with and about the family; and (4) keeping spaces and people clean and tidy. None of these material domains or sets of activities is unequivocally female, but in any mixed household the women are still more likely than the men to be responsible for them, whether it be house-hunting, choosing new curtains, stocking the fridge or keeping the family photo album up to date. Any eight-year-old can work a washing machine, but laundry is still notoriously a

It is interesting to note that although they value the internet for informational and educational purposes, and for shopping (including such novel forms as eBay), the majority of Americans think of the internet as useful primarily for allowing e-mail communications between family (Lenhart 2003). Communication can of course involve the transfer of information, but another dimension that is equally important is its role as a form of mutual grooming, a medium for expressing affection, 28

F. BRAY: THE TECHNICS OF THE AMERICAN HOME industry offers them a host of special products to maintain, update and renew these albums – from scannerprinters that will refresh old photos, to software for organising the on-line collection.

closeness and reassurance (e.g. Dunbar 1996). With impressive speed, people have become dependent upon the constant availability to family and friends that cellphones offer. Rather than a phone call at work signalling that something serious is wrong, now it is the absence of a call that suggests catastrophe. Recognizing this new need for continuous family input, many businesses are now allowing their employees to combine personal with professional instant messaging at work.

This by no means exhausts the wide range of uses of information and communications technologies that are now standard techniques of motherly responsibility. Providing on-line access to children for educational purposes; selecting parental control software to make sure the children don’t download pornography when they should be studying; purchasing e-Books that allow a parent or teacher to monitor how the child is working her way through the text; consulting on-line medical sites or chat-pages for information about health and development, or for support in case of sickness – all are now an everyday component of a middle-class mother’s life, and these new and ever-growing needs constitute a powerful vector of economic growth.

The telephone and home computer, e-mail and web access, digital cameras and colour printers are indispensable tools not only for the immediate instrumental purposes of keeping in touch but also for creating collective family narratives and individual or group social identities. While many of these communications technologies were initially aimed at the business sector, their rapid incorporation into the domestic sphere has been an equally important vector of growth, carrying the economy forward as people come to depend on new sets of technical devices to lead normal lives. Yesterday’s luxury is today’s need: at first cell phones were marketed to businesses so their executives could keep in touch while they travelled from one meeting to another; now many mothers would think themselves irresponsible if they didn’t provide their teenagers with cell phones to call home when they need a ride.

Technics: an approach to linking consumption and production Among the disciplines currently interested in the impact of home life in the advanced economies on the wider world, conventional economics, cultural studies and even much of what is usually called globalization theory tend to treat domestic technologies no differently from other consumer goods – although communications technologies are usually given special treatment (e.g. Harvey 1996; Bonacich and Appelbaum 2000; Baudrillard 1998; Castells 1996). But I would argue that there are at least two reasons why domestic technologies, as opposed to consumer goods in general, offer particularly incisive insights into the macro-politics of the middle-class lifestyle.

Photographic technologies serve to inscribe family identities (Berger 1972; Spence and Holland 1992). From the fixed grins recorded by the early box cameras, as still and movie cameras became more sophisticated the range of conventional subjects expanded from picnics and weddings to include holiday slides, then underwater fishing scenes and action shots. Now we have wedding webpages and point-and-shoot cell-phones to zap our husband that hilarious picture of the dog eating the birthday cake while it’s actually happening. Baby photos - i.e. life narratives - now start to circulate at the stage of the first echograph. Although in our digital trigger-happy, image-saturated society it may seem that any subject is good for a family snap, in fact only certain kinds are acceptable, namely those which celebrate and consolidate “proper” or “happy” families - or fun occasions between friends. We don’t take or send photos of quarrels or of loved ones in intensive care. However recent pictorial technologies allow minor family flaws to be easily mended, at least on the page. With Photoshop, red-eye can be removed or an absent son grafted into the Christmas picture. It can even be used to give the appearance of life to a stillborn child, thus giving meaning to a near-mother’s loss (Scheeres 2001). Pictures have become an essential element of family identity, so that a family without photos feels fragile and bereaved: when a fire burned hundreds of houses in Santa Barbara in 1990, families frantically contacted relatives and friends in the hope of reconstituting at least part of the lost photo albums. Although men are still often the takers of photos, women remain responsible for maintaining the real or virtual family albums, and the IT

The first reason is that they are technologies, material devices designed to facilitate the performance of material tasks. Domestic technologies connect consumption and production more directly than other consumer goods. In this respect a microwave is qualitatively distinct from a bottle of soda or a pair of trainers. As one element in a complex technical system bringing together electricity supplies, special containers, plastic wrap and microwave dinners - and the culture of “food-zapping” - the microwave, like other domestic technologies, constitutes an interface or transmission, defining flows between the home and the world beyond (Cockburn and Ormrod 1993). Although the choice of certain inputs is flexible (a microwaves will cook fresh as well as frozen vegetables), it is not arbitrary. Such interfacing devices materially regulate flows between the household and its global networks of service and supply, thus underlining the role of consumption not just as one integral dimension of a system of production, but as a form of production in itself. Depending on a network of complementary technologies in order to function, domestic technologies exhibit a systemic dynamic of change. The adoption of the 29

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES machines are far more energy- and water-efficient and thus have lower running costs, but they are smaller, they are front-loaders, and the purchase price is higher. Despite vigorous marketing campaigns, sales of German washing-machines in the US remain very low – and American domestic preferences can be seen to mesh with American national energy policy (Weisberg 2002).

microwave stimulated the growth of an industry producing microwaveable meals and of another producing microwave-safe dishes; that of the washingmachine encouraged the development of easy-care fabrics. Devices that start off as luxuries or curiosities become necessities once they are incorporated into daily routines shared within the group or across the social network. Once young parents started using digital cameras and e-mail to send out photos of their babies, retired people who never had to use computers in their working lives came under pressure to acquire the wherewithal to download and print baby pictures. When a daughter leaves home for college, even the most technically-averse mother takes the plunge and buys a pair of cell-phones. Domestic technologies are distinct from other consumer commodities, then, because they operate like cogs in a machine rather than desserts in a cafeteria. Hence they offer a particularly powerful instrument for analysing consumption-production relations.

A Californian gynotechnics that explores the materialisation of maternal virtues through an assemblage of gadgets seems to me to be a fascinating topic in itself. Still more fascinating are the economic and technical dynamics of such a socio-technical system. What most excites me about the project, however, is that world views and global ethics are embodied in these everyday technologies – thus their decoding offers a key to the paradox whereby the material reproduction of family values in the metropolis entails the reproduction of inequality at the global scale. References

The second reason for focusing on domestic technologies rather than consumer goods in general is that the technical features of houses themselves, the apparatus of kitchens, living rooms and bathrooms, garages and dens, play a central role in physically constructing the rich and pleasurable material experiences typical of middle-class life, and in shaping, fulfilling and extending the demands of modern social roles and relationships. Domestic technologies help naturalize the material habits of a particular style of consumption in which expectations, values and pleasures are deeply rooted – cell phones and instant messaging, for instance, accustom us to continual, instantaneous access to loved ones who are at a distance. Furthermore technologies are essential to the fulfilment of social roles, and the values and sentiments that go with them. How can a woman be a proper middle-class mother in California today without a house of at least 2,000 square feet, a minimum of three bedrooms and two-anda-half bathrooms, a laundry room, a refrigerator to store food (and a refrigerator door to serve as a family bulletin board), an SUV to ferry children safely to soccer practice, and a PC to send digital photos of the latest soccer match to fond grandparents? How can a high-school student maintain her social networks adequately without a cellphone, a PC and instant messaging?

Baudrillard, J., 1998, The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures, (London: Sage). Berger, J., 1972, Ways of Seeing, (Harmondsworth: Penguin). Bonacich, E. and Appelbaum, R.P., 2000, Behind the Label: Inequality in the Los Angeles Apparel Industry, (Berkeley: University of California Press). Bray, F., 1997, Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China, (Berkeley: University of California Press). Castells, M., 1996, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol.I: The Rise of the Network Society, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers). Castells, M., 1997, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol.II: The Power of Identity, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers). Castells, M., 1998, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol.III: End of Millennium, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers).

At one level domestic technologies encode domestic virtues, facilitating culturally defined standards of care, cleanliness and warmth. At another level their design incorporates other types of standards which are often taken as self-evident, yet can also be shown to be culturally defined. Take, for example, the concept of efficiency. Most American household gadgets are designed to save labour, time and money rather to use resources sparingly. The typical American washingmachine takes large loads, is a top-loader which avoids any need to stoop, and its purchase price is quite low; it is inefficient in terms of energy and water use, but Americans are accustomed to cheap and unlimited supplies of both. German and Japanese washing-

Cockburn, C. and Ormrod, S., 1993, Gender and Technology in the Making, (London; Sage). Dunbar, R., 1996, Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language, (London: Faber & Faber). Dutton, M., Seth, S. and Gandhi, L. (2002), “Plumbing the depths: toilets, transparency and modernity”, Postcolonial Studies: Culture, Politics, Economy, 2 (July 2002), pp. 137-142. Fehérváry, K., 2002, “American kitchens, luxury bathrooms, and the search for a “normal” life in 30

F. BRAY: THE TECHNICS OF THE AMERICAN HOME Stanley, A., 1993, Mothers and daughters of invention: notes for a revised history of technology, (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press).

postsocialist Hungary”, Ethnos special issue, Consumers Exiting Socialism, 67 (3), pp. 369-400. Franklin, S., 2003, “Re-thinking nature-culture: anthropology and the new genetics”, Anthropological theory 3 (1), pp. 65-85.

Stone, A. R., 1991, “Will the real body please stand up? Boundary stones about virtual cultures”, in M. Benedikt (ed), Cyberspace: First Steps, (MIT Press: Cambridge), pp. 81-118.

Freeman, C., 2000, High Tech and High Heels in the Global Economy: Women, Work, and Pink-Collar Identities in the Caribbean, (Duke University Press).

Turkle, S., 1995, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, (New York: Simon & Schuster).

Gero, J. M. and Conkey, M. W., 1991, (eds), Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehistory, (Oxford: Blackwell).

Weisberg, R., 2002, The evolution of the automatic washing maching: technology and culture intertwined, UCSB Department of Anthropology undergraduate honors thesis.

Hafter, D. M., 1995, (ed.) European women and preindustrial craft, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Harvey, D., 1996, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference, (Oxford: Blackwell). Lenhart, A. with Horrigan, J., Rainie, L., Allen, K., Boyce, A., Madden, M. and O’Grady, E., 2003, The evershifting Internet population: a new look at Internet access and the digital divide, (Washington D.C.: The Pew Internet and American Life Project). Lerman, N. E., Palmer, A., and Oldenziel, R., 1997, “The shoulders we stand on and the view from here: historiography and directions for research”, Technology and Culture, 38 (1) (Special Issue: Gender Analysis and the History of Technology), pp. 9-30. Lie, M. and Sørensen, K., 1996, (eds), Making Technology our Own: Domesticating Technology into Everyday Life, (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press). MacKenzie, D. and Wajman, J., 1985, re-issued 1999, (eds), The Social Shaping of Technology: How the Refrigerator Got its Hum, (Milton Keynes: Open University Press). Mahias, M.-C., 2002, Le barattage du monde. Essais d’anthropologie des techniques en Inde (Paris : Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme). Rabinow, P., 1996, “Artificiality and enlightenment: from sociobiology to biosociality”, in Essays on the Anthropology of Reason, (Princeton University Press), pp. 91-112. Scheeres, J., 2001, “Photo homage to the stillborn”, WiredNews, 28 December 2001. Spence, J. and Holland, P., 1992, (eds), Family Snaps: the Meanings of Domestic Photography, (London: Virago).

31

5. Solar Disks and Solar Cycles: The Domestic Origins of Aztec Art Elisabeth Brumfiel Department of Anthropology. Northwestern University, USA (Kubler 1943, Nicholson 1971, Pasztory 1983; Umberger 1996). The style coalesced during the mid-fifteenth century, shortly after the Aztecs established their regional dominance, and it ended less than a century later with the Spanish conquest in 1521. Despite its short duration, the number of pieces belonging to this style is “prodigious” (Nicholson and Keber 1983:26), and stylistic development within the tradition was rapid (Pasztory 1983:143).

Aztec ideology and art Aztec state religion linked warfare to the natural cycles that sustained human life. The Aztecs recognized that human life depended on the orderly alternation of natural cycles: day and night, summer and winter, rainy season and dry season, growth, death, decay, and regeneration. But while we see these cycles as natural and inevitable, the Aztec state asserted that they were the uncertain outcome of cosmic struggle. For example, the sun rose victorious each morning, driving off the moon and stars to capture the daytime sky. But the sun’s victory was only provisional, for each afternoon and evening, the sun sank in weary defeat and the moon and stars took back the heavens. The sun’s success in this daily struggle depended upon its being nourished with the hearts and blood of sacrificial victims, preferably vigorous young men taken captive in battle. To underscore the uncertainly of human survival, the Aztecs postulated the existence of four previous orderly creations that had been overwhelmed by destructive chaos. The present creation persisted only because it was maintained by sacrifice.1

However, the origin of Aztec imagery is something of a mystery. While Aztec sculptors duplicated certain sculptural forms from the ancient city of Tula (where the Aztecs carried out excavations to recover Toltec remains), Tula’s sculpture is little concerned with solar imagery, which is so important in Aztec art. However, archaeological research at Xaltocan, a provincial town 20 miles north of Mexico City/Tenochtitlan has yielded many images that express solar and cyclical themes with compositional forms and symbols that closely resemble Aztec art. These images appear on small decorated spindle whorls recovered from domestic contexts at Xaltocan. This evidence suggests that Aztec imagery did not originate in the state-sponsored art of large urban centers of central Mexico; rather, its composition and symbolic language were developed in everyday household contexts, probably by women pursuing their craft of cloth production.

To communicate this world view, the Aztec ruler commissioned works of monumental sculpture. For example, the Aztec calendar stone is filled with symbols that refer to cosmic cycles: ƒ

near the center of the stone, the four previous cycles of orderly creation that had been destroyed disorder are named by the forces that destroyed them: jaguars, wind, a rain of fire and floods; ƒ these are surrounded by a ring containing the 20 signs of the Aztec 260-day ritual almanac, related to the life cycle and personal destiny; ƒ outside of this ring is another, the solar disk, referring to the cycles of day and night and the 365-day solar calendar; ƒ the entire design is encircled by the sky and the starry heavens; ƒ and at the center, as if to underscore the need for human sacrifice is a central deity, with a sacrificial knife protruding from his mouth and talons on either side of his face grasping human hearts. This magnificent sculpture belongs to what George Kubler (1943) termed the Metropolitan School of Aztec art. These monuments are distinguished by their large size, complex iconography, fine design and craftsmanship

Cloth production and spindle whorls at Xaltocan Cloth was woven from two fibers in Aztec Mexico. One was fiber extracted from the leaves of the maguey, a plant that was extensively cultivated in the cold, high plateau surrounding Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital. The other was cotton, which does not grow in the highlands but which could be obtained from warmer lands in Morelos and Puebla. The maguey or cotton fibers had to be spun into thread they were woven. The spinner worked by hand, drawing the fibers out and twisting them into thread using a wooden spindle. The spindles were weighted with perforated ceramic disks that prolonged the spindle’s rotation. These perforated ceramic disks are called spindle whorls. Spinning thread by hand was very timeconsuming; spinning requires two or three times the hours of effort for each hour devoted to weaving (Berlo 1991:451). Large, heavy spindle whorls were used to speed the production of maguey fiber thread, but smaller, lighter spindle whorls were used to twist shorter cotton fibers (Parsons 1972; McCafferty and McCafferty 2000).

1 In accord with Western science, the Aztecs perceived that entropy is that natural state of things, and order requires energy.

33

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES In Xaltocan, both large and small spindle whorls are present, suggesting that both fibers were spun.2 The spinners were probably women. Cloth production in Aztec Mexico was strongly gendered female. New born baby girls were presented with the symbols of womanhood: “the spinning whorl, the batten, the reed basket [for unspun cotton], the spinning bowls, the skeins, the shuttle, her little skirt, her little blouse” (Sahagún 1950-82 bk. 6, ch.37, p.201). And a woman’s weaving equipment was placed with her when she died (Sahagún 1950-82 bk. 2, ch.33, p.138). Spinning and weaving served as metaphors for women’s experiences with pregnancy and childbirth, and female deities were depicted with spinning and weaving tools (Klein 1982; Sullivan 1982; McCafferty and McCafferty 1991). We have very little information about who produced cloth in the pre-Aztec era at Xaltocan, but spindle whorls and needles appear in some infant burials and women’s graves, suggesting that cloth production was a female activity (De Lucia 2004). A careful consideration of spindle whorl decoration at Xaltocan suggests that the composition and design motifs of pre-Aztec spindle whorls anticipate the style and themes of Aztec Metropolitan art. On this basis, I suggest that the Aztec state drew heavily upon these domestic conventions to develop its own striking artistic style.

FIG. 1. The Valley of Mexico during the Aztec period, showing the locations of Xaltocan, Tenochtitlan and other important towns

Xaltocan—A Pre-Aztec Center

Spindle whorl designs and solar cycles

Xaltocan lies in the Northern Valley of Mexico (Fig. 1). It has been occupied from 900 CE to the present, including occupational remains dating to the Early, Middle, and Late Postclassic, and the colonial and republican periods. Sixteenth-century documents state that during the Early and Middle Postclassic (900-1350 CE) Xaltocan was an important regional center, the capital of Otomí-speaking people in southern Hidalgo and the northern Valley of Mexico. (Alva Ixtlilxóchitl 197577 I:423, II:299; see Carrasco 1950). In 1395, Xaltocan was conquered by its neighbor Cuauhtitlan, which received the help of its allies, Azcapotzalco and Tenochtitlan (Anales de Cuauhtitlan 1945:50). In 1395, Xaltocan fell under the control of the Aztec Triple Alliance and in 1521 Xaltocan was defeated by Cortés, his Spanish army and native allies, initiating the colonial period (Cortés 1971:118). Our archaeological research has focused on the changes in daily life in Xaltocan which accompanied transformations of the regional political economy (Brumfiel 2005). The deep stratigraphy in Xaltocan, very rare in other parts of the Valley of Mexico, has helped us define those changes.

I examined 96 decorated spindle whorls from Xaltocan. Most of these spindle whorls were recovered from the lower, pre-Aztec strata at Xaltocan, with dates of AD 900-1430. In higher strata representing the Aztec empire (AD 1430-1521), more than three-quarters of the spindle whorls were undecorated, a point to which I will return. Decorated spindle whorls were found in houses on living floors, in domestic refuse, and in five cases, in burials. The decorations were mold-made impressions, and they sometimes bear traces of the paint that must have covered their molded designs. To define the possible meaning of these designs, I considered two aspects of spindle whorl decoration: design composition and design motifs. Texts and pictorial documents from the early colonial Mexico provide guidance for the meaning of these symbols. With regard to composition, two-thirds of spindle whorls have a design divided in four parts, with motifs distributed symmetrically in the four quarters of the disk. Archaeologist Constanza Vega Sosa (1984) has suggested that quadripartite divisions in Aztec art represent the four quarters of the universe, the conventional way of imagining space in Mesoamerica (see Gossen 1974; Tedlock and Tedlock 1985). Vega Sosa argues that the four quarters were defined by lines emanating from the inter-cardinal directions, defined by the points on the horizon where the sun rises and sets at the summer and winter solstices. Vega Sosa concluded that these

2

Seventy-one of these decorated spindle whorls (74%) are large, that is, they weigh 20 g or more and have diameters of at least 38 mm. They would have been used for maguey fibers. Twenty-five of the decorated spindle whorls (26%) are small, that is, they weigh 16 g or less, with diameters of 34 mm or less. They would have been used for cotton.

34

E. BRUMFIEL: SOLAR DISKS AND SOLAR CYCLES: THE DOMESTIC ORIGINS OF AZTEC ART quadripartite compositions demonstrated an interest in and a concern for the daily and annual cycles of the sun. Probably, the quadripartite composition of spindle whorls also indicates an interest in the sun and its movements. Two-thirds (71 cases) of the spindle whorls in the Xaltocan sample are divided into four or eight parts which might refer to the cardinal and inter-cardinal directions with their solar associations. The other spindle whorls either have undivided design motifs (5 cases), or a dual division (4 cases), or a division in three or six parts (8 cases), or in five parts (2 cases), or in seven parts (1 case), or in ten or more parts (9 cases). The spindle whorls with undivided design motifs bear animal motifs (vultures, frogs, the mythical cipactli, and a plumed serpent). The spindle whorls with five parts are decorated with pentagrams (what we would call stars, but in ancient Mesoamerica, a circular symbol was used to represent stars). The spindle whorls with seven or ten or more parts bore designs that consisted of a series of dots or swirls or flower petals. Spindle whorls with three or six parts had the same motifs as spindle whorls with four or eight parts. It is to these motifs that we now turn. The design motifs seem to cluster according to four themes: (1) solar energy, (2) the spatial and temporal order of the universe, (3) the creation of this order, and (4) cyclical or rotary movement. Flowers constitute one common motif, present on 16 of the decorated spindle whorls (Fig. 2a). Flowers have been associated with the Xochiquetzal (whose name means flowery quetzal feather). Xochiquetzal was the goddess of spring, flowers, love, feminine sexuality and the patron of embroiderers (Díaz Cíntora 1990; McCafferty and McCafferty 1999; Lopéz Hernández 2005). Thus, we might conclude that the spindle whorl designs were focused on women’s sexual and reproductive powers. But this interpretation would be too narrow. Flowers had very broad symbolic meanings in prehispanic thought. Specifically, flowers referred to the sun, heat, light, fire, and life (Velasco and Nagao 2006). Flowers had the many associations because they were associated with tonalli, the divine energy that sparked life in all living things: plants, animals, and human beings (Hill 1992). In defense of an interpretation of flowers as manifestations of tonalli, we might cite the many other spindle whorl designs that refer to the sun. For example, six spindle whorls are decorated with flowers and sun rays (Fig. 2b), making a design that resembles the glyph ollin, which refers both to the movement of the sun and to the era of the fifth sun, the present creation (Vega Sosa 1984:153).

FIG. 2A-B. Spindle whorls with flowers, above a simple flower, below a flower adorned with sun rays (drawings by Laura Jordan).

Another spindle whorl is decorated with only sun rays, another with the symbol ihuitl (Fig. 3a), a symbol of the day, and a third spindle whorl is decorated with a fourpetal flower, the Maya glyph k’in, also a symbol of the sun (Fig. 3b).

35

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES

FIG. 4. Spindle whorl decorated with possible flower petals or plumes of the solar eagle (drawn by Laura Jordan).

FIG. 3A-B. Spindle whorls with sun symbols, above an ihuitl, a day symbol (drawn by Laura Jordan), below a spindle whorl with a k’in, the Maya sun glyph (drawn by Elizabeth Brumfiel).

Two spindle whorls are decorated with a complicated sun disk motif, surrounded by a ring of what might be the petals of flowers or feathers of the solar eagle (Fig. 4). Two other spindle whorls lack the sun disk but have a ring of petals or feathers. A second grouping of motifs is related to the spatial and temporal order of the universe. For example, six spindle whorls are decorated with a quincunx motif (Fig. 5a), crossed diagonal lines that connected the four intercardinal points of the universe, the points defined by the rising and setting of the sun during the summer and winter solstices. In eight other cases, two lines cross the central perforation of the spindle whorl, dividing it into four parts that represent the four quarters of the universe (Fig. 5b).

FIG. 5A -B. Spindle whorls with four-part divisions, above the quincunx, below the four quarters of the universe (drawings by Laura Jordan).

36

E. BRUMFIEL: SOLAR DISKS AND SOLAR CYCLES: THE DOMESTIC ORIGINS OF AZTEC ART A third grouping of spindle whorls refers to the creation of the universe, of time, and of the sun. For example, one spindle whorl is decorated with portraits of Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca, the creators of the five successive suns. Two spindle whorls are decorated with the cipactli symbol, the first day of the tonalpohualli, the 260-day ritual calendar (Fig. 6). On the day cipactli, the sun began to move, initiating the sequence of days of the tonalpohualli (Sahagún 1950-82 bk.7, ch.2). Seven other spindle whorls are decorated with dots or concentric circles which might represent the succession of days, that is, daily suns. The number of dots or circles varies between four and twelve.

patterns of movement and change that sustained life in all its varied forms.

FIG. 7. Spindle whorl with the xicalcoliuhqui, step-fret spiral with rectangular sides, a symbol of cyclical movement (drawn by Laura Jordan).

Discussion Spindle whorl designs can be interpreted in a series of ways, some narrow and concrete, others broad and abstract. For example, there are important associations between flowers, sexuality, and the acts of spinning and weaving (McCafferty and McCafferty 1991; Sullivan 1982). Very likely, the women of Xaltocan were aware of these associations and the act of spinning with spindle whorls decorated with flowers evoked reflections on their sexuality. Flowers were also connected with an array of symbols representing tonalli, divine energy (Hill 1992, Taube 2006). Currently, some residents of traditional Mesoamerican communities believe that tonalli is an essential component of successful craft production. They believe that this energy is necessary in order to produce several products transformed by heat, including fired ceramics, slaked lime, and the proper maturation of an in utero fetus (Monaghan 2001). In addition, tonalli also makes possible artistic achievement. For example, Huichol women offer sacrifices to the son in order to acquire the force that allows them to produce high-quality textiles (Schaefer 2002).

FIG. 6. Spindle whorl with a cipactli, the first day of the ritual almanac (after Enciso 1971:19).

Finally, the most common motif in the spindle whorls from Xaltocan is the xicalcoliuhqui, the step-fret spiral (Fig. 7). The xicalcoliuhqui occurs on 27 decorated spindle whorls (31% of the decorated whorls).3 In almost all cases, they occur in groups of four. Both Zelia Nuttal (1901) and Constanza Vega Sosa (1984) suggest that the xicalcoliuhqui refers to movement, and the groupings of four suggest that they might have referred to annual cycle of the sun through its summer and winter solstices. Perhaps we should accept a very generalized interpretation of the xicalcoliuhqui as representing movements and cycles of all types, including the rotation of the spindle whorl, itself, as it produced its thread. Both the spiral motif and the rotating spindle whorl might have represented all the cycles of the current universe, all the 3

Zelia Nuttal (1901) noted the presence of two types of step-fret spirals in ancient Mexico, spirals with round sides and spirals with straight sides. She believed that the spirals with round sides were associated with the above, with moving air and water, while spirals with straight sides were associated with the earth, night, and darkness. Vega Sosa (1984) accepts this interpretation but suggests that both types of spirals were related to the movement of the sun: the day-time sun in the case of spirals with round sides and the night-time sun (passing through the bowels of the earth) in the case of spirals with straight sides. But this interpretation is not entirely consistent with the characteristics of the motif as it occurs on the Xaltocan spindle whorls. On these spindle whorls, all the spirals have straight sides, that is, there is no alteration of day and night signaled by spirals with round sides and spirals with straight sides.

At a more abstract level, spindle whorls referred to the energy that drove the regular cycles of the universe and thus sustained life. The most important were the sun’s cycles which showered the earth with tonalli and defined the limits of the cosmos and marked the passage of time (Gosden 1974:22). We have seen that the designs on spindle whorls were related to various aspects of the sun and its energy: orderly cyclical movement, divine energy, the four-quarters of the universe, and the creation of the spatial-temporal order. The popularity of these themes suggests that the women of Xaltocan were interested in 37

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES sacrificial victim after his battle. The central perforation or hollow of the sacrificial stone was analogous to the central perforation of a spindle whorl. The upper face of the sacrificial stone was engraved with the sun disk, a multi-part composition. Around the central hole, the sacrificial stone bore several concentric circles, many times enclosing a row of dots that symbolized the succession of days. Outside the concentric circles, eight solar rays marked the cardinal and inter-cardinal directions. Outside of this, engraved eagle plumes adorned the border.

abstract and large scale cosmological concepts. In addition, the motives which appear on spindle whorls (for example the xicalcoliuhque, the ihuitl, the k’in, the quincunx) indicate that the women of Xaltocan possessed substantial knowledge of Mesoamerica’s symbolic vocabulary. We don’t expect prehispanic women to have such cosmological interests. Western tradition assumes that women’s thought and action is confined to the hearth and patio, that is, the domestic sphere. Evidently, our Western expectations are mistaken with respect to the Early and Middle Postclassic women of Xaltocan. These cosmological interests were probably nourished by the uncertain markets and unstable politics of central Mexico prior to Aztec dominance. This economic and political instability encouraged households forge inter-household alliances to even out fluctuations in household wellbeing. The preferred mechanism for doing so was interhousehold feasting, as guided by the 260-day ritual calendar, which linked household affairs with cosmic processes, but that is another story (Brumfiel 2004, 2007).

The central perforations, rows of dots, sun rays, and eagle plumes are all found on spindle whorls. The only motif that is present on these sculptures and ball court rings that does not appear on spindle whorls is the handles of blood-letters used in self-sacrifice (Matos and Solís 2004). The handles of blood-letters are positioned between the solar rays of the cardinal directions. The solar disk was also present on the cuauhxicalli, stone bowls that were receptacles for the hearts of sacrificed captives. The solar disk also appeared ceremonial seats and sculptures of the xiuhmolpilli, the bundle of 52 sticks that commemorated the completion of a calendrical cycle of 52 years (Matos and Solís 2004). All these objects played important roles in ritual activities that communicated the themes of state ideology, that is, cosmic struggle, war, sacrifice, and imperial expansion.

From the Home to the State Many artistic conventions that appear on the spindle whorls of pre-Aztec Xaltocan are duplicated on sculptures later produced under the patronage of the Aztec state. This suggests that women were an important source of the symbols and ideology used by the Aztec state to construct its legitimacy.

Thus, the official art of the Aztec state shared several motifs and rules of composition with the spindle whorls of Xaltocan, but the spindle whorls are older than all the Aztec sculptures. Some of the spindle whorls in our sample antedate the Aztec monuments by four centuries. Therefore, we have to consider the possibility that sun symbolism and some related concepts were developed by Postclassic women and later appropriated by the Aztec rulers.4 This is not supposed to happen.

The Aztec state sponsored two types of circular sculptures. The simpler of the two was the ring of the ball court, the tlachtemalácatl (Matos 2002). Its circular form duplicates the circular form of spindle whorls. Like the central perforation in a spindle whorl, the ball court ring had a central perforation through which the rubber ball passed to score a goal. A tenon on the edge of the ring permitted its suspension from the wall of the ball court. Among the surviving ball court rings, one is carved with the motif of an eight-petal flower which more or less duplicates on a grand scale the spindle whorls with flowers that we see in Xaltocan. Another bears a series of 16 dots surrounding its central hole. Others are engraved with sun rays. Since the Mesoamerican ballgame had sacred meanings linked to life and death, the sky and the underworld, the presence of celestial and solar motifs on these rings is not surprising. What is surprising are the similar motifs and composition shared by the ballgame rings and the spindle whorls.

Since the time of Robert Redfield, anthropologists have argued that ideas and ideology diffuse from the upper classes to the lower classes. Redfield (1940) believed that 4 Of course, this idea would be more credible if it were possible to demonstrate that women were the ones who decorated the spindle whorls with solar motifs. It is unlikely that the women who used the spindle whorls that we find in Xaltocan were actually the ones who produced them because we have recovered very few molds for spindle whorls at the site. In contrast, Nichols et al. (2000) report a concentration of almost 100 molds for large spindle whorls in a limited area of Otumba, a Late Postclassic site in the northeast corner of the Valley of Mexico. In Otumba, the molds were associated with basalt scrapers used to extract maguey fibers from fleshy leaves, which implies that those who produced the spindle whorls also participated in the preparation of the maguey fibers, including spinning the fibers. In addition a complete assemblage of domestic ceramics was found in this area, suggesting that the production of spindle whorls and spinning maguey fibers occurred in a household setting. Thus, it is probable that the women who lived in these domestic units participated in the design of the spindle whorls. This also suggests that although the majority of women did not engage in spindle whorl production, they nevertheless determined spindle whorl design in an indirect way through these purchase of spindle whorls with one design or another.

Another form of sculpture produced under the patronage of the Aztec state was the temalacatl, a monumental sculpture that supported the enemy warrior during the gladiatorial sacrifice (Matos and Solís 2004). In some cases, the center of the sacrificial stone was perforated to permit the passage of a cord used to tie the captive to the stone during his ritual battle. In other cases, the sacrificial stone had a central hollow to collect the blood of the 38

E. BRUMFIEL: SOLAR DISKS AND SOLAR CYCLES: THE DOMESTIC ORIGINS OF AZTEC ART Great and Little Traditions existed in agrarian class societies, and he envisioned ideas flowing from the Great Tradition of the urban elite toward the Little Tradition of the rural peasants. But, with regard to the culture of Madagascar, Susan Kus and Victor Raharijaona (2000) argue that the state sometimes finds it useful to appropriate ideas from the family and the home. By appropriating household symbols, state rulers can hope to transfer to themselves the deep sentiments and familiar ideas of domestic life. In this way, Kus and Raharijaona suggest, rulers strengthen their legitimacy.

References Alva Ixtlilxochitl, F. de., 1975-77, Obras Históricas, (México, D.F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) Anales de Cuauhtitlan, 1945, “Anales de Cuauhtitlan”, in P.F. Velázquez Códice Chimalpopoca, (México, D.F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), pp.1-118. Berdan, F.F. and Anawalt, P.R., 1992 (eds.), The Codex Mendoza, 4 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press)

Kus and Raharijaona do not consider the difficulties of appropriating the already familiar symbols of everyday life for use by the state, but such difficulties might be anticipated. The process might be especially difficult when the symbols must be regendered in the process, say from female-associated spindle whorls to male-associated warfare. How was this accomplished? Marie Louise Sørensen (2000) observes that performances are the key to endowing material objects with cultural meaning. The repetitive association of objects with females or males, acting out narratives of female or male action, supplies the context for engendering objects.

Berlo, J., 1991, “Beyond bricolage: Women and aesthetic strategies in Latin American textiles”, in M.B. Schevill, J.C. Berlo, and E.B. Dwyer, (eds.) Textile Traditions of Mesoamerica and the Andes (Austin: University of Texas Press), pp. 437-479. Brumfiel, E., 2004, “Meaning by design: ceramics, feasting, and figured worlds in Postclassic Mexico”, in J.A. Hendon and R.A. Joyce Mesoamerican Archaeology (eds). (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 239-264.

The two sculptural forms we have just examined, ballcourt rings and sacrificial stones, were the center of attention in just such a narrative. The ball game featured two opposing teams of male warriors (the forces of light and darkness) battling for control over the ball (a symbolic sun), a metaphoric reprise of the battle for a life-sustaining cosmos. The gladiatorial sacrifice was a contest between an enemy captive and an Aztec warrior, the latter fighting with a sword edged with obsidian blades and the former fighting with a sword edged with feathers. Again, this was a metaphoric battle between male warriors, but in this case the outcome was predestined, as was the destiny of the Aztec people, to triumph as imperial rulers and protectors of cosmic order.

Brumfiel, E., 2005, Production and Power at Postclassic Xaltocan. (México, D.F. and Pittsburgh: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia/University of Pittsburg)

Conclusion

Cortes, H., 1970, Cartas de Relación (México, D.F.: Porrúa)

Brumfiel, E., 2007, “Commoner demand as an economic force in Postclassic Central Mexico”. Paper presented at the 72nd Annual Meeting, Austin TX, Society for American Archaeology. Carrasco, P., 1950, Los Otomíes: Cultura e historia Prehispánica de los pueblos Mesoamericanos de habla Otomiana. (México, D.F.: Biblioteca Enciclopédica del Estado de México)

The case of Aztec Mexico seems to conform to the model provided by Kus and Raharijaona. Solar symbolism, originating in household contexts in the familiar act of spinning thread for clothing, was transformed into state art. The small scale of the spindle whorl with its intimate symbolic idiom was magnified on monumental sculpture in order to proclaim the necessity of war ad sacrifice, activities that resulted in conquest, tribute, and the perpetuation of the class system. We see in the case of Postclassic Mexico that activities dominated by state elites were justified with symbols and ideas rooted in the daily routines of women. In the process, the symbols and ideas changed their meaning, but at the same time, they were enriched by the meanings and sentiments of their native soil.

De Lucia, K., 2007, “Domestic economies and regional transition: Obsidian and household strategies in Early Postclassic Xaltocan”, Paper presented at the 72nd meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Austin, TX. Diaz Cintora, S., 1990, Xochiquetal. Estudio de mitología náhuatl. (México, D.F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) Gossen, G., 1972, Chamulas in the World of the Sun. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press) Hill, J., 1992, “The flower world of old Uto-Aztecan”, Journal of Anthropological Research 48, pp. 117-44. Kubler, G., 1943, “The cycle of life and death in metropolitan Aztec sculpture”, Gazette des Beaux Arts 23, pp. 257-68. 39

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES Kus, S. y Rahaijaona, V., 2000, “House to palace, village to state: Scaling up architecture and ideology”, American Anthropologist 102, pp. 98-113.

Sahagun, B., 1950-82, Florentine Codex. (Santa Fe, NM and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and The University of Utah)

López, M., 2005, La Condición de la Mujer Mexica y Maya Vista a Través de las Diosas, (México, D.F.: Tesis Lic., Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia)

Schaefer, S., 2002, To Think with a Good Heart: Wixárika Women, Weavers, and Shamans (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press)

Matos, E., 2002, “The Ballcourt in Tenochtitlan”, in E.M. Whittington, (ed). The Sport of Life and Death, (London: Thames and Hudson), pp. 89-104.

Sørensen, M., 2000, Gender Archaeology (Cambridge: Polity Press) Sullivan, T., 1982, “Tlazolteotl-Ixcuina: The great spinner and weaver”, in E.H. Boone (ed.) The Art and Iconography of Late Post-Classic Central Mexico (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks), pp. 7-35.

Matos, E. y Solis, F., 2004, El Calendario Azteca y Otros Monumentos Solares. (México, D.F.: Conaculta/INAH) McCafferty, G. y McCafferty, S., 1999, “The metamorphosis of Xochiquetal”, in T. L. Sweely (ed.) Manifesting Power, (London: Routledge), pp. 103-125.

Taube, K., 2000, “The turquoise hearth: Fire, self sacrifice, and the central Mexican cult of war”, in D. Carrasco, L. Jones and S Sessions, (eds.) Mesoamerica’s Classic Heritage. (Niwot, CO: University of Colorado Press), pp. 269-340.

McCafferty, S. y McCafferty, G., 2000, “Textile production in Postclassic Cholula, Mexico”, Ancient Mesoamerica 11, pp. 39-54.

Taube, K., 2006, “At dawn’s edge: Tulum, Santa Rita, and floral symbolism in the International Style of Late Postclassic Mesoamerica. Paper presented at “Astronomers, Scribes, and Priests,” G. Vail y C. Hernández (orgs.). (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks).

Monaghan, J., 2001, “Physiology, production, and gendered difference: The evidence from Mixtec and other Mesoamerican societies”, in C.F. Klein (ed.), Gender in Pre-Hispanic America. (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks), pp. 285-304.

Tedlock, B. y Tedlock, D., 1985, “Text and textile: Language and technology in the arts of the Quiché Maya”, Journal of Anthropological Research 41, pp. 121146.

Nichols, D., Mclaughlin, M., y Benton, M., 2000, “Production intensification and regional specialization: Maguey fibers and textiles in the Aztec city-state of Otumba”, Ancient Mesoamerica 11, pp. 267-291.

Vega Sosa, C., 1984, “El curso del sol en los glifos de cerámica azteca tardía”, Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 17, pp. 125-170.

Nicholson, H., 1971, “Major sculpture in pre-Hispanic central Mexico”, in G. Ekholm and I. Bernal, (eds.). Archaeology of Northern Mesoamerica, Part 1, (Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 10). (Austin: University of Texas), pp. 92-134.

Velasco, A. y Nagao, D., 2006, “Mitología y simbolismo de las flores”, Arqueología Mexicana 78, pp. 28-35. Umberger, E., 1996, “Art and imperial strategy in Tenochtitlan”, in F.F. Berdan, R.E. Blanton, E. Boone, M. G. Hodge, M. E. Smith and E. Umberger (eds) Aztec Imperial Strategies (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks), pp. 85-106.

Nicholson, H. y Keber, E., 1983, Art of Aztec Mexico: Treasures of Tenochtitlan. (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art) Nuttal, Z., 1901, “The fundamental principles of old and new world civilization”, Archaeological and Ethnological Papers of the Peabody Museum 2, pp. 105. Parsons, M., 1972, “Spindle whorls from the Teotihuacán Valley, Mexico”, in M.W. Spence, J.R. Parsons and M.R. Parsons (eds) Miscellaneous Studies in Mexican Prehistory, (University of Michigan, Anthropological Papers 45), pp. 45-81. Pasztory, E., 1983, Aztec Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams) Redfield, R., 1940, The Folk Culture of Yucatan. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press)

40

6. Nurturing the dead: Medieval women as family undertakers Roberta Gilchrist Department of Archaeology, University of Reading, U.K. offered prayers to the dead to help the soul’s journey through Purgatory; and once the dead had joined the communion of saints, they could intercede on behalf of the living.

Introduction: gender, agency and burial archaeology Previous analyses of gender in mortuary contexts have focused on the gender identity and status of deceased individuals, and how gender ideology is symbolised and transformed through the material culture of the grave (e.g. Arnold and Wicker 2001). It has been remarked that ‘the dead do not bury themselves’ (Parker Pearson 1993: 203), but the significance of gendered agency in undertaking rites has been a neglected topic. The multiple sources of evidence available to historical archaeology permit us to extend the enquiry beyond the individual grave as a representation of the dead, to consider mortuary practice as a form of gendered agency among the living. By taking an inter-disciplinary approach to medieval burials, we can assess the meaning of the grave to the community of mourners. Funerary rites can be examined within the framework of family relationships and the gendered roles of grief. This paper presents new evidence for female agency in the medieval mortuary sphere, and argues particularly for the importance of mothers as family undertakers.

Archaeologists have often assumed that grave goods did not accompany later medieval burials, and that all medieval Christians were interred in simple shrouds, without elaboration of grave goods, coffins or grave memorials (O’Brien 1996: 161–2). The Anglo-Saxon tradition of furnished burial was abandoned during the 8th century, as the conversion to Christianity brought greater uniformity to burial practice; simplicity in death was intended to represent the equality of all Christian souls. It has been argued that Saxon women were active in promoting transitions to the new religion: first, they incorporated Christian symbolism in their repertoire of grave goods, and later they were amongst the earliest to choose unfurnished burial in a churchyard (Crawford 2003: 2, 9). There were exceptions to the rule of unfurnished interment, and the burials of high-ranking ecclesiastics continued to be marked by grave goods throughout the late Saxon period (Hadley 2001: 92-106).

Recent work in the fields of both gender archaeology and medieval studies has highlighted the significance of mothering as a productive social role (Wilkie 2003; Parsons and Wheeler 1996). To date, however, there has been no discussion of the potential of burial archaeology to address the place of mothering in mortuary rites, with female care-giving roles extending to their maintenance of the dead. It is not my intention to propose that maternal nurture and the experience of motherhood are universals (e.g. Chodorow 1978; Ruddick 1980). Instead, mothering is viewed as a role grounded in culturallyspecific practice (Scheper-Hughes 1992; Wilkie 2003), evaluated within the context of the life and death of the medieval Christian family, as evidenced through the burial record of 12th to 16th-century Britain.

Historians of medieval death have argued that by the 13th century, death had been removed from the family and community and had become the preserve of the clergy, as a class of professional undertakers. This view was first asserted by Philippe Ariès (1981), and has since been repeated as an historical maxim. For example, the art historian Paul Binski described medieval funerary rites as being dominated by monks:

Medieval Christian death

In essence this clerical domination of the rituals of remembrance amounted to an appropriation of rites by a class of specialized technocrats of death, and for the remainder of the Middle Ages this renunciation by society of rituals which formerly belonged within the family itself, to an impersonal group, remained normal (Binski 1996: 32–3).

According to medieval Christian belief, the dead continued to exist after expiry of the body; they resided in the liminal antechamber of Purgatory, awaiting full resolution at the Last Judgment. Recent historical research has emphasized that the medieval dead were a distinct social group, who continued to have ‘a significant social ‘presence’’ amongst the living (Gordon and Marshall 2000: 2). From the late 12th century, the religious belief in Purgatory had profound and lasting implications for social and economic relations between the living and the dead. This exchange has been characterized as a form of reciprocity or gift giving between the two communities (Geary 1994). The living

The prevailing interpretative models of medieval burial have been challenged by a recent study of 5,000 graves from monastic cemeteries in Britain, with a comparative sample of 3,000 burials from parish churches, cathedrals and Jewish cemeteries (Gilchrist and Sloane 2005). This reassessment has shown that while grave goods were not the norm in later medieval burial rites, there was increasing diversity in mortuary expression from the 12th century. New modes of burial were developed from the 12th and 13th centuries, in parallel with changing perceptions of religious and secular identity, and alongside the increasing emphasis on Purgatory. By c. 1100 the burials of priests and monks were accompanied 41

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES with women’s domestic work of weaving. For instance, a chalk example was carefully placed on the chest of a man buried in a lead coffin in the monastic cemetery of Stratford Langthorne (Essex), dated c. 1230 – 1350 (Barber et al 2004: 4.4). The lead coffin was a sealed context, so that the spindle whorl cannot be dismissed as a casual loss or residual artefact.

by chalices and patens, pectoral crosses and croziers, and religious corpses were wrapped in hides or linen shrouds, or buried in monastic habits. Cists and coffins were sometimes lined with lime or chalk, planks of wood, or head support stones. Within a century, the laity were adopting burial practices that had been initiated by the clergy. Between c. 1200–1300, interment in clothing and with jewellery became more common. Greater affluence and increased access to material culture were channelled into burial rites as a means of expressing growing social differentiation. Among these general patterns, we can discern the use of grave goods to mark more intimate social relations, and we can also reassess the active agents behind medieval undertaking. The visual culture of medieval death provides alternative insight to burial preparations that were completed in the home. Particularly relevant here are the Books of Hours that were used by the living to intercede on behalf of the souls of the dead in Purgatory. The miniature illustrations that marked the beginning of each Office of the Dead often included vignettes charting the stages of a funeral from the sickbed to the grave (Wieck 1999). They give insight to the sequence of preparations, the locale in which mortuary provisions took place, and the individuals who undertook them. From the Books of Hours, it is possible to identify a crucial moment in the funerary sequence at which mortuary rites were transferred from the family to the church. The pivotal point seems to have been the funeral procession itself. Before this, the women of the family washed the corpse and dressed it in clothing or sewed it into a shroud; once prepared, the body was displayed in the home on a bier or in a coffin. It may be suggested that items placed with the cadaver at this stage represent the choices and actions of the deceased’s family or community, and more particularly, of the women who prepared the corpse. In contrast, the preparation and furnishing of the grave was carried out within the more highly regulated context of the monastic or parish cemetery, the preserve of the clergy.

A more widespread practice was the ‘ash burial’: the laying of ash into the coffin, most likely before the body was placed into it. This material was not used for grave linings in the cemetery, but was exclusive to the domestic context where the body was prepared. Some 43 examples have been identified in England, and their distribution is principally urban and southeastern (Gilchrist and Sloane 2005: 120-23.). The rite was particularly well represented at the Black Death cemetery at East Smithfield, London (established in 1348), and at the later Cistercian cemetery of St Mary Graces overlying it (Grainger et al in prep). Ash was added to the coffins of the deceased of both sexes and all ages, but to date has not been linked with priests’ burials. The ash has been analysed scientifically in only four cases, but these reveal its origins in a domestic hearth or fireplace. The ash contains fragments of mammal bone, fish bone and shell, carbonized vegetables, burnt pottery and iron objects, and wood charcoal. The ash used to line coffins was derived from hearth rakings, and it may be argued that it was placed with the corpse as a symbol of the home and family – a source of comfort in the wretched place of Purgatory.1 The ash deposited in coffins may even represent the remains of a funeral feast held in the home, an essential part of the wake in which the deceased was remembered by friends and family. Documentary evidence is consistent in linking women in medieval society with food preparation in the home, with the open hearth at the centre of the house serving as their main work space (e.g. Hanawalt 1986). The placing of ash in the coffin seems to represent an extension of women’s maintenance of the hearth, an act linked with their position as family undertakers.

Medieval women as family undertakers

Nurturing the medieval dead

The reassessment of medieval burial evidence has challenged the dual assumptions that medieval graves were devoid of grave goods, and that they were prepared exclusively by male clergy as specialist undertakers. Many of the apotropaic items placed with the corpse were added when the body was washed and shrouded: for example, coins or stones placed in the mouth, crosses or bullae placed on the chest or in the hand, and padlocks placed near the pelvis (Gilchrist and Sloane 2005). From the visual evidence of the Books of Hours, it can be proposed that women added such items to the corpse during the preparation of the body in the home.

Practically and ideologically, medieval women were assigned the task of care-giver. Gender roles allotted women the maintenance of the home and family, and their particular religious vocations linked women with the extension of care to the wider community, through the distribution of food and nursing as a form of Christian charity. Nurturing was perceived by medieval people as a proactive and positive female mission, with the cult of the Virgin Mary emphasising the significance of Mary’s role as Christ’s mother in bringing forth Christianity. Indeed, the feminised symbolism of maternal nurture was adopted 1 This paper was delivered in November 2005. I argued subsequently that ash deposits in coffins dating to the period of the Black Death might be linked with a revival of popular sorcery that may have been intended to stop the ‘dangerous dead’ from walking (Gilchrist 2008 in press).

Certain materials placed in the coffin or grave are highly redolent of family involvement, and perhaps the active agency of women. The occurrence of spindle whorls in a mortuary context may be significant for their connection 42

R. GILCHRIST: NURTURING THE DEAD: MEDIEVAL WOMEN AS FAMILY UNDERTAKERS such associations, and the cultural value placed upon them, is culturally specific.

frequently in the writings of male religious figures (Parsons and Wheeler 1996: xii). Outside the family, the destitute, sick and dying sought refuge in medieval hospitals, where they were cared for by nursing sisters who had taken religious vows. These women tended the dying and the dead, taking responsibility for preparing corpses for burial and sewing the cadaver into a shroud (Rawcliffe 2003a: 19).

A mind: body duality was certainly promoted in medieval religious and medical discourses. Women were regarded as inherently more corporeal: their bodies were open and leaky vessels, prone to the sin of lust, and their humours were assessed as colder, wetter and more changeable than men’s, rendering their bodies in death more prone to decay and decomposition (Bynum 1995: 221). Women carried the legacy of Eve: her role in the Original Sin brought women the collective punishment of the pain of childbirth (Rawcliffe 2003b: 91). The female body was feared for this alleged connection between women and sin: priests and physicians avoided physical contact with females, and women were prohibited from approaching the most sacred spaces and objects of the church. A woman’s body was considered polluted after childbirth, and she had to undergo the purification of a formal ‘churching’ 40 days after the birth. If she died in childbirth, her body was considered to be contaminated by the unbaptised foetus. Infants who died unbaptised were regarded as unclean, and as fearful objects that might return from the dead (Shahar 1990: 51-2). It is usually accepted that by the later Middle Ages, unbaptised and stillborn infants were not permitted a grave in consecrated ground (ibid; Orme 2001: 124), and women who died in childbirth could not be buried inside a church, but only in the churchyard. The Council of Canterbury (1236) and the Council of Trèves (1310) decreed that it was unlawful to bury a woman until the foetus had been cut from her. In the 15th century, John Mirk’s manual for English parish priests instructed that ‘A woman that died in childing shall not be buried in church, but in churchyard, so that the child first be taken out of her and burial outwith churchyard’ (Erbe 1905: 298). In reality, however, few infants are likely to have died without an emergency baptism, and Mirk’s manual also anticipated that priests should instruct midwives in how this should be done.

The work of mourning was also gendered, and gestures of grief are highly feminised within medieval literature and visual representations (Vaught 2003: 4). The most common ‘gestures of despair’ were depicted in relation to the women who gathered at Christ’s crucifixion at Golgotha, remaining there after the male disciples had fled in fear (Mark 15: 40). The Virgin Mary is sometimes shown swooning, and Mary Magdalen weeps and tears her hair (Binski 1996: 52). Occasionally, we glimpse the archaeological vestiges of such mourning practices. A man in his 40s was buried at St Bees priory, Cumbria, in the 14th century, and the wrapping of his body in layers of waxed cloth and lead sheeting afforded exceptional preservation (O’Sullivan 1982). He was found with a tress of longer hair than his own wrapped around his neck, perhaps deposited in an act of grief. His burial vault was enlarged to take the burial of a woman at some later date, and it seems very likely that the tress of hair was placed by this female relative, perhaps his wife, daughter, or mother. Anthropologists have commented on the striking crosscultural recurrence of women with grief rituals. In many traditional societies, women prepare the corpse for burial, they join in collective weeping, and they display mourning by cutting their hair, wearing black, covering themselves with ashes, depriving themselves of food or sanitation, and mutilating their bodies (Bloch 1982; Scheper-Hughes 1992; Metcalf and Huntingdon 1991). An influential essay by Maurice Bloch explored the link between women and death as a pervasive structural opposition that assigns women the cultural responsibility for exorcising the pollution of death. By absorbing the tainted aspects of death and decomposition, it is proposed that women allow the remainder of the community to focus on the transcendental, supernatural aspects of death as a form of spiritual re-creation (Bloch 1982: 226). Bloch’s argument was typical of much structuralist anthropology of the 1970s that attempted to explain why power relations typically privilege male authority and create female subordination. In common even with feminist anthropology of the period (e.g. Ortner 1974), Bloch suggested a pervasive binary opposition between women and men, flesh and spirit, pollution and purity; implying that women are universally perceived in terms of the polluted body. Structuralist models have been criticised for their tendency to essentialise male and female into binaries that emphasise rather than explain sexual difference, and which limit the perception of gender to binary structures (Gilchrist 1999: 32-36). While it is evident that women cross-culturally seem to be linked with rites of death and mourning, the meaning of

The evident misogyny of the medieval church was tempered by veneration of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalen, who provided positive images of holy women integrated with the corporeal practices of birth and death. The Marian cult was one of motherhood, showing Mary pregnant or nursing the Christ child – in effect nurturing the embryonic church. From the 14th century, the imagery of the Pietà depicts her as a grieving mother, cradling the broken body of Christ (Marks 2004: 123). In contrast, the iconography of Mary Magdalen suggests a cult of female mourning. She is depicted in ritualised gestures at the base of the Crucifixion, touching Christ’s feet with her hair, weeping, and throwing her arms up in despair (Haskins 1993: 202-4). The holy women are given a central role in the gospel accounts of the Resurrection: the three Marys visit the tomb to anoint Christ’s body with spices but they find the stone rolled away and the tomb empty. Magdalen is the first to recognise the risen Christ, becoming the first apostle of the Christian church. Both the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalen held a special 43

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES Some are likely to have been talismans that held a broadly protective purpose, such as a pilgrim’s badge that was buried with a child aged 7-10 years, near the south porch of St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury (Sherlock and Woods 1988: 66). Further examples include a jet pendant cross, placed on the breast of an infant buried in the nave of the Augustinian priory church of St Mary Gisborough, Cleveland (Heslop 1995: 93-4), and a cross recovered from near the mouth of a child, buried in the church of Pontefract Cluniac priory, Yorkshire (Bellamy 1965: 93). In the location of burials, the positioning of the body and the addition of apotropaic grave goods, it seems that the women who prepared corpses for burial were particularly concerned to offer additional protection to the young (see Gilchrist 2008 in press). Such practices may be regarded as an extension of women’s use of folk remedies in healing, which sometimes had chilling links to the grave. For example, a charm to induce a safe labour required the pregnant woman to take earth from the grave of one of her own dead children, to wrap it in wool and to sell it (Shinners 1997: 282-3).

place in the medieval iconography of death, and these biblical archetypes provided highly charged models of women nurturing the dead. Medieval mothering and mortuary rites In their roles as mothers and midwives, medieval women confronted death all too often. Infant mortality may have been as high as 50-60%, although infants and children are under-represented in excavated medieval cemeteries. Historians once argued that the high mortality rate prevented parents from forming a significant emotional attachment to their young children (Ariès 1965), although this view has been challenged by more recent research (Shahar 1990; Orme 2001). Archaeological evidence suggests that the emotional bond with infants was intense, evidenced by the special treatment that their burials received. Theirs is the only category of medieval burial to be marked by a special body position. The standard position was extended and supine, but infants were regularly placed curled on their sides, in a natural sleeping position (Gilchrist and Sloane 2005: 155-6). Their graves ranged from simple interment in shrouds, to the more conspicuous investment of burial within an individual wooden coffin or stone cist. Perhaps the most evocative is a single infant buried in a wickerwork basket, in the north transept of the church of the Cistercian monastery at Stratford Langthorne, the only infant in the entire monastic cemetery (Barber et al 2004). Infant and child graves are more often located in the western region of the church and churchyard, in both parish and monastic contexts (Gilchrist and Sloane 2005: 67). At Brighton Hill South, a rural parish church cemetery in Hampshire, excavations to the northwest of the nave recovered predominantly infant and juvenile burials (Fasham and Keevil 1995). Small numbers of infant and children’s burials were excavated at St Margaret in Combusto, Norwich, found near the western end of the church (Ayres 1990: 59). Monastic examples include Aberdeen Whitefriars, where infant burials clustered in the west end of the church, and particularly along its north wall, inserted partly over the footings of the wall (Stones 1989); and at SS Peter and Paul, Taunton, where 20 infant burials were excavated from a lay cemetery to the southwest of the presumed location of the church (Leach 1984). This zoning is significant when considered in terms of the sacred topography of the church. They were interred in the area associated with the font, so that the efficacy of baptism could continue to protect their vulnerable souls during the dangerous journey through Purgatory (Gilchrist and Sloane 2005: 223).

The central role of women in undertaking may explain why certain ecclesiastical principles were apparently not observed in practice. In particular, the directive to separate the mother who died in childbirth from her stillborn child (discussed above), was evidently not always followed. Examples of women buried with foetus in utero have been recorded at the Hospitaller preceptory at Clerkenwell, London (Sloane and Malcolm 2004: 185), and at Guildford Dominican friary (Poulton and Woods 1984). At Hartlepool Franciscan friary (Daniels in prep), a newborn was laid between the knees of the young mother; while at Hull Augustinian friary, the coffined burial of an adult female contained within it the tiny coffin of a neonate (Evans forthcoming). It may be that medieval monks approached such deaths with a greater degree of humanity than the written sources suggest. Alternatively, they were unaware that the foetus remained within the shrouded or coffined burial. Male religious would have been reluctant to handle the remains of a female body that was doubly polluted by childbirth. It is likely in such instances that the mother’s corpse was prepared for burial by the midwife, a woman trusted both by the clergy and the local community (Rawcliffe 2003b: 96). Perhaps surprising in a medieval context is the evidence for the burial of infants outside the consecrated ground of the church or churchyard, and instead within the domestic space of houses. Infant remains have been recovered from the medieval English villages including Riplingham, Gomeldon and Thrislington, the last recovered from the upper fill of a well (Astill 1988: 58). From an urban context, two infant burials have been recovered from 12th-century houses in Dover. The houses in Townwall Street were part of a poor fishing district, and two contained graves or pits located next to walls, containing the burial of a foetal or newborn child. In both cases, the graves were sealed by later floor levels, confirming that the houses remained in use (Anderson and Parfitt 1998:

Infants and children were buried with a considerable number of the surviving objects that may be interpreted as having been added during the process of washing and shrouding the body, in the context of the home. While adults may have chosen whether particular artefacts accompanied their burials, the grave goods of young children reflect the agency of parents or guardians, and comment on the relationship between the generations. 44

R. GILCHRIST: NURTURING THE DEAD: MEDIEVAL WOMEN AS FAMILY UNDERTAKERS pollution, to medieval women they brought forth the Christian church and community. Birth and death were the preserves of women, and these arenas were championed by the powerful figures of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalen. Popular devotion to these holy women extended the Christian concept of female nurture to caring for the dead. Undertaking was a valued expression of female agency, through which medieval women continued to tend the bodies of their loved ones in birth, life and death.

123). Not all of these domestic interments can be dismissed as being those of unbaptised or stillborn infants. At the medieval village of Upton in Gloucestershire, an infant aged between 3-6 months was buried beneath the floor of a long-house, located in the service or lower end. The house was dated to the mid or later 13th century, and the floor of the service end had been cut into a bed of hard rock. The southwest corner of the house had a clay floor reinforced by stone slabs. This sealed the grave of the infant, which was associated with two objects: a spindle whorl and a whelk shell. As discussed above, the spindle whorl is symbolic of the home, and particularly of weaving as women’s work. The shell is also significant, since it was not a domestic species, and was therefore an item which may have been specially collected or retained for use as a grave good (Rahtz 1969: 86-8). This child was certainly old enough to have been baptised in the church, and we must conclude that a deliberate choice was made to bury the infant in the home. Rather than reflecting surreptitious or callous disposal of an unwanted child, this domestic burial seems to stress the close bonds of home and family.

Despite the cross-cultural frequency with which women are linked with care for the dead, their responses to death are diverse and historically contingent. High infant mortality was confronted routinely by medieval women, just as it remains in many regions today. The anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes (1992) examined the impact of child death on mothers in contemporary Brazil, some of whom distance themselves from ailing children, and may accept the death of sickly children as a blessing to be celebrated. These children die without sin or blame and it is believed that their salvation is therefore assured. Their bodies are dressed and displayed as ‘little angels’, transitional objects that allow mothers to ‘let go’. In contrast, medieval mothers in Britain prepared the bodies of their dead infants to sleep peacefully in the grave, curled on their sides; and they continued to watch over and protect their children through the perils of Purgatory, by securing grave-sites near the font, or placing talismans in the shroud. At least one mother in the medieval village of Upton was not ready to ‘let go’ of her baby, and a grave was prepared beneath the floor of her home. Tokens of a mother’s grief were placed with the infant corpse: the keepsake of a special shell, and a spindle whorl, a symbol of her everyday work in the home.

Conclusion: a mother’s grief? The visual evidence of medieval Books of Hours is consistent in depicting women in the context of the home, washing and shrouding the corpses of deceased family members in preparation for their burial. Similarly, in representations of medieval hospitals it is the nursing sisters who are shown sewing the cadavers into their shrouds (Rawcliffe 2003a). Previous scholarship on medieval death concluded that mortuary preparations were the exclusive preserve of the male clergy (e.g. Ariès 1981; Geary 1994; Binski 1996). In contrast, it is proposed here that medieval women played a key role in the first stage of the funerary rite, before the corpse was removed from the home in a procession to the church. Archaeological evidence suggests that at this preliminary stage, symbols of the home were sometimes deposited in the coffin, most poignantly in the form of ash from hearth rakings. Talismans were also placed within some shrouds, most notably those of infants and children, whose corpses were also marked out for special treatment in the location of their graves and the placement of the body. Together, this evidence presents a strong case for the role of women in family undertaking, perhaps as an extension of the social role of mothering. The treatment of the corpses of women who died in childbirth also suggests a previously unrecognised role for midwives as specialist undertakers of mothers and stillborns.

The connection between women, death and grieving does not elicit universal emotions or meanings. In the poorest regions of contemporary Brazil, some mothers face child death stoically, while in medieval Britain, they seem to have extended their nurturing to children in the grave, perhaps in a strategy to aid them in Purgatory. The icons of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalen supported a gender ideology that placed women at the core of medieval death rituals. In their preparation of bodies for burial, medieval women expressed their grief; these women made choices as undertakers that emphasise the Christian female vocation of care-giving, whether as wife, midwife, nurse or mother. Acknowledgements This paper followed from a joint research project with Barney Sloane on medieval monastic burial, a four-year collaboration between the University of Reading and the Museum of London Archaeology Service. The original project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and published with a grant from English Heritage.

The medieval case provides another example of the crosscultural tendency for women to be linked with death and grieving. Rather than representing a universal connection between women and pollution (Bloch 1982), contextual analysis reveals an integral link between women’s roles in mothering and their activities as family undertakers. The corporeal processes of birth and death were regarded ambivalently: to the clergy they carried the overtones of 45

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES Evans, D. H., (ed.) (in preparation), Excavations at the Austin friary, Hull, 1994–9 (Hull: East Riding Archaeologist).

References Anderson, T. and Parfitt, K., 1998, “Two unusual burials from medieval Dover”, International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 8, pp. 123-124.

Fasham, P. and Keevil, G., 1995, Brighton Hill South: an Iron Age farmstead and deserted medieval village at Hatch Warren, Hampshire, Wessex Archaeology Report 7.

Astill, G., 1988, “Rural settlement: the toft and the croft”, in G. Astill and A. Grant (eds) The Countryside of Medieval England, (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 36-61.

Geary, P.J., 1994, Living with the dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press).

Ariès, P., 1965, Centuries of childhood (New York: Jonathon Cape).

Gilchrist, R., 1999, Gender and archaeology. Contesting the past (London: Routledge).

Ariès, P., 1981, The hour of our death (Harmondsworth: Penguin).

Gilchrist, R., 2008 (in press), “Magic for the dead? The archaeology of magic in later medieval burials”, Medieval Archaeology 52.

Arnold, B. and Wicker, N.L., 2001, “Introduction”, in B. Arnold and N.L. Wicker (eds) Gender and the archaeology of death, (Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press), pp. vii-xxi.

Gilchrist, R. and Sloane, B., 2005, Requiem: the medieval monastic cemetery in Britain (London: Museum of London Archaeology Service Monograph).

Ayres, B., 1990, Norwich. Current Archaeology 122, pp. 56-59.

Gordon, B. and Marshall, P., (eds) 2000, The place of the dead: Death and remembrance in late medieval and early modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Barber, B., Cheew, S. and White, W., 2004, The Cistercian abbey of St Mary Stratford Langthorne, Essex: archaeological excavations for the London Underground Limited Jubilee Line Extension Project (London: Museum of London Archaeology Service Monograph 18).

Grainger, I., Hawkins, D. and Waldron, T. (in preparation), The Black Death cemetery, East Smithfield, London (London: Museum of London Archaeology Service Monograph).

Bellamy, C.V., 1965, Pontefract priory excavations 1957–6 (Thoresby Society Publications 49). Binski, P., 1996, Medieval death: representation (London: British Museum).

ritual

Hadley, D.M., 2001, Death in medieval England (Stroud: Tempus).

and

Hanawalt, B. A., 1986, The ties that bound: peasant families in medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Bloch, M., 1982, “Death, women and power”, in M. Bloch and J. Parry (eds), Death and the regeneration of life, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), pp. 211230.

Haskins, S. 1993, Mary Magdalen (London: Harper Collins).

Bynum, C., 1995, The Resurrection of the body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York: Columbia University Press).

Heslop, D. H., 1995, “Excavations within the church at the Augustinian Priory of Gisborough, Cleveland”, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 67, pp. 51–125.

Chodorow, N., 1978, The reproduction of mothering: psychoanalysis and the sociology of gender (Berkeley: University of California Press).

Leach, P., (ed.) 1984, The Archaeology of Taunton (Gloucester: Western Archaeological Trust Excavation Monograph 8).

Crawford, S., 2003, “Anglo-Saxon women, furnished burial and the church”, in D. Wood (ed.), Women and religion in medieval England (Oxford: Oxbow Books).

Marks, R., 2004, Image and devotion in late medieval England (Stroud: Sutton).

Daniels, R., (in preparation), The Franciscan Friary of Hartlepool.

Metcalf, P. and Huntingdon, R., 1991, Celebrations of death: the anthropology of mortuary ritual (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Erbe, T., 1905, “Mirk’s Festial”, Early English Text Society Extra Series, 96.

O’Brien, E., 1996, “Archaeological study of church cemeteries: past, present and future”, in J. Blair and C. Pyrah (eds), Church archaeology: research directions for 46

R. GILCHRIST: NURTURING THE DEAD: MEDIEVAL WOMEN AS FAMILY UNDERTAKERS Sloane, B. and Malcolm, G., 2004, Excavations at the Priory of the Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, Clerkenwell (London: Museum of London Archaeology Service Monograph 20).

the future, Council for British Archaeology Research Report 104, pp. 159–166. Orme, N., 2001, Medieval Children (Yale: Yale University Press).

Stones, J. A., (ed.) 1989, Three Scottish Carmelite friaries: Excavations at Aberdeen, Linlithgow and Perth 1980–86. Edinburgh.

Ortner, S., 1974, “Is female to male as nature is to culture?”, in M. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere (eds.), Woman, Culture and Society, (Stanford: Stanford University Press), pp. 67-88.

Vaught, J. C., 2003, “Introduction”, in J.C. Vaught and L. Dickson (eds.). Grief and gender 900–1700. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 1-14.

O’Sullivan, D., 1982, “St Bees man: the discovery of a preserved medieval body in Cumbria” Proceedings of the Palaeopathological Association 4th Annual Meeting, pp. 171-177.

Wieck, R.S., 1999, “The death desired: Books of Hours and the medieval funeral”, in E.E. Dubruck and B.I. Gusick (eds), Death and dying in the Middle Ages. (New York: Peter Lang), pp. 431–476.

Parker Pearson, M., 1993, “The powerful dead: relationships between the living and the dead”, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, pp. 203-229.

Wilkie, L. A., 2003, The archaeology of mothering: An African American midwife’s tale (London: Routledge).

Parsons, J.C. and Wheeler, B., 1996, “Introduction: medieval mothering, medieval motherers”, in J.C. Parsons and B. Wheeler (eds), Medieval mothering. (New York: Garland), pp. ix-xvii. Poulton, R., and Woods, H., 1984, Excavations on the site of the Dominican Friary at Guildford in 1974 and 1978 (Guildford: Research Volume of the Surrey Archaeological Society 9). Rahtz, P., 1969, “Upton, Gloucestershire, 1964-1968”, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 88, pp. 74-126. Rawcliffe, C., 2003a, “The seventh comfortable work: charity and mortality in the medieval hospital”, Medicina & Storia III(6), pp. 11-35. Rawcliffe, C., 2003b, “Women, childbirth and religion in later Medieval England”, in D. Wood (ed.) Women and religion in medieval England. (Oxford: Oxbow Books), pp. 91-117. Ruddick, S., 1980, “Maternal thinking”, Feminist Studies 6(2), pp. 342-367. Scheper-Hughes, N., 1992, Death without weeping: the violence of everyday life in Brazil, (Berkeley: University of California Press). Shahar, S., 1990, Childhood in the Middle Ages (London: Routledge). Sherlock, D.A. and Woods, H., 1988, St Augustine’s Abbey: report on excavations 1960–78 (Gloucester: Kent Archaeological Society Monograph series 4). Shinners, J., (ed.) 1997, Medieval Popular Religion: a Reader (Broadview Press: Peterborough Ontario).

47

7. Maintenance activities in the funerary record. The case of Iberian cemeteries Antonia García-Luque Carmen Rísquez Centro Andaluz de Arqueología Ibérica, Universidad de Jaén, Spain Introduction

Maternity: a lowly represented activity in the funeral context

Traditional research on the Iberian culture (corresponding to the local name for some Iron Age populations in the Iberian Peninsula) has usually paid little attention to the analyses of women’s graves. The relevant role of women in the systems of power and in the world of symbolic ritual, shown by the great wealth of some female graves of the elite, has been likewise overlooked. However, we are convinced that this is a fundamental aspect to reach a better understanding of the Iberian world. It seems to us that the archeological evidence of some of these tombs indicates not only that these women enjoyed a high level of “wealth,” but that they played fundamental social roles in their communities. And we would like to stress this fact instead of explaining this high level of “wealth” by only associating them with powerful men.

One of the fundamental roles of women throughout history has been the procreation and socialization of their offspring. To analyze maternity through the Iberian funerary record, we have studied double graves corresponding to women and infants/newborns, usually interpreted as mother and child. We have also studied funerary material culture associated to motherhood such as askos or baby’s bottles, rattles, etc. and kourotrophos terracottae. Iberian research has usually paid little attention to the study of infancy, although we are recently witnessing the development and growth of the so-called Archaeology of the Childhood (Gusi, 1970, 1989, 1992, 1993; San Nicolás y Ruiz Bremón, 2000; Chapa, 2001-2002, 2003, e. p.; De Miguel, 2005). Children’s burials are usually located in the domestic spaces and , therefore, linked to the female sphere and, most probably, to the maternal sphere.

In this paper, we will study and analyze the roles of women and maintenance activities using combined evidence from funerary grave goods, bones analyses, space readings, and symbolic interpretations of some funerary contexts. Thus, and from a gender perspective, we will study those aspects of the funerary record that can provide information about the status and power of buried women and about their responsibilities in the maintenance of the social order. In addition, we will consider these women in relation to motherhood and, most specifically, we will examine the case of Grave 200 in Cigarralejo (Jaén, Spain).

Iberian cremations of newborns and infants have also been documented in different cemeteries, although in very low numbers. They are usually in the company of adults, mostly females. Less frequently, we also find male interments with infantile cremations. Not only these burials are exceptional, but they do not follow an apparently standardized behavior pattern; each one of these graves shows differences with respect to the burial typology, the composition of grave-goods, the locations within the funeral enclosures, and the ritual practices.

Iberian Culture encompasses a period of 700 years (sixth century B.C. to first century A.D.) in the Mediterranean area of the Iberian Peninsula and the South of France. The advent of this new culture marked the end of the prehistoric cultures in this geographical area and the consolidation of social hierarchy and aristocratic power.

Two of these tombs are grave 140 of El Cigarralejo (El Cigarralejo, Mula, Murcia, 350-325 b. C.) and ustrinum 11/48 from Castellones de Céal (Jaén). Both of them had remarkable funerary furniture. The first one contained the remains of a young woman inside an ovoid urn, into which a newborn was introduced later on. Among the findings there were 19 Spindle whorls of varied forms, which bestow an outstanding social position to the woman buried there, and a ritual double vase of small size, rarely seen in this necropolis (Cuadrado, 1987). In the second case, the grave of a inhumated newborn was found to be associated with the ustrinum of a young woman (18–20 years), who was incinerated outside the cremation area. In this case, the only element of the funerary offering was a circular ceramic object. The fact that they are not buried together made us consider several hypotheses. On the one hand, mother and son could have

In this paper, we will focus in what is called the middle period of the Iberian culture (from the end of the fifth century B.C. to the beginning of the third century B.C.), which coincides with the biggest development and consolidation of the local aristocracies. Iberian cemeteries contain only a very restricted percentage of the actual Iberian population, since burials, usually following the cremation rite, were restricted to the social elite. In this paper we will show how maintenance activities were also part of the ideological program (values, rites and beliefs) that inspired these burials.

49

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES wealth of the funerary grave-goods. However, we do believe that it may be the rank or the authority of the young/adult women buried here, perceived as the mothers, which justifies the interment of the infants and newborns.

died at the same time in a premature childbirth. For this reason the body of the mother would have not bee cremated in the habitual zone, and the baby was inserted later close to the place of cremation, according to the rite of the newborns. On the other hand, the mother could have probably died during childbirth while the son survived for some months. After his/her death, the rest of the family must have made the decision to bury him/her close to the the mother, but not with her.

Another possible way of analyzing motherhood with respect to the Iberian funerary contexts is the study of materials associated with it, for example, the terracotta kourotrophos documented in some graves (tomb 341 and 343 of necropolis of Cabecico del Tesoro, the L-127A and the F-100 of la Albufereta, and in the necropolis of the Puig dels Molins). In the necropolis of Cabecico del Tesoro, Murcia, these pieces (300–250 B.C.) were found to be very similar in terms of typology and stylistics. Probably, these terracottae were deposited here because of the female gender of the tomb, thus establishing an entailment with the sex of these protective goddesses – companions in life and death (García Cano y Page del Pozo, 2004).

There are also differences in the ritual practice when the two of them were cremated, as can be observed, for example, if we compare grave 38 of El Turó del Dos Pins (Cabrera de Mar, Barcelona, second half of the third century B.C.) and tomb 24S from La Senda (Coimbra del Barranco Ancho, Murcia, second quarter of the fourth century B.C.). In El Turó del Dos Pins, the skeletal remains of an adolescent woman and an infant of a few months were placed in the same cinerary urn, an Iberian amphora (García Roselló, 1993). However, in the tomb of La Senda, the skeletal remains corresponding to a sexually indefinite adult/adolescent and an infant of 3–4 years were placed directly in the niche, together with outstanding grave-goods (García Cano, 1997). We presume that these differences may be owing to the geographical variations in cultural traditions.

These kourotrophos (Fig. 1) represent a woman seated on a throne, with long braids and looking forward. From her back, a golden veil floats similar to a divine halo. This divine atmosphere of prostration is emphasized by the dress that seems to float, maybe because of the wind. On her lap sits a baby whom she nurses. The hairdo of these women attracted our attention, because the braids have traditionally been interpreted as indicating young and adolescent women and initiation rituals. In that case, we could be facing the only Iberian iconographical evidence of the very young mothers.

The above-mentioned examples exhibit the varied range of different rituals in the Iberian cemeteries, which makes difficult to find an only explanation for the double burials. Only a separate analysis of each one of them, in their own geographic and temporary context, can shed some light on their understanding.

Nevertheless, we believe that the braids, as an isolated formal element considered outside archaeological context, are neither a determining nor a distinctive attribute of any age group or any type of rite. For instance, stone sculptures documented in religious contexts (offering lady of el Cerro de los Santos) show a similar hairdo but attires and ornaments more typical of older woman. In the case of the necropolis of la Albufereta, where the plaque of tomb F-100 was found, there were also attributes of an adult woman.

Besides, in La Senda, it was possible to differentiate two independent groups of burials, which seem to be separated according to the gender of the deceased. Tombs 37S and 41S, located in the eastern area, are the most ancient (first quarter of the fourth century B. C.), and they both correspond to women. Tomb 24S stands out from the Eastern group due to the wealth of its mortuary offerings (abundant Attic pottery, local ceramics, a bone plate and a pin, a gold and a bronze ring, and 2 iron hairpins). The jewels were, without doubt, symbols of wealth and power, indicating the status of the person who had worn them. It is uncommon to find gold in Iberian necropolis, since this metal can be stored and easily reused. However, in La Senda, another tomb, grave 35S, very close to 24S, also contained this metal, which clearly proves the high status and prestige of the women buried there.

As paleoanthropological studies could no be carried out in these graves, the only element to ascribe sex was the funerary offering. According to this evidence, these are female burials, probably of young women with whom a sacred kourotrophos was buried for protective purposes. Or, they could be interments of infants of high status to which these pieces of art were introduced, which can be understood as a symbolic and ideological extension of the everyday maternal care in the afterlife. We should not forget that, previously to the introduction of paleoanthropological analyses, the only element used to ascribe sex was the funerary offering. Later on it was seen that goods traditionally interpreted as females (spindle whorls, ornaments, tokens, etc.) were also deposited in child burials.

As we have seen, neither the type of the rite practiced in case of the infants (inhumation or cremation), nor the age of the buried people can be a determining factor in the process of establishing a burial organization in this type of interments. We observed a variety of ritual conduct, demonstrated fundamentally by the difference in the

50

A. GARCÍA-LUQUE AND C. RISQUEZ: MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES IN THE FUNERARY RECORD?: THE CASE OF… The introduction of this type of item with maternal iconography inside the graves can be interpreted in different ways On the one hand, as an initiation rite of the transition into the other world, so that the dead would be like a newborn into the new life represented by the afterlife, and the divinity in charge of taking care of him and feeding him in this new life (Almagro-Gorbea, 1980, Olmos, 1992). On the other hand, the breastfeeding can symbolize the transmission of life to the other world (Blech, 1997), and so the tomb is understood as an underground path of initiation. Finally, we presume that by inserting these kourotrophos inside the tombs, without previous intention of being publicly exposed, one could try to establish a link or an ideological and symbolic association between the domestic space and the sacred area of the afterlife. It would represent an extension of the everyday, earthly, maternal care to the care of the dead. We would like to emphasize once more that these terracotta appear mainly in the female graves. An interpretation of the maintenance activities. Tomb 200 of the necropolis of El Cigarralejo Graves 200 and 227 from Cigarralejo (400-350 B.C.) are considered princely tombs because of their typology and the wealth of its material culture. According to the gravegoods, both graves were identified by Cuadrado (1987) as couples’ burials (woman–man). They both occupy a privileged and distinguished place in the necropolis. Tomb 200 is slightly above tomb 277, which probably indicates its later construction and the family filum. Both graves commemorate the founder lineage, situating themselves as a reference for the further generations.

FIG. 1. Kourotrophos from Tomb 341 in the necropolis of Cabecico del Tesoro (García Cano and Page del Pozo, 2004; Olmos et alii, 1999) In the necropolis of La Albufereta, in the tomb L-127-A, one kourotrophos was documented, and in the F-100 tomb, a standing woman holding a boy on her left arm and a dove, baby’s bottle (?) in her right hand. In the kourotrophos figure, the hairdo was unrecognizable owing to its state of preservation; it was even impossible to determine whether they were braids. We could only make some conjectures about the possibility of the sculpture being one of a young mother, similar to those documented in Cabecico del Tesoro. The sculpture from F-100 tomb is commonly interpreted as a goddess associated with fertility, fundamentally because of the dove that she has in one of her hands, which is a sacred symbol in the Iberian. In this sense, it is important to mention that there are tombs in which askos with the form of this bird, which have been interpreted as possible baby’s bottles (grave 70 of El Poblado), have been documented.

These couple’s tombs were of paramount importance in the reproduction of the social system and in the construction of the identity of both the family groups and the women who were part of the aristocratic structure (Ruiz Rodríguez and Molinos, 2005; Rísquez and García Luque, 2007; Ruiz Rodríguez, Rísquez and Molinos, forthcoming). Women had a direct control over the family structure, for instance in prenuptial pacts, over social bonds and over the reinforcement of economic activities. Besides, women were also important receivers of luxury goods, as well as producers of certain goods that could convey them an important role in commercial transactions. The place where these tombs were situated conferred them an important symbolic value and highlighted their social status. Besides, it seems to us that there was also a willingness to emphasize the specific functions associated to such social status. In this sense, we have to emphasize that tomb 200 is especially remarkable for the abundant elements related to the textile practice. It is true that the deposition of textile items and products had a symbolic meaning in the Iberian World. For instance, fabrics could symbolize a permanent value after death, a lack of permanence, or the thread that still unites the dead with the afterlife. As indicated by Izquierdo, it could be a part of the “fabric-destiny, fabric–memory” symbolism

The use of the baby’s bottle is widely documented in the Greek world. However, in the Iberian culture, we have scarce evidence of it. One of the examples is the previously mentioned case of the baby’s bottle found in the department 14 of el Puntal dels Llops, whose real function is unknown (Bonet and Mata, 2002).

51

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES the house, by women of somewhat inferior rank. Weaving, which involves technical skills, appears to be a task of an elevated social rank and, therefore, is reserved for the mater familias. The tintinnabulo or pendant from the degli Ori de Bolonia tomb (7th century B.C.) also illustrates the sequential process of the domestic wool production, which should be interpreted in a double sense: the technical one and the status it entails. First, the volute of the combed wool was produced, and in this scene two women appear, the bobbin is spun by only one standing woman of greater size, which according to Torelli may indicate her higher rank, followed by the preparation of woolen yarn balls. Second, we find two women, the one on the left of a throne, indicating a higher rank, and the one on the right, a helper, indicating an inferior status. And finally, in the fabric with a vertical loom, a woman brings the wool to weave to another woman sitting on a throne, who would collect it and perform the most prestigious task of all. This piece, of doubtless ideological meaning, describes the domestic activity related to the preparation of wool and fabric.

known in the old Mediterranean world (Izquierdo, 2001: 299). The spindle whorls may recall the woman who has completely devoted her life to looking after the house, since the tasks of spinning and weaving were considered paradigms of the honest woman, being connected with transit rites, mainly marriage and death. But the presence of 57 spindle whorls and the bobbin in tomb 200 needs not only to be interpreted in terms of their symbolical meaning. In fact, we think that they represent the remains of a vertical loom, as indicated by Cuadrado (1987) or Iniesta, Page and García Cano (1987). Also, the presence of some wooden elements in the laminae may correspond, as indicated by Alfaro, to the coils/spools in which the finished threads might have been coiled and deposited in the wicker baskets seen in this tomb. Furthermore, Alfaro explained how these elements could be attributed to this purpose and not simply exist as furniture items. This type of wood obtained from boxwood and olive tree, being very hard, is considered appropriate for these types of instruments that must be very smooth to prevent the thread from getting tangled (Alfaro, 1984: 77); however, we could also interpret it as the possible bobbin parts, because of the parallels that we observed (Wild 1988:26) (Fig. 2).

We can find one of the clearest examples of this process in the group of red figures, which is in the New York Metropolitan Museum, attributed to the painter of Amasis. Following Lissarrague’s description (2000), we again observed the complete process of wool fabrics manufacture. Nine women divided into four groups work on the wool, and some spin it. Following this last image, we can also relate a set of 10 bronze weights of truncated cone found in tomb 200 with the textile activiy, which could be symbolically related to the weight of the wool. As stated by Grau and Moratalla (2002–2003: 50), the weights have implicit economic and political significance, as they respond to the own necessities of advanced social systems that consider trading as its fundamental economic activity. It is clear that its incorporation into the funerary world reinforces its symbolic character, but, together with the rest of the evidence that we have described, we obtain a set that is more functional than symbolic.

In this context, we also found a possible scraper together with two perforated bone plaques, which are related to the textile activity and could be a part of a small loom (Ruano and Montero, 1989). Adjacent to these items, there were wooden plates that could possibly be a part of a loom of plates, well known in the world of textile production (Fig. 3). It is interesting to note that in this case, the plates were 3 and 3.5 cm long and a little more than 1 mm thick, which implies that the person who handled them was an expert (Alfaro, 1984). We also found the presence of bronze needles and a significant number of bone pins, some of which could have been used as awls. In addition to these tools, the final products (fabrics) were also present in the tomb. These findings prove an important development of the textile work, including the wool work, a fabric that was also found in this tomb.

Similarly, we could associate the important number of knucklebones recovered, nearly 300, with this process. Although they have been traditionally considered as objects for gambling, such a big amount may also be related to another type of activity. Probably, as indicated by Cuadrado (1987), they are related to the accounting system related to the textile activity described.

Although the Iberian art has not left us any complete image that show the development of this process, we can resort to some of the references we have from the Etruscan or the Greek culture. First is from the throne of Verucchio found in tomb 89 from the middle of the seventh century B.C. First, a dual scene is presented: two standing women with a bobbin in one hand and two women seated together with a very high vertical loom. The three following scenes, read one after another, show the complete process of wool acquisition and elaboration, reconstructed in a sequence that marks the hierarchy of spaces within the house. The first activities are those made in the most external spaces, in the waiting room of

Taking into account all these elements together, in spite of their clear symbolism, we cannot overlook the fact that they were selected to be deposited to manifest the importance of an activity, the textile production, related to the woman buried there.

52

A. GARCÍA-LUQUE AND C. RISQUEZ: MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES IN THE FUNERARY RECORD?: THE CASE OF…

FIG. 2. Roman spindles form different European sites (1), spindle with other indeterminate elements from Tomb 200 in El Cigarralejo (2). (Wild, 1988; Cuadrado, 1987)

FIG. 3. Grave goods related to textile production from Tomb 200 in El Cigarralejo (Cuadrado, 1987)

53

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES Also, the importance of the textile is additionally highlighted by the presence of the remains of different fabrics of vegetal as well as animal origin, which have been preserved through carbonization in the pyre (Cuadrado, 1987: 103). Indeed, the studies by Hundt and Alfaro (1984) illustrated the variety of the fabrics presented. Some of them were made with loom plates, like the ones that appear in the same tomb, resulting in items made of wool, a material used for the fabrication of capes and tunics, and also items made of linen, some of them being very fine, almost transparent, probably veils. FIG. 4. Pottery grave goods from Tomb 200, El Cigarralejo (Cuadrado, 1987)

This even allows us to indicate the presence of some of the cloth items that were found in the tomb, such as tunics, veils, and capes. The importance given to the final product of the textile activity, the manufacture of pieces of clothing, among others, is also made clear by the important number of buckles that were found. The different size of buckles also indicates their use; those of greater size were designed for heavier and larger clothes, such as the capes, and the smaller ones for the different tunics. We cannot ignore the fact that the women of high social status wore several tunics, one on top of the other as we can see on some of the better-known sculptures – such as la Dama de Baza. In addition, we have the related metal elements and accessories: what could be a metallic part of a belt and a pectoral medallion or a hairpin, a bone buckle, necklaces of different types and materials, a necklace with 35 bone elements, 4 rings and torques.

On the other hand, we also found a significant number of red glazed pottery related with beverages and rituals, most probably banquets. The funeral banquet gathered together close relatives and clients who ate and drank to honor the deceased, also present in a symbolic way. These ceramics, which were found in great number in the tomb, were 5 pathers of different sizes, 7 cotiles, the greatest one being 15.6 cm in diameter, and the rest between 11 and 12 cm. These were drinking glasses adjacent to the Kantharos, from which we found 2 complete and 1 fragmented cup of attic import, most widely used amongst the Iberian populations of the Murcia zone, in which the necropolis of El Cigarralejo lies. They were glasses used for the wine-drinking ritual. We must also draw attention to the two red ceramic kylix (Fig. 5), mainly because of the portraits they contain. Inside one of them, an image of a woman’s head that is turned to the left was observed and the back was decorated with two couples with their faces covered. The second kylix had a decoration on the back with an identical theme, whereas the inside was decorated with a covered figure that was looking to the right. From this evidence, it is obvious that a couple was buried in that tomb, as previously mentioned, and the two glasses may refer to them.

Textual evidence also shows the importance of textile production, like the famous competition narrated by Éforo: “The women of the Iberian men display in public every year the fabrics that they have woven. Some men, chosen by vote, judge and honour preferably the woman who has worked the most. They also have certain notion of size, and if the waist of any cannot be surrounded by it, she is considered infamous.” (Nicol. Dam. Fragm. 102. Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, III: 456). If the textile products are prestigious merchandise goods that can be interchanged, aristocracy and most specifically, aristocratic women, must had had the control of these goods. This is how power and the socioeconomic status were united.

Finally, we observed the metal and wooden fragments described by Cuadrado, which could possibly be a hand chair for transportation. We also have some images of these items in the Iberian ceramics related to feminine figures (Sant Miquel de Lliria, La Serreta de Alcoy and Santa Catalina del Monte), and hence, it really could be a chair associated with the feminine figure.

In addition to the textile items, this tomb also contained resources related to the culinary sphere, such as edible products that were part of the Iberian diet (cereals, small acorns, almonds and pinions), storage containers, and cooking devices, such as a small kitchen pot of only 12 cm high (no 136 of inventory) (Fig. 4). It can be described as a coarse mud pot with a decorated neck. It seems to us that these elements may indicate the distribution and control of foods that were at the base of the social structure, and which seem to be related to the women buried here.

Furthermore, it was also possible to identify part of the later rituals conducted in this tomb and in tomb 277, such as posterior visits to the tomb or the deposition of offerings. Some of these materials (an attic Kantharos and bone pins, a miniature glass and a set of spindle whorls in the margin of tumulus 277) were objects associated with women, which could indicate that it was other women who would make these offerings to the women buried there and the participation of women in the maintenance of those tombs.

54

A. GARCÍA-LUQUE AND C. RISQUEZ: MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES IN THE FUNERARY RECORD?: THE CASE OF…

FIG. 5. Red figures Kylix with figurative decoration from Tomb 200, El Cigarralejo. (Cuadrado, 1987)

References To conclude, we would like to stress once more that tomb 200 stands as evidence of the importance of the buried woman inside her community and that the objects deposited represent her status. The clear spatial connection with tomb 277 may indicate her family bond with the couple buried there. She was probably their daughter. Therefore, this tomb indicates that her prestige is the result of her own condition and function, and not the result of her marriage with the man who was buried next to her.

Alfaro, C., 1984, Tejido y cestería en la Península Ibérica. Historia de su técnica e industrias desde la Prehistoria hasta la Romanización. Biblioteca Praehistórica Hispana Vol. XXI, Madrid Barber, E. J. W., 1990, Prehistoric textiles. The development of cloth the Neolithic and bronze ages. Princeton University Press Bonet, H. and Mata, C., 2002, El Puntal Dels Llops un fortín edetano. Servicio de Investigación Prehistórica.

55

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES Serie de Trabajos Varios num. 99. Diputación Provincial de Valencia.

Guatitoli, M.T., 2003, “La vita e la morte, il divino e l’umano nella metáfora del filo e del tessuto” en Bazzanella, M, Mayr, A., Moser, L, y Rast-Eicher, A. Textiles. Intrecci e tessuti dalla prehistoria europea. Trento

Chapa, T., 2001-2002, “La infancia en el mundo funerario ibérico a través de la necrópolis de El Cigarralero (Mula, Murcia)”. AnMurcia, 16-1, pp. 159– 170. Chapa, T., 2003, “La percepción de la infancia en el mundo ibérico”, Trabajos de Prehistoria 60, nº 1, pp. 115–138.

Iniesta, A., Page, V, García Cano, J.M., 1987, La sepultura 70 de la necrópolis de Coimbra del Barranco Ancho (Jumilla). Colección Documentos, Serie Arqueología 1. Murcia

Chapa, T., e. p., “Presencia infantil y ritual funerario en el mundo ibérico”, en F. Gusi (ed.) Enterramientos infantiles a lo largo de la Historia: una visión arqueológica, antropológica y simbólica.

Izquierdo, I., 200, “La trama del tejido y el vestido femenino en la cultura ibérica”, en M. Marín (ed.): Tejer y vestir: De la Antigüedad al Islam. Estudios árabes e islámicos. Monografías, I CSIC, pp. 287–311.

Cuadrado, E., 1968, “Tumbas principescas de El Cigarralejo” MM, 9, pp. 148–186

Lissarrague, F., 1992, “Una mirada ateniense” en Duby, G y Perrot, M. Historia de las mujeres I ed. Taurus, pp. 183–250

Cuadrado, E., 1987, La Necrópolis del Cigarralejo, Mula, Murcia, Biblioteca Praehistórica Hispana Vol, XXIII, Madrid.

Lucas Pellicer, Mª. R., 2001-2002, “Entre dioses y hombres: el paradigma de El Cigarralejo (Mula, Murcia). AnMurcia 16-17, pp. 147–158

De Miguel, Mª P., 2005, “Muertes y ritos. Aportes desde la osteoarqueología” en L. Abad, F. Sala, I. Grau (eds.): La Contestania Ibérica. Treinta años después. Universidad de Alicante, Servicio de publicaciones, pp. 325–336.

Olmos, R., 1992, “El surgimiento de la imagen en la sociedad ibérica”, en R. Olmos, T. Tortosa, P. Iguacel (eds.), La sociedad ibérica a través de la imagen. Ministerio de Cultura. Madrid, pp. 8–32.

García Cano, J. M., 1997, Las necrópolis ibéricas de Coimbra del Barranco Ancho (Jumilla, Murcia), Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Murcia, Murcia.

Olmos, R., 2000-2001, “Diosas y animales que amamantan: la transmisión de la vida en la iconografía ibérica”, Zephyrus, 53–54, pp. 353–378.

García Cano, J. M., Page del Pozo, V., 2004, Terracotas y vasos plásticos de la necrópolis de Cabecico del Tesoro, Verdolay, Murcia. Dirección General de Cultura. García Roselló, J., 1993, Turó dels Dos Pins: necrópolis ibérica. Museu Comarcal del Maresme, Mataró.

Rísquez, C., García Luque, A., 2007, “Mujeres en el origen de la aristocracia ibera. Una lectura desde la muerte” Complutum 18, pp. 271–280. Ruano, E., MonteroI., 1989, “Placas de hueso perforadas procedentes de la necrópolis de El Cigarralejo (Mula, Murcia)” Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, S.I. Prehistoria y Arqueología, t.2, pp. 281–302.

Gusi, F., 1975, “Sondeos arqueológicos en la necrópolis ibérica de La Punta (Vall de Uxó)”, CPAC, 2, pp. 163– 164.

Ruiz Bremón, M. y San Nicolás, M.ª P., 2000, Arqueología y antropología ibéricas. UNED, Madrid.

Gusi, F., 1989, “Posibles recintos necrolátricos infantiles ibéricos en Castellón”, CPAC, 14, pp. 19–42.

Ruiz Rodríguez, A. y Molinos, M., 2005, “En la vida y en la muerte: el final del período orientalizante en el Alto Guadalquivir”. Anejos de Archivo Español de Arqueología. Actas del III Simposio Internacional de Arqueología de Mérida: Protohistoria del Mediterráneo Occidental, pp. 787–799.

Gusi, F., 1992, “Nuevas perspectivas en el conocimiento de los enterramientos infantiles de época ibérica”, en Estudios de Arqueología Ibérica y Romana. Homenaje a E. Ballester. S.I.P., Serie de Trabajos Varios 89, Valencia, pp. 239–260.

Ruiz Rodríguez, A., Rísquez, C. y Molinos, M., e.p., “Túmulos, linajes y clientes: la construcción del paisaje funerario aristocrático en el Sur de la Península Ibérica”.

Gusi, F., 1993, “Noves puntualitzacions entorn dels establiments ibèrics amb enterraments infantils”, Homenatge a Miquel Tarradeli, Barcelona, pp. 463–475.

Torelli, M., 1997, Il rango, il rito e l’immagine. Alle origine della rappresentazione storica romana. Electa.

Grau, I., y Moratalla, J., 2003-2004, “La regulación del peso en la Contestania Ibérica. Contribución al estudio formal y petrológico de las pesas de balanza” AnMurcia, 19-20, pp. 25–54.

Wild, J. P., 1988, Textiles in Archaeology. Shire Archaeology 56

8. Greek terracotta figurines: images and representations of everyday life Marina Picazo Departament d´ Humanitats, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain

development of significant new technical skills, because of the greater difficulty involved in carving stone as compared to wood. In addition, to transport a large sized figure, as occurred in the case of the offering of Nikandre, made in Naxos and then sent to Delos, had substantial additional expense beyond the cost of making the sculpture. The Artemis of Nikandre provides us, therefore, with an important example of conspicuous wealth associated with the creation and display of these large, technically sophisticated monumental figures. Indeed, only rich families belonging to the landowning aristocracy that emerged during the Archaic period were capable of such displays of luxury and wealth consumption. This appears to have been precisely the case with Nikandre’s family who proudly present themselves in the inscription on the figure: “excellent among women, the daughter of Deinodikes the Naxian, sister of Deinomenes and wife of Phraxos”.

Introduction For centuries, Greek sculpture has been considered one of the canonical reference points of the realistic image of the human figure. From the middle of the seventh century BC, Greek sculptors used limestone and marble to create life size human figures. Their search for ways to improve the natural representation of the human body involved a variety of strategies including depictions of sexual difference. In recent years several authors have analyzed the expression of the gender differences in large scale Greek sculpture (Osborne 1998:1). By contrast, similar analytical approaches have rarely been explored in relation to another class of sculpture, the more numerous smaller terracotta figurines that share the same chronology of the great statues of stone and bronze. In what follows, we shall suggest that the images of men and women and their respective activities and social roles demonstrate important functional and ideological conceptual differences between the large “classical” sculptures and the figurines fashioned in terracotta. These differences are not only related to the diversity of the materials used and the different technologies used, but, perhaps more importantly, they reveal a social agenda; that is they demonstrate significant social differences between those people who commissioned and acquired the stone sculptures, by way of contrast to those who created and used the terracottas. Importantly, this social distance separating one class from another also had consequences for the forms of representation of the sexes as well as the relationships between the people of different gender and age classes. What we shall argue here, is that the construction of the female image (including children and older people) represented in Greek terracotta figurines, present an entirely different aspect that distances them from the overtly sexualised presentation of the large scale stone sculptures that have come to typify classical Greek art.

The importance of this sculpture lies in the fact that it represents a prelude to the emergence of one of what was to become one of the most important sculpture groups of the Archaic period, the korai, the life sized or even larger representations of young women. The korai which appear to have had a variety of functions, were numerous in the sanctuaries, such as, for example, in the temple of the Athenian Acropolis, where they were dedicated to Athena, the goddess and protector of the city.

Men and women in Archaic Greek sculpture

A great deal of debate has centred on issues as to whether the korai were representations of goddesses, priestesses, or simply, votive offerings. It is possible, however, that the answer may be a combination of all three. Korai are also found in relation to cementeries as tomb markers, such as in the case of Phrasiklea, a rich young Athenian woman from the middle 6th century BC who died before marrying. In this case the kore was used as a representation of the young dead woman demonstrating her status as a member of an aristocratic family (Stieber 2004:1) (Fig. 1).

Historically, the first known large marble sculpture was one dedicated by a woman named Nikandre in the sanctuary of the Island of Delos, and dated to the middle of the seventh century BC. It was a votive offering to the goddess Artemis in the form of a figure almost two metres high but rather flat in profile, being barely 17 cm thick. Its shape was probably derived from the figures of divinities made of wood that we know existed at the time, although none of them have survived. The introduction and use of marble as a sculptural material involved the

Contemporary with the korai were figures of young men, known as kouroi. They symbolised the image of the aristocratic ideal of the kalolagathia, that is, the qualities of ‘virtue and beauty’, representing the pinnacle of male youth (Fig. 2). In fact, it has been suggested that some of these sculptures could have been used in beauty contests, which were common in many archaic Greek communities, where ‘beautiful masculinity, euandria’ was celebrated (Spivey 1997: 148). It has been calculated that, during the Archaic period from the seventh to the 57

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES (1.6.5), the nudity of male athletes was a feature that distinguished the Greeks from the barbarians.

sixth century BC, thousands of these kouroi were made in the Greek world, from the Ionian coast (Anatolia) to the Greek colonies in Sicily, although they are relatively rare in some regions like Crete and Peloponnese. Kouroi were also employed in sanctuaries as offerings to the gods or additionally in order to commemorate athletic or military victories, and occasionally as funerary markers.

FIG. 2. Kouros Anavyssos, National Museum, Athens

Following this idea, it has been suggested that the images of the kouroi are depictions of this general concept, that is, the essence of masculinity, of man in his natural state (Stewart 1997:38). Thus, in Archaic Greek communities, the nude male figure probably represented the ‘natural' sex and at the same time, as a symbol of the human condition, whereas by contrast, the clothed woman in contemporary female sculptures, the korai, represented the ‘constructed’ sex. The kouros, with open legs and arms firmly on both sides of the body and one of the feet ahead of the other, appears to have the potential for movement. On the other hand, the kore is firmly fixed on the ground, with legs together and arms, or one of them, extended above, in an attitude of offering. Women in sculpture, as in social life, had to remain passive, adorned and offering themselves to the viewer, or more explicitly, to the male gaze.

FIG. 1. Kore Phrasikleia, National Museum, Athens

Predominantly, kouroi represent youths presented as elitist, idealised images of the human body in its period of greatest splendour. As we have mentioned earlier, these were prestigious and costly objects and, thus, could only be commissioned by a very small section of society, that is, members of the aristocracy. It should be noted that Greek pederasty, also closely associated with the aristocratic way of life, was probably one of the reasons behind these sculptured images focused on the beauty of the male nude. In fact, one of the characteristic features of Greek art is that men frequently appear nude, or partially nude, even when they are doing activities that we know that were done fully clothed, such as combat or taking part of religious processions. Indeed, the representation of naked men as opposed to well-dressed women, was one of the distinguishing features of the images of the ancient Greek world, visible in statuary, ceramics and other objects. According to Thucydides

This difference between the representation of women and men in Archaic Greek sculpture undoubtedly corresponds to the profound dichotomy which existed between the two sexes, and which occurs elsewhere in other aspects of Greek culture. It is possible that in the emerging world of Greek cities occurring around this time, what we are seeing is the representation of institutionalised male supremacy, something that formed the basis of the social life of the poleis, and which was essentially the domain of the aristocracy.

58

M. PICAZO: GREEK TERRACOTTA FIGURINES: IMAGES AND REPRESENTATION OF EVERYDAY LIFE This eroticism if not overt sexuality is especially pronounced in the case of figures that present a breast to the viewer. Finally, in the middle of the fourth century BC, the sculptor Praxiteles carved the Aphrodite of Knidos, which is the first woman nude on a grand scale in Greek and Western art. It is probably significant that in antiquity it was believed that the sculptor used his lover, the famous hetaera or courtesan Phryne, as a model for Aphrodite (Fig. 4), thus beginning the narrative on the relation between the artist and his model, which will be destined to have a long history in Western Art. The influence of Praxiteles’ Aphrodite on later art owes itself, in part, to the implication of the role assumed by the female nude in contrast to that of the male nude. Thus, what is significant from a historical perspective, is that the tradition began by Praxiteles was essentially one that depicted nude women as passive, vulnerable and available in the eyes of the viewer.

Other female images in Greek art In the seventh and eighth centuries BC, prior to the appearance of the kouroi and the korai, many small socalled ‘nude goddess’ figures were made in the Greek communities of the Aegean. Generally they are representations of divinities, especially Aphrodite and Artemis. Completely naked except for jewels and headdress, they look straight at the viewer and at times their hands are placed under their breast or covering their genitals. They are basically images of oriental origin that ignored the Greek norms of a visual distinction between the sexes, which as we have noted is one of the predominant aspects of large scale Greek sculpture. The production of this type of nude figure of oriental origin ceased around 600 BC and from then until the end of the fifth century BC all the female divinities were shown clothed1. The dichotomous relation between naked men and clothed women that characterizes the Archaic period was maintained (with some changes), until the beginning of the classical period. The korai disappear and, in fact, female figures were less represented than men and when we do find female images, they are goddesses or mythological figures. The feminity that the korai represented is, in large part, absent from the early classical sculpture, while the masculine types are numerous, especially as representations of athletes and warriors. Over time we see changes and gradually some of the female figures begin to be represented with clinging diaphanous cloth, thus revealing the curves of the female body. In some cases, the close fitting dress simulated the effect of wet clothes, as we see, for example, in the case of Aphrodite of the Ludovisi throne (Fig. 3).

FIG. 4. Aphrodite of Cnidus, Roman copy Musei Vaticani, Roma

The Aphrodite of Knidos can lay claim to being the first large size nude sculpture although nude figures of hetaeras and prostitutes had appeared previously in ceramic painting. In some of these scenes, for example, it is clear that the artist was using the female body as an object of sexual desire; thus the drinker can gaze on the female form at the bottom of his cup as he drinks wine.

FIG. 3. Ludovisi Throne, Aphrodite rising from the sea, c. 460 BC. Museo Nazionale Romano

1 There are some exceptions to the norm of the clothed female. The most well-known is that of the small bronze figures, primarily Spartan, that show girls partially or completely nudes (Stewart 1997: 108-118)

59

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES status of common objects in the daily life of Greek people. They were offered in the sanctuaries as votive objects, where their low cost made them an ideal offering for the common people who didn’t have the means to dedicate more expensive items such as large stone statues. They were also used as religious images in houses and were placed in the graves to protect and accompany the deceased members of the family. From the classical period onwards, they were used sometimes as decorative objects and in other contexts as gifts. As a way of representing the human figure, terracotta sculptures made it possible to present a greater variability of subject matter than was possible with figures done in other media such as stone or bronze, or alternatively on the painted decoration of ceramics. While the multifunctional nature of these figurines resists any simplistic attempt to define their purpose, what it is notable is that the figures were implicated in the quotidian life of the common people, marking particularly the different events that constituted the life cycle. For example, during pregnancy, future mothers would offer a figure of the goddess Eileithyia, who watched over the process of giving birth. During infancy, the terracotta could protect children and if necessary, accompany them to the grave. In fact, the custom in many Greek cities was to bury the dead with the objects used by them in life: jewelry, combs and figurines for the women; weapons and strigils for the men; figurines and toys for children. In general, Greek terracottas reflect the ideals, preferences and interactions of people seen as distinct from those that we see in classical statuary and other forms of Greek representation.

The appearance of the female nude in ceramic vessels used in the Greek symposium is also related to the Greek aristocracy, who initiated this form of commensality where food and drink were accompanied by debate, political discussions, music, poetry and sexual games. It has been suggested that the image (and reality) of the Greek hetaera emerged from such context (Kurke 1997). Absent from the symposium, however, were other types of woman, such as mothers, wifes and sisters, thus reaffirming their role as diametrically opposed to that of the hetaera. These contrasting forms of femininity, the prostitute and the respectable woman, together constitute an antagonistic force opposed to Greek masculinity, the citizen who is at once a soldier and political man, the ideal representation of humanity in all aspects (Picazo 2008). Despite this, during the classical period, there was an area of visual representation where the masculine figure is not predominant. We are referring to the relief scenes on the funeral stelae, which contain the greatest number of images of “normal” women. This type of grave marker was common in the Athenian cemeteries of the last quarter of the fifth century BC. Frequently they show the dead person saying goodbye to members of the family or are depicted taking part in everyday activities. In some cases, mixed groups of men and women are shown while in others we see only women. Nevertheless, in general, figures of women clearly predominate. Men appear either as soldiers if they had died on the battlefield, or, alternatively, as members of the family. Significantly, references to their political status are rare. Women appear doing domestic chores and in scenes giving birth, or placed in affective relationship with members of the family. The common practice of the time was to prohibit the mentioning of respectable women of citizens in written sources. In the stelae, we see the names of the dead women or if they were who made the dedications. Considering that Greek cemeteries were public places, especially when they were located along roads, it is clear that the scenes on the stelae were carved with the express intention of being seen. It is highly probable that the important presence of women in these forms of representation was linked to their prominent role in funerary rituals; that is, beginning with the funeral lament and the final care of the body, to the later maintenance of the tombs. In this case, the fact that the Athenian men accepted and paid for the forms of representation that we find in the Attic funerary stelae can be considered one of the indirect ways of recognising the social importance of women in Greek society.

From the perspective of stylistic and technical skill, it is clear that, throughout the long history of their manufacture and use of terracottas, a variety of technological and thematic changes occurred. Nevertheless, women were generally always predominant in the representations. This is, in fact, a general tendency that can be observed in other cultures and periods ever since the appearance of figurines in human cultures (Masvidal and Picazo 2005). There are few specific studies on the attribution of gender or gender and age relations with respect to the Greek terracotta figurines, despite the fact that the predominance of female representation has been frequently mentioned. It is unfortunate that information on the discovery process and exact provenance of most of the terracotta pieces that are exhibited in museums is quite rare, primarily because most of them originated from grave robbery contexts. Despite this, some excavations like that conducted in the ancient city of Olynthus in Chalcidice, which was destroyed by the Macedonians in 348 B.C., have provided research opportunities for studying terracotta pieces especially in relation to the content of the houses. In this context, the Olynthian terracottas appear to be associated with objects primarily associated with women, such as looms and cooking items and hence appear to have been closely related to domestic activities and the everyday lives of women. It is significant that a number

The terracotta figurines Women’s social role, however, can best be seen in the small, terracotta figurines that were abundant in Greek world. The ubiquity of these figurines is in part because terracotta was the cheapest and most abundant material with which figures could be made. This fact made these figures accessible to a large number of people regardless of social class and, for this reason, they assumed the 60

M. PICAZO: GREEK TERRACOTTA FIGURINES: IMAGES AND REPRESENTATION OF EVERYDAY LIFE of households were involved in the manufacture of terracotta figurines (Cahill 2002:5). Scenes from daily life in Boeotia A number of Greek cities were important centres of production of terracotta figurines, in particular those of the region of Boeotia, which since the Mycenaean period and throughout antiquity was a focus for the production of figurines, especially images of women, men, boys and girls depicting a wide variety of attitudes, dress, and adornments. These are generally single sculptures, although there are some examples of paired or group configurations. A characteristic example is to be found in the beautiful series of figurines made in Boeotia at the end of the sixth century and into first decades of the fifth century BC. They are handcrafted figurines, although in some cases the heads are made from a mould. They were originally elaborately painted with colours, predominantly in black, red and yellow.

FIG.5. Woman sitting in front of an oven. Archaeological Museum, Polygyros

Basically, this group of figurines shows people doing various types of activities, but always in relation to objects, animals or to other people: the artists were not interested only in the human body but in the figures representing specific attitudes or social interactions, or both. Significantly, women performing everyday household tasks represent the dominant group. For example, in the collections of the Louvre, we see a group of women kneading dough while listening to the music of a flute. This scene of collective work similar to those that have brought women together over the centuries, for example, in public laundries or in spinning groups where women get together to spin yarn. These types of collective activities have always had a social function in which conversation, music, and sometimes food, were linked to the women’s work. In other figurines, women are watching over the baking of bread in little domestic ovens (Fig. 5). Other types of food preparation also appear in this group of terracotta pieces: a woman tends the soup pot accompanied by a small domestic animal, or in another figure, a man is slicing what is probably cheese. We also see a barber cutting the hair of another man or someone sawing wood. In some scenes, the close interaction between adults and children are shown. A mother carries a little boy on her shoulders, showing the difference in the colour of the skin of the two figures. Another woman is cooking with a girl in what could be an image of socialisation, where the girl listens and learns how to cook from her mother (Fig. 6). In an additional and completely unusual scene in Greek art, an older man is depicted with white hair that contrasts with his dark skin. He is showing a cluster of grapes to a little girl while holding a pomegranate in the other hand.

FIG. 6. Woman and child cooking. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Although there are also in these Boeotian terracotta figures more female representations than male, the most remarkable feature, from the point of view of gender construction, is that there is little difference between the images of the two sexes: men and women, modestly dressed, appear doing everyday activities: sawing, cutting hair, cooking, kneading dough, and preparing food. Even the care and responsibility for children does not appear to 61

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES be solely tied to women. The world that appears before our eyes is one of everyday life full of activity, where children are manifestly present in order to be cared for or taught by the adults and in which women are in charge of the basic maintenance activities of the group. Men, women and children are represented as social beings, a characteristic that is clearly absent in the large-scale classical statuary. Significantly, it is in the other group of representations that were closely related with women, the funerary stelae where again we find men and women of different ages engaged in social interaction, or men with children, such as in the grave relief of the Athenian shoemaker Xanthippus who appears holding a shoemaker’s last, flanked by his two daughters, one much smaller than the other2.

The ‘Tanagras’ principal interest seems to be the world of women and children, alone or together in company with other women and children or animals. By contrast to large scale Greek sculpture where the predominant aesthetic model was based on representations of men in their prime, the terracottas of the Classic and Hellenistic period focused attention on the image of beauty associated with young women, whose clothes and adornments enhance the aesthetics of the human form and its movements. Also old age, which is generally absent from other forms of representation, has a distinctive place in the terracotta sculptures, sometimes in association with children as in the figurines of wet nurses (Fig. 7).

The Tanagras A new repertory of terracotta representations originating in Athens, appeared in the middle of the fourth century BC. Since the end of the nineteenth century they have been known as the ‘Tanagras’, because of their association with a site in Boeotia, where a large number of tombs were discovered and plundered between 1872 and 1873. These figurines forming part of the funerary offerings inundated the European antiquities markets and their popularity led to the appearance of a large number of forgeries. These delicate figurines generally depict young elegant women. In the process of manufacture they were covered with a white slip before firing, and upon which smooth colours were painted. Red was used for the lips, hair, shoes and other accessories and the eyebrows, eyes and other details were outlined in black. The skin was painted in a smooth orange tinted pink and for the clothes a reddish purple. The ‘Tanagras’ were made in a double mould for the parts of the front and back with the heads and arms often coming from separate moulds that were then joined to make the figurine prior to the firing process. The emphasis in many of these figurines is on the representation of the clothes and is remarkable, with groups of folds that wrap around the body in different directions, highlighting the contrasts between the fabric and the body. This technique reached a high point of artistic skill in some of the dancing figures, where the folds of the himation were used to accentuate the beauty of their movements. The Tanagras, above all, exhibit elegance, highlighted at times by accessories such as wide brimmed hats, garlands of flowers or wide fans. Sometimes we see two girls walking together, sitting down to exchange confidences, or playing. The subject of children or young girls at play is exclusive to these terracotta figures and constitutes an approach to the subject of female socialisation, practically absent from written sources or other forms of visual representation in Greek art.

2

FIG. 7. Nurse with child. Musée du Louvre

Conclusions As we have noted, in a number of societies in antiquity, small sized figures have conventionally been associated with female images. Since Prehistory, they have been found under floors, in grain silos, in sanctuaries and, especially, in graves of women and children. Although their functions and characteristics vary across different cultures and historic periods, a clear trend is decipherable; that is, these images were connected to the practices associated with the care of members of the group throughout the life cycle. They were frequent in domestic contexts and, in occasions, as we have seen in the case of the Boeotian terracotas, they are largely

British Museum 628.

62

M. PICAZO: GREEK TERRACOTTA FIGURINES: IMAGES AND REPRESENTATION OF EVERYDAY LIFE are not present. The world of the terracottas invites us into the intimacy of domestic space; that is the places where the most important things are quotidien tasks and those forms of relationship that sustain life in any human society. In this context, young women, little girls and women do not appear to be passive or vulnerable: they play, dance, walk, display themselves and interact with each other. By contrast to the permanent time represented by the first Greek human sculptures in stone, the small terracottas are more ephemeral, focused on actions and activities of short temporal duration, the instantaneous time represented by the multiple details of quotidian life.

concerned with domestic activities. In funerary contexts, they depict maternal concerns for children and infants; thus, figurines were places as protective offerings that would accompany the children to the hereafter. What it is more significant, as we have tried to show, is that ways of characterizing the two sexes in stone sculpture and in terracotta figurines in the Greek world, show important differences. The nudes of the kouroi, which are dominant in the early human figures sculpted in stone, were intended to represent something transcendental: an image of the grandeur and eternity of the human condition as contemplated from a masculine perspective. This is a world of fixed and unchanging values in which the korai were presented as decorated objects to be contemplated and offered up to the gods. Both forms of representation, male and female, share a sense of monumentality that appears to belong to the time of the gods or eternity. They were used as icons in ceremonial and funeral contexts, transmitting the sacredness of those spaces and the wealth and social importance of the people who were able to commission and pay for these impressive life size figures. It seems they represent permanence and a desire to render in stone the golden ideals of youth: kuroi and korai as representations of a time frozen in stone.

References Cahill, N., 2002, Household and city organization at Olynthus, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press) Kurke, L., 1997, “Inventing the hetaira: Sex, Politics, and Discursive Conflict in Archaic Greece”, Classical Antiquity 16, pp. 106-150. Masvidal, C. and Picazo, M., 2005, Modelando la figura humana. Reflexiones entorno a las imagines femeninas de la Antigüedad, (Barcelona: Península) Osborne, R., 1998, Archaic and Classical Greek Art, (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

Notably, there is a great variability in the terracotta pieces and particularly, in terms of how the sexes are differentiated. More especially, the thing that sets the terracottas apart from the static monumental sculptures and this is, in part, due to the inherent properties of the material. Clay could be worked more quickly than stone and this gave artists more freedom to interpret movement and gesture. In addition, while sculpture on a large scale was, form the beginning, associated with the dominant classes, who were the only ones able to afford such objects, by contrast, the clay figurines were within reach of the popular classes. They were able to capture aspects of the social reality more easily. In summary, when we consider the figurines of all the periods, they appear as celebrations of daily life, where women and men, of different ages, can be seen making food or caring for children, and domestic animals. For this reason they have an immediacy and freshness that is lacking in the more formal classical sculptures of the period.

Picazo, M. 2006, “Las mujeres y la transformación de la vida cotidiana en la ciudad griega arcaica”, in L. Prado and C. Ruiz (ed.) I Jornadas Internacionales de Arqueología del Género, (Madrid, Publicaciones de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) Stieber, M., 2004, The Poetics of Appearance in the Attic Korai, (Austin: University of Texas Press) Spivey, N., 1997, Greek Art, (London: Phaidon) Stewart, A., 1997, Art, Desire and the Body in Ancient Greece, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)

Despite modern research having highlighted the important role of women in the public space of religious rituals, the fact is, from a social and political perspective, patriarchal ideology effectively pushed women into a secondary role. However, this norm seems to be less prominent in the case of the clay figurines that are present in practically all of the important collections of Greek art. They are representations where, in contrast to the usual written sources and other visual forms of depiction, the separation between male from female appears to blur. In fact, it seems that they highlight an image of shared daily life a celebration of the different phases of the human life cycle as it was from infancy to old age and in a context where forms of authority based on either gender or class 63

9. Grinding to a Halt: Gender and the Changing Technology of Flour Production in Roman Galilee Carol Meyers Duke University, North Carolina, USA assortment of individual ways in which women and men interacted in social reality. Yet it seems valid to observe that women are essentialized, as a different, inferior, and sometimes dangerous other, in Roman period sources but not in the literature of ancient Israel.

Introduction Prophet, sage, judge; singer, landowner, skilled ones— these are all titles, epithets, or roles, in addition to the expected maternal and wifely ones, of women in the Israelite literature (the Hebrew Bible) of Iron Age Palestine (ca. 1200-587 BC). To be sure, there are negative characterizations as well, but even castigated prostitutes are sometimes heroic figures in the Bible. And nothing in this literature portrays women as less intelligent or capable than men; indeed, they are often depicted as clever and competent people, not inferior to their spouses (Wegner 1998: 85). They reflect the social reality of the small village communities in which most people lived; women moved about freely, and female professionals served a variety of community needs (Meyers 1999: 161-170). Moreover, reconstructions of household life based on archaeological and ethnographic information suggest that women contributed to and controlled important aspects of the household economy (Meyers 1988: 149-154; 2003).

This profound shift coincided roughly with major changes in the Levant. Beginning in the late fourth century BC, Hellenism from the west penetrated and profoundly influenced the Semitic cultures of the Iron Age and Persian Period in Palestine. This “Hellenization” of the biblical world involved new political forms brought by Greek and then Roman dominance, which in turn entailed general cultural change incorporating new languages, art, economic patterns, religious beliefs, philosophical views, and yes, technologies. All of these would have had their impact on gender roles and relations and on the way women are represented in the literatures of the Roman period and later. This paper will focus on the technological changes involved in flour production in this period, the impact of the changes on women’s lives, and the consequences for how women are presented in the (rabbinic) sources; but it is important to acknowledge that those changes are embedded in larger cultural developments.

A strikingly different picture is presented in the Jewish (rabbinic) literature of the Roman period (ca. 50 BC– AD 363), most of it originating in Galilee. The authors of those documents recognize the admirable qualities of some biblical women, but they also find traits of weakness in them and even manage to censure them for their praise-worthy deeds. Even worse, they sexualize the energies of otherwise exemplary biblical women and thus of all later women, depicting them as threatening, dangerous, and in need of strict male control (Bronner 1994). In addition, the legal materials in rabbinic literature seek to limit the movements of women, forbid them to participate in the public world, and make them completely subject to their husband’s authority. Hierarchical values establishing women as subordinate to men permeate the literature;1 and embedded in the structure of male dominance are views of women as mentally, emotionally, and morally inferior. Anecdotes and tales may sometimes reveal the affection of men for their spouses and appreciation of their generosity and compassion; but almost as often they contain exceptionally disparaging and harsh comments about them. This is a vastly oversimplified view of the complex and multi-vocal literatures of two periods of the ancient Levant. As with all such oversimplifications, it risks stereotyping women and men and misses the rich

The technology of flour production Cereal products were the mainstay of the east Mediterranean diet, so much so that the Hebrew word for bread (lehem) is sometime used to designate food in general (Dommershausen 1995: 523-524). It has been estimated that approximately half—53-55 percent—of an adult’s caloric intake was from a grain-based food (Broshi 2001: 123-124). However, the grains had to be processed in order for their nutritional starches to be digestible. Grinding, which breaks open the cereal grains and releases the part with nutritional value so that it can be prepared for consumption, is thus essential (Watts 2002: 11). Indeed, grinding is arguably among the oldest of human arts, preceding even the cultivation of grains (Moritz 1958: xxv). The literature describing the technology of grain processing does not employ uniform terminology. In this discussion, I will use two different terms for it, in relation to two kinds of devices used for the task.2 The first term is grinding, which means to reduce something—the 2 These terms do not necessarily coincide with their use in various histories of technology, and sometimes they are used synonymously. I use them here to differentiate between two different kinds of flour production.

1

The rules are less stringent for non-married women (widows or divorcées), probably not very numerous, who did not live in their parental homes. They in fact, of necessity, had considerable autonomy.

65

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES grain—to small fragments by friction. The second is milling, which means to process grain in a machine or apparatus more technically advanced that those used for grinding. The various kinds of instruments used for both grinding and milling are generally called “ground stone implements.3”

250). But grinding remained an activity accomplished by human strength using simple tools. All that began to change in the last centuries BCE in the Mediterranean basin when three dramatic innovations in the technology of flour production appear, each of them increasing efficiency and enabling larger yields in less time with fewer workers. The origins of these changes— whether they evolved one from the other, and whether they can be considered developments of the handstone and slab—are disputed. What is not in doubt is that, although they did not appear simultaneously throughout the Greco-Roman world, all three were in widespread use by the end of the first century BC.

The production of flour from grain involves a simple mechanical principle: the weight and friction of a heavy object crushes the outer hull of the grain, releasing the endosperm and thus its nutritional potential from the surrounding bran or husk.4 For millennia, at least since the Late Natufian, stone grinding implements used for processing cereals have been identified at sites in the Levant (Ebeling and Rowan 2004: 109-110). The major grinding equipment consisted of a pair of grinding stones: an upper one that moved back and forth across a stationary lower one. The upper one—the handstone—is also called a rubber, muller, mano, processor, grinding stone, or upper grinding stone. The lower stone is called a grinding slab or table if has a flat rubbing surface; if it has a slightly curved rubbing surface, it is known variously as a quern, trough quern, saddle quern, saddlestone, or metate.

Probably the earliest one is called the lever mill, hopperrubber mill, push mill, or, most often, the Olynthus mill because dozens of such mills were found in the excavations at Olynthus in Greece.6 Consisting of two rectangular stones situated horizontally, one over the other, with grooving patterns on the opposing surfaces to direct the flow of the grain and flour (described, inter alia, in Frankel 2003a: 45-46), it involved two important advances. One improvement, actually found in all three of the new devices, was the use of a hopper—an opening in the upper slab—to allow quantities of grain to be fed to the rubbing surfaces; the person using this device thus did not have to stop constantly to place grains on the lower slab. The other improvement was in the way the upper stone moved over the lower one. A wooden handle was set into a groove on top of the upper stone, with the handle in turn set into a pivot at its short end; this radically increased the mechanical power available to move the upper stone. These two improvements meant that preparation of flour was now done by what can be termed a machine (Moritz 1958: 46; Curtis 2001: 282). Grain was milled by a device that significantly enhanced human motive power so that more grain could be processed in a briefer span of time by less human effort. The movement still required reciprocal action, with the lever being moved in a to-and-fro arc, and two people were needed to operate it (Frankel 2003b: 54); but it was nonetheless a huge advance over the handstone with slab or quern.

Grinding cereals with these tools was an inordinately tedious and time-consuming task, such that commentators refer to it as the “daily grind” (e.g., Molleson 1994: 70; Ebeling and Rowan 2004). With a flour extraction rate of about 80 percent from the cereal grains of the east Mediterranean, it is estimated that it took an hour of grinding to produce 8 kg of flour. The daily consumption rate, given the caloric value of cereals in relation to the needs of a small adult, would have been about 1 kg of flour. Thus a family of six would have needed up to 3 kg of flour, and producing that would have required two to three hours of grinding per day (Broshi 2001: 125).5 When centralized polities and their institutions—temple and palace, and the military—needed large quantities of flour for personnel or even for the general populace in urban settings, output was increased by establishing workrooms with many grinding slabs lined up side by side (Curtis 2001: 201-2; 246). The difference between household production and institutional production was thus one of scale not method.

Originating in the east, perhaps in Asia Minor, and disseminated by the Greeks, Olynthus mills appear in Palestine throughout the Roman period, beginning in the first century CE, although there are some earlier ones dating to the Hellenistic Period and perhaps earlier.7 Examples have been found at nearly thirty sites (Frankel 2003a: 3, Table 1). Because they were larger, more expensive, and less easily moved than handstones with slabs or querns, these mills were probably used commercially, or to serve a group of households or part

Despite the arduous nature of grinding, no significant technological advances were made for 8,000 to 10,000 years. Minor improvements can be detected, such as in the shape or surfacing of one or both of the elements; and in some places, mainly in temple or palace workshops, ergonomic enhancements, such as placing the slabs on a platform or tilting them, can be identified (Curtis 2001:

3 That term is itself ambiguous in that it can refer to the artifacts that are produced by grinding as well as artifacts that are used for grinding 4 This is somewhat less important if the grains are boiled rather than baked; but even boiled grains are more nutritious if the kernels are first cracked (Ebeling and Rowan 2004: 108). 5 Similar time estimates are derived from ethnographic studies in MesoAmerica (Bauer 1990: 3).

6

Thirty-one appear in the Robinson and Graham 1938: 327-334. Hellenistic (late fourth century BCE) examples are imports from the Aegean and may have been introduced to the Levant by Alexander’s army (Alexandre 2006: 176-177). 7

66

C. MEYERS: GRINDING TO A HALT: GENDER AND THE CHANGING TECHNOLOGY OF FLOUR… of a settlement, rather than in individual agrarian domiciles (Curtis 3002: 283).

needed; they would have been used mainly in large urban commercial centers, which were less common in Palestine than in other parts of the Mediterranean basin.

Appearing at about the same time as the Olynthus mill, the second new technology for flour production—the rotary mill—probably originated in the west Mediterranean, in Spain, and also involved two horizontal stones with holes in the center of each. However, its stones are round, with a central socket on the bottom stone holding a spindle on which the upper stone, enlarged to serve as a hopper, is set; and it rotates by moving a vertical wooden handle affixed to the upper stone (Curtis 2001: 339; Watts 2002: 33). This too was a machine, technically superior to the Olynthus mill in increasing the potential output of flour. Moreover, it could be operated by a single individual. It is important to note that rotary mills, although used by Roman soldiers in Palestine as a stock item of the expeditionary forces, did not become common among the general Jewish populace until the Byzantine period (Frankel 2003a: 54). For example, rotary mills were recovered from the Roman occupation at Masada, whereas the Jewish defenders of the site used Olynthus mills (Frankel, personal communication).

Gender attribution of flour production The implements of flour production, like those used in most subsistence tasks in the ancient world, are not inherently gender noisy. Only by using archaeological materials in relation to ancient texts is it possible to attribute gender to the users of grinding and milling implements and to assess the impact of the transition from grinding to milling in Roman Palestine. Both archaeological remains and texts present difficulties. Syro-Palestinian archaeology has not always attended properly to mundane objects such as ground stone tools, and the texts and their interpreters typically exhibit a strong androcentric bias (Baskin 1998: 74; Meyers 1997; 2003a: 186-89; Rutter 2003: 170; but cf. Meyers 2003). Yet both archaeological data and written sources still contain valuable information about flour-production tools and their users. In another paper, in which I investigated flour production with respect to gender in Iron Age households (Meyers 2003b; cf. Meyers 2002), I pointed to several important aspects of the process. First, in the Iron Age (biblical period), grinding with slabs or querns and handstones took place in the individual households of the agricultural settlements in which roughly 90 percent of the population lived. Second, each household apparently had a set of grinding stones; and sometimes more than one set was found in a single workspace, indicating simple task simultaneity, which is a useful way to organize repetitive and time-consuming labor. Third, the slab (or quern)-andhandstone technology was virtually a female monopoly.9 I will indicate the meaning of this female dominance of grinding for women’s lives in the Iron Age below; but first it is necessary to attribute gender to the milling technologies of the Roman period by examining archaeological data and then textual sources.

The third new development in flour production, which probably did not stem directly from either the Olynthus or rotary mill but rather depended on awareness of the technical advantages of both (so Frankel 2003b: 19), was the hour-glass mill, so named for its characteristic shape. Also known as the Pompeian mill because of the many examples recovered from Pompeii (Peacock 1989), it is more often called the donkey mill because—with levers extending on both sides and with a full circular motion possible—it could be powered by small draft animals. These mills constituted a powerful advance in milling technology.8 Expensive to make and operate, they were used commercially rather than in individual households or even groups of households. According to ancient Roman sources, one donkey mill could produce up to 873 liters of flour a day, or about a hundred times more than could one individual using a slab or quern and handstone (Curtis 2003: 348). It is estimated that one “industrialized” public mill and bakery establishment, using donkey mills, could provide daily bread for 1000 or more people (Storck and Teague 1952: 84-85: cf. the more conservative estimate in Bauer 1990: 3).

Archaeological Data from Two Galilean Sites (Table 1) Because Galilee was the center of Jewish life in Palestine during most of the Roman period, Galilean sites are of particular interest. Moreover, outcroppings of basalt, the stone favored for grinding and milling implements, were plentiful in Galilee and in adjacent regions (Rutter 2003: 92-98). The settlement pattern of Roman Galilee shows that small villages dotted the highlands of Upper Galilee with several urban centers dominating Lower Galilee. Except in those few cities, most people were agriculturalists. Owning and working one’s own land was

Although the donkey mill apparently spread throughout the Roman Empire, some scholars have suggested that it is absent from the east Mediterranean (Curtis 2003: 344; cf. Mortiz 1958: 911-96). It is likely, however, that they were just less widespread, for a number of fragments have in fact been recovered from excavations in Palestine (as at Gamla and Qumran) and date to as early as the Hellenistic period. Because donkey mills were more powerful and productive than other mills, fewer were

9 In institutional settings using slave or hired labor, men may have been conscripted to work the grinding stones. However, that scenario is less likely in Palestine than in the more densely populated and complex polities of neighboring lands; note that the royal conscription of labor in the Hebrew Bible calls for women to be palace bakers (1 Sam 8:13); see Meyers 2000.

8 Watermills were perhaps even more powerful machines, but the dearth of requisite flowing water in Palestine makes consideration of them here irrelevant.

67

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES handstones and slabs. Acquiring this pair of grinding implements, if a family did not inherit them, would have been like buying a refrigerator—it was crucial for existence, involved considerable upfront costs, but was durable for a lifetime (Biskowski 2008). An Olynthus or donkey mill would have been beyond the means of the peasant farmers typical of Galilee in the Roman period (Sperber 1978: 207). Thus, the Iron Age tradition of women as grinders probably endured throughout the Roman period at this site. As a village, Nabratein would have lacked community bakeries (Safrai 1994: 82) and presumably mills, as well as many of the other commercial services found in larger settlements. Furthermore, the subsequent introduction in the Byzantine period of rotary mills, which could be operated by a single person, probably continued this gendered pattern of flour production in individual households at Nabratein.

highly valued; indeed, most people produced their own foodstuffs, including grain (cf. b Baba Metzia 107a), even if they could be procured more cheaply in a market (Aberbach 1994: 165-66). Processing grain would have been part of the daily life of most agrarian households. However, the pattern may have been different in cities. Thus I shall look at two representative sites. One, Nabratein, is a small settlement in Upper Galilee. Its corpus of ground stone implements will be considered in relation to that of Sepphoris, a Lower Galilean urban center of great importance for the literature of early Judaism and thus for the gender attitudes, which strongly influenced subsequent Jewish tradition, encoded in that literature. Nabratein Located on the eastern edge of the highlands of Upper Galilee just north of Har Kana‘an, Nabratein is situated on the summit of a small hill some 650 m above sea level. Grain production would have been ample because of the good rendzina soils in the surrounding valleys, the presence of several nearby springs, and the assurance of a relatively high annual rainfall (800-900 mm/annum). The structural and stratigraphic remains of the site are from the Early Roman to Late Roman periods, followed by a 200-year gap in occupation and then a substantial settlement in the late Byzantine-early Arab period. The site has a sizeable synagogue that was founded in the Middle Roman period, renovated twice in the Late Roman period, and restored in the Byzantine period (Meyers and Meyers forthcoming), indicating that the inhabitants were Jews. About seven dunams (1.6 acres) in size, Nabratein was technically a very small “town” according to ancient rabbinic terminology (Safrai 1994; 42, 65); but in terms of its size and largely self-sufficient economy, it would be better designated a village.

Sepphoris The archaeological situation is markedly different at Sepphoris, a site located in one of the richest areas of Lower Galilee and centrally positioned along two major ancient road systems (Meyers and Meyers 1997: 527). The Romans made it the capital of Galilee in the first century BCE, and it remained a leading center even after the regional capital shifted to Tiberias (Miller 1996a). Indeed, it was one of the few Palestinian settlements to be granted the coveted status of polis, or city, in Rome’s scheme for controlling its far-flung holdings (Butcher 2003: 99, 116). Its ties with the imperial capital meant the presence of some Romans in the city; but its population was predominantly Jewish throughout the Roman period.10 As a regional economic and political center, Sepphoris sprawled down the hillsides surrounding the summit on which the earliest settlement stood. Its full extent cannot be determined because of later occupation and military demolition; but its population was surely in the many thousands, perhaps as many as 10,000 occupying about 700-800 dunams (155.6-177.9 acres).11 About half its families were probably agriculturalists with holdings in the surrounding fields, with the rest practicing the trades and specializations characteristic of urban centers in the Roman period (Safrai 1994: 374). The city’s area included considerable civic space, including a theater, colonnaded streets with shops, an agora, and several bathhouses; and at least some of the residences were luxurious mansions (Netzer and Weiss 1996). Provincial cities were expected to exhibit monumental architecture consonant with Roman standards (Butcher 2003: 99), and Sepphoris clearly complied.

The corpus of ground stone artifacts from Nabratein is sizeable, given that the excavations concentrated on public space (the synagogue and its adjoining courtyard) rather than domiciles. Sixty-seven items appear in the catalogue (Ebeling forthcoming a: Chart 9). The largest number (twenty-two) of recovered ground stone tools are handstones. Of these, four are unstratified surface finds. However, the others are all from the first or second through the mid-fourth centuries AD, that is, from the Roman period. None are from stratified contexts of the Byzantine or Early Arab periods. The somewhat fewer grinding slabs or querns—five grinding slabs, two flat pieces called tables but are arguably slabs, and four indeterminate fragments that are likely from slabs or querns—have a similar chronological profile. In contrast, not a single fragment of an Olynthus mill or donkey mill was recovered. Moreover, although there are six examples of the rotary mill, all are Byzantine or Early Arab in date.

10 Minimal, if any, Christian presence can be documented before the fifth century AD (Freyne 1996). There are, however, some references to Jewish-Christians at Sepphoris in the Roman period. 11 Using a maximum density coefficient of 25 persons/dunam and figuring that up to 50 percent of the area was civic rather than residential space (London 1992; Reed 2000: 79-80).

This profile of ground stone tools reflects the agrarian economy of the site in the Roman period: grainproducing households ground their own cereals with 68

C. MEYERS: GRINDING TO A HALT: GENDER AND THE CHANGING TECHNOLOGY OF FLOUR…

SITE

HANDSTONE

QUERN, SLAB, or TABLE

ROTARY MILL

Nabratein (village)

22 (Roman)

7 (or 9?) (Roman)

6 (all Byzantine)

Sepphoris (city)

2 (both pre-Roman)

1 (+ 2 questionable)

0

OLYNTHUS MILL 0 15 (5 lower; 8 upper; 2 unclear)

DONKEY MILL 0 1 (3 pieces)

TABLE 1. Number of fragments of ground stone tools for producing flour at two Galilean sites heartland of its formation was Galilee, especially in the Roman period when, following the two ultimately futile Jewish attempts (in 66-70 CE and 132-135 CE) to throw off Roman domination of Palestine, many Jews fled Jerusalem and Judea and settled in Galilee. Among them were a small group of sages whose intellectual and legal traditions were eventually encoded in a large corpus of writings. Many of these writings were directly or indirectly produced at Sepphoris, which was a leading rabbinic center as well as a city of major political and economic importance in Roman Palestine (Miller 1996b). Some of the leading Jewish authorities of the period lived there; and, for a time, it was the location of the Jewish high court (Sanhedrin).

With the wealth of monumental construction, the several excavation projects drawn to the site since the 1930s have focused on public structures rather than domiciles.12 However, one expedition has concentrated on a residential area and has recovered a good corpus of ground stone artifacts (Ebeling forthcoming b). The Sepphoris corpus of grain processing tools is strikingly different from that of Nabratein in two ways. First, the corpus contains only two handstones, both of which are probably from pre-Roman fills, and only one grinding slab.13 Despite the longevity of these durable tools and the inherent conservatism in the dissemination of new technologies—it is estimated, for example, that it took nearly a millennium for the more efficient rotary mill to replace the Olynthus mill (Frankel 2003b: 18) in the east Mediterranean—virtually none of the pre-Roman technology persists into the Roman period at Sepphoris. Second, the new technologies of flour production reaching Palestine by the Roman period are clearly present in the Sepphoris corpus, which includes fifteen pieces of Olynthus mills (fragments of five lower stones, nine upper stones, and two indeterminate) and three of a donkey mill (but, as would be expected, no evidence of rotary mills, which were not used by Jews in Palestine in this period).

The earliest of the rabbinic writings, and arguably the core of all subsequent ones, is called the Mishnah and was collated in the early third century AD at Sepphoris by a famous sage known as Rabbi Judah the Prince; Rabbi Judah and other influential rabbinic figures of both earlier and later eras flourished in the cosmopolitan setting of this Galilean city (Miller 1992). Further Galilean traditions are reflected in a rabbinic commentary known as the Tosefta, from the third century CE, which reports the rulings of many of the same Sepphorean sages mentioned in the Mishnah. Finally, two more commentaries, one produced in Palestine during the fourth century CE and the other a century or more later in Babylon (but containing Palestinian as well as Diaspora traditions), elaborate further on issues discussed in the Mishnah and are known respectively as the Talmud of the Land of Israel and the Babylonian Talmud.

Archaeological data thus indicate that milling with machines replaced grinding with simple tools at this prominent urban site of the Roman period. Identifying the gender of those who operated Olynthus or donkey mills depends largely on textual information.14

In providing legal rulings dealing with the realia of daily life, the sages of Sepphoris and their successors inevitably drew upon what they experienced in their city (Miller 1984: 4); thus the dozens of passages mentioning flour production reflect the practices of Sepphoris. Unfortunately the texts only rarely provide explicit information about the gender of those using them; but indirect information does exist, along with attitudes about women and work.

Textual Evidence from Roman Galilee: Rabbinic Sources Rabbinic literature took shape in many different cultural settings over nearly half a millennium. However, the 12 The materials recovered from the market area have not yet been published; presumably the two expeditions working on that part of the site will report many more ground stone artifacts. 13 Two other pieces are possibly grinding slabs, but they are too fragmentary for identification to be certain. Note that Sepphoris data are provisional; final analysis is not yet complete. 14 Iconographic evidence is limited but note that the second or third century BCE “Homeric” bowls from Megara (in Greece), depict male millers (labeled ΜΎΛΩΘΡΟΙ) using the Olynthus mill (Rostsovtzeff 1937: 88, fig.1).

Of all the textual references to the processing of grains, only one passage uses the terms for slabs or querns used with handstones. The terms are mentioned at the end of a long list of objects, including all kinds of bed-coverings, 69

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES the building within which it is constructed also sells the mill.15

in an arcane passage about what can transmit (ritual) impurities (m. Oholot 8.3). The principle seems to be that the movability of objects entails susceptibility to ritual uncleanness; and handstones with slabs were indeed movable. That they are part of a list in which most of the items would be part of a woman’s realm is suggestive of their association with female labor. Another text, which mentions a pair of grinding stones in a more generic sense, clearly specifies the female gender of the user. This text (m. Shevicit 5.9) lists implements—including various objects used in household bread production, such as sieves (for removing bits of husks from ground grain), ovens (a portable device), and grindstones—that a woman may lend to a needy female neighbor. It also mentions that, under certain circumstances, a woman can help her female neighbor grind and sift grain. To be readily lent to a neighbor, the grindstones must be moveable; that is, they are a handstone/quern or slab set. As in the Iron Age, such tools are part of the realm of female household labor. These two texts, along with the strong tradition of women operating pairs of grindstones in Iron Age materials, suggests that whenever grinding tools persisted into the Roman period, as they did at Nabratein, they were used by women in individual households.

In addition to the texts mentioning milling tools, various rabbinic rulings refer to various crafts, trades, and services performed by the people of Sepphoris, including millers (Miller forthcoming; see Pesiqta Rabbati 23; cf. y. Pe’ah 1.15c). In all of the occupations listed, the male noun is used. Because rabbinic sources always mention women workers explicitly, texts using the masculine gender can be understood to refer only to male workers, who are thereby deemed the norm (Peskowitz 1997: 186, n. 8). Moreover, in the idealized world of the sages, in which (as we shall see) women were potentially polluting and dangerous, honorable men were urged not to allow their sons to practice certain crafts or trades that would bring them into contact with women (m. Qiddushin 4:14). The astonishingly long and unrealistic list of undesirable occupations—after all, if everyone obeyed such a stricture, who would provide all these services?— includes tailors, launderers, haircutters, and millstone grinders (t. Qiddushin 5:14).16 Such Utopian texts willynilly reveal men as practitioners of these occupations (Peskowitz 1997: 62-64). In sum, the texts indicate that the introduction of the technologically superior milling tools involved a shift, although not absolute, to male labor and to the commercialization of flour production in urban settlements in the Roman period. It remains to discuss the implications of this change.

Many other passages refer to the milling tools used in the new technology of the Roman period. A large group of texts mentioning the Olynthus mill (e.g., m. Baba Batra 2.1, 3; t. Baba Batra 1.3) are concerned with how it is to be positioned in relation to the wall of the room in which it is situated and indicate that the most stable way was to insert the lever into the wall (Frankel 2003a: 53). However, in an urban setting with the wall of one building sometimes also serving as the wall of an adjacent building, liability issues come into play; and another consideration in the location of mills is the noise they make. In the process of providing regulations for such matters, the texts reveal the mills to be large, stable installations that would have been located in the large domiciles of wealthier classes or in shops that served the wage-earning lower classes in an urban setting. The texts indicate how men should use their property in ways that do not interfere with the property or peace of their neighbors and, in so doing, refer to men as the millers and imply commercial usage of the millstones. The increased strength necessary to move the lever of an Olynthus mill as well as the commercialization of a process having greater output than do handstones, signals a shift from female grinders to “professional” male millers (Curtis 2003: 284).

Discussion Some people look at technological changes as positive developments, with “new and better” ways of doing things enhancing worker output and advancing society. Others look at such changes change as Faustian—they may provide something important but take away something important as well, with their advantages not necessarily distributed evenly among people affected (Postman 1998; cf. 1995: 192-93). The latter view, at least with respect to women’s lives, accords with the change from grinding to milling in Roman Galilee. This change produced some benefits but also significant disadvantages for women. To assess the impact of this technological change means first noting the importance of grinding as an essential daily activity for women in the Iron Age, when households were largely self-sufficient and women’s contributions to the domestic, largely non-market,

Other texts mention donkey mills and similarly take us into the world of male millers in an urban and probably commercial context. One text (m. Zavim 4:2), which discusses whether men who have a discharge (gonorrhea?) can contaminate the tools with which they work, names the various parts of a donkey mill. Another text (m. Baba Batra 4.3) notes that the lower part of a donkey mill is immovable and thus that a man who sells

15 But the upper millstone was movable and is probably the millstone (mulos onikos, “donkey mill”) of two New Testament passages: Matthew 18:6 and Mark 9:42. 16 Compare Boserup’s observation (1970: 92) that “men usually despise occupations manned (sic) predominantly by women, be it agricultural or trade, and they normally will hesitate to take part in such work.”

70

C. MEYERS: GRINDING TO A HALT: GENDER AND THE CHANGING TECHNOLOGY OF FLOUR… economy were substantial.17 Women transformed most crops and slaughtered animals into edible form, produced textiles, and provided a household with various other necessities of daily life. Among all of a woman’s chores, bread production was both most time-consuming and most directly related to family survival. As I have proposed in other studies (Meyers 2002; 2003b), such circumstances typically provide women with considerable power: (1) the household social power, including decision-making, that accrues to women by virtue of their dominance of essential household processes, especially the provision of commodities that cannot be obtained in any other way; (2) the community social power that emerges from the informal networks formed when women regularly spend extended periods of time together at their grindstones, as the archaeological data indicate they did; these networks create female solidarity, connecting households in ways that allow for mutual aid in times of duress and provide other trans-household functions; and (3) personal power, or the valued sense of self and concomitant gratification, that is contingent upon performing tasks that require technological skill and that supply life-sustaining products. Also, women in nonmarket cultures generally enjoy considerable prestige for their contributions to their family and larger kin group and for their control of crucial household activities (Applebaum 1984: 14; Bradley 1989: 33-37). But what happens to these benefits of women’s participation in the household economy when flour is no longer produced at home, as was the case in the Roman period in Galilee in larger towns and cities, such as Sepphoris, with developed markets?

power. When commodities can be procured outside the home, whatever work is still done within the home affords women less prestige and social standing (Applebaum 1984: 14; cf. C. Meyers 1983).19 But other insidious and perhaps even more adverse consequences can be related to the reduced time required for women to perform subsistence tasks, especially grinding grain. For women among the poorer classes in towns and cities, the availability of time and energy that would otherwise have been used for grinding was probably beneficial. Such women could become wage earners or engage in a trade or craft; and indeed, references in rabbinic texts indicate that women worked in textile production and in many service occupations (Aberbach 1994: 132, 209, 215; Peskowitz 1997: 205). But the situation would have been different for well-to-do urban women, for whom the availability of basic commodities from markets or from the labor of servants provided unencumbered hours. Such free time is widely believed by men to be the cause of female dalliance, perhaps because adultery to a certain extent requires leisure and resources and so tends to be an indulgence of upper classes (Williams 1996: 133). Female leisure is explicitly mentioned in rabbinic texts as a source of infidelity. Indeed, the very passage that allows women to relinquish grinding and other household tasks if they have servants also insists that women be compelled to maintain their work in wool even if they have 100 servants; and the reason given is that “idleness leads to unchastity” (m. Ketubbot 5.5). Similar sentiments—that labor protects women from the sexual temptations resulting from leisure—appear in the literature of ancient Rome (Peskowitz 1997: 99).20 Because of male concerns about the paternity of heirs, extra-marital sex with its potential for pregnancy was a grave offense, especially in wealthier families; and honor was a powerful attendant issue. Much was at stake in the control of female sexuality. Thus the increased leisure of some women contributed towards their increased sexualization in male perception and, consequently, in rabbinic texts.

Perhaps the most dramatic and immediate affect would have been a positive one, namely, improvement in women’s physical health. To work effectively with grinding tools, a woman’s toes are bent against the ground as she pushes forward with the handstone, keeping her body parallel to the ground. Long hours in this position lead to deformities of the back, knee, and toes. These “repetitive stress injuries” would have been uncomfortable at best and painful or debilitating at worst (Molleson 1994). The end of grinding would have brought a significant improvement to women’s health.

Another important aspect of the leisure time available to well-to-do women with the advent of milling was that they could not be used it in the pursuit of knowledge. Women were banned from the flourishing academies in Sepphoris and other Galilean towns and cities and from learning in general. Such prohibitions were justified in rabbinic texts by the claim that women were of lesser intellect. Women needed to learn enough to maintain dietary laws, and some may have learned to read and

But the change to milling also had negative consequences. For one thing, commercial milling meant that flour and often bread could be obtained from sources outside the household. The paucity of handstones and the abundance of millstones at Sepphoris meant that urban women would have purchased flour in one of the several markets of the city.18 With the availability of commercial mills, women were no longer sole providers of a dietary staple; their economic role would have been significantly diminished, with concomitant decrease in status and

19

The commercialization of flour-production, and baking too, would have had other, repercussions for the social relations of women and their communities; see the ethnographic evidence from Sardinia (Counihan 1984). 20 Compare the situation nearly two millennia later in Meso-America. When milling on an industrial level became available, men opposed it; they wanted women to continue grinding with manos and metates precisely because they felt leisure would otherwise give them more opportunity to be unfaithful (Bauer 1990: 16).

17

Non-market societies are non-industrial cultures in which work and most other institutions are embedded in kinship structures. Applebaum (1984) summarizes the features of both non-market and mixed societies. 18 Note that the grinding of grain is appears first in a rabbinic list of tasks married women should perform but is also the first that could be transferred to someone else (m. Ketubbot 5.5).

71

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES write; but intellectual pursuits—understood as the study of Torah—were not normally open to them (Ilan 1995: 190-204). Consequently, in their cognitive and moral faculties, no less than their physical (sexual) characteristics, women were deemed inherently different from and inferior to men (Wegner 1998: 82). This essential otherness generated male fear and even loathing, despite the fact that women were acknowledged to be essential as child-bearers and enablers and were often cherished as such. Conceptualized as a breed apart, women needed to be controlled (Baskin 2002: 8-9, 1343).

and scholars now believe it unlikely that the rabbinic views and legal decisions either reflected or affected the inhabitants of small agricultural villages such as Nabratein and the even smaller hamlets scattered about the Galilean countryside. However, ironically and tragically with respect to gender issues, rabbinic policy that resulted from and regulated the lives of the relatively small number of wealthy residents of urban centers, especially Sepphoris, in the Roman period was destined to become authoritative for nearly all Jewish communities for generations to come. The texts that originated from and were adhered to by what was probably an atypical, upper-class minority became the normative, classical, and binding traditions of most Jews well into the modern age. As grinding came to a halt in cities such as Sepphoris, the resulting changes were part of larger shifts in elite Galilean society that were to have lasting and profound repercussions for the lives of nearly all Jewish women.

Possible reasons for such alarmingly negative attitudes and policies in Jewish texts of the Roman period have been suggested in recent scholarship (summarized in Baskin 2002: 36-40). One possible factor was the powerful influence of Hellenistic thought. Its binaries, which paired women with negative traits, such as bestiality and immorality, and linked men with the opposite positive traits, had an impact on the sages, as did the general misogyny of much of the Roman literature that reached the upper classes in Galilee. Another possibility was that the emasculation of Jewish men by their losses in the two wars against Rome and their concomitant loss of political autonomy contributed to the force with which they asserted themselves in the control of women. These and other explanations have merit, for the change in cultural perceptions of women from the generally positive ones of the Iron Age to the negative ones of the Roman period was undoubtedly a complex process involving multiple variables.

References Aberbach, M., 1994, Labor, Crafts, and Commerce in Ancient Israel. (Jerusalem: Magnes Press at the Hebrew University) Alexandre, Y., 2006, “Nahal Tut (Site VIII): A Fortified Storage Depot from the Late Fourth Century BCE”, Atiqot 52, pp. 131-87. Applebaum, H., 1984, “Theoretical Introduction”, in H. Applebaum (ed.) Work in Non-Market and Transitional Society, (Albany: State University of New York Press), pp. 1-38.

What none of these theories take into account, however, is the role of technological change, with household grinding replaced by commercial milling in the urban sites of the Roman period.21 It is no accident that the misogynistic rabbinic texts, many of which originated at Sepphoris and similar large settlements, were the product of the middle and upper classes whose households were most directly affected by the new technology and the concomitant decrease in women’s work and worth. The leading sages were either themselves from aristocratic families or aspired to and often achieved the wealth, prominence, and privilege of urban elites (Levine 1985). What they experienced in their own households and in the social circles in which they moved found its way into the texts they produced.

Baskin, J., 2002, Midrashic Women: Formations of the Feminine in Rabbinic Literature (Brandeis Series on Jewish Women), (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press at the University Press of New England) Bauer, A. J., 1990, “Millers and Grinders: Technology and Household Economy in Meso-America”, Agricultural History 64, pp. 10-17. Biskowski, M., 2008, “Maize-Grinding Tools in Prehispanic Central Mexico”, in T. Rowan y J. Ebeling (eds.), New Approaches to Old Stones: Recent Studies of Ground Stone Artifacts. (London: Equinox)

Interestingly, in the Roman period itself, the negative rabbinic comments and rulings on women probably affected the lives of the elite but not necessarily the general populace (Ilan 1995: 228-29). The Jewish population of Roman Galilee was quite heterogeneous,

Boserup, E., 1970, Women’s Role in Economic Development, (New York: St. Martin’s)

21 Amazingly, a similar transition, with equally profound negative implications for women occurs at the same time in textile production, with a more efficient two-beam loom replacing the older warp-weighted loom and creating the possibility of developed commercial use (Peskowitz 1997: 81-92).

Bronner, L. L., 1994, From Eve to Esther: Rabbinic Reconstructions of Biblical Women. (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox)

Bradley, H., 1989, Men’s Work, Women’s Work: A Sociological History of the Sexual Division of Labour in Employment (Oxford and Cambridge: Foley)

72

C. MEYERS: GRINDING TO A HALT: GENDER AND THE CHANGING TECHNOLOGY OF FLOUR… Broshi, M., 2001, “The Diet of Palestine in the Roman Period: Introductory Notes”, in Bread, Wine, Walls, and Scrolls (Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Supplement Series 36). (London: Sheffield Academic Press), pp. 121-43.

Journal of the American Academy of Religion 51, pp. 569-593.

Butcher, K., 2003, Roman Syria and the Near East, (London: British Museum Press)

Meyers, C., 1997, “Recovering Objects, Re-visioning Subjects: Archaeology and Feminist Biblical Study”, in A. Brenner and C. Fontaine (eds.), A Feminist Companion to Reading the Bible. Approaches, Methods, and Strategies. (Sheffield, Sheffield Academic Press), pp. 270-84.

Meyers, C., 1988, Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context, (New York: Oxford)

Counihan, C. M., 1984, “Bread as World: Food Habits and Social Relations in Modernizing Sardinia”, Anthropological Quarterly 57, pp. 47-59. Curtis, R. L., 2001, Ancient Food Technology (Technology and Change in History, Vol. 3), (Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill)

Meyers, C., 1999, “Guilds and Gatherings: Women’s Groups in Ancient Israel”, in P. M. Williams, Jr. and T. Hiebert (eds.), Realia Dei: Essays in Biblical Interpretation in Honor of Edward F. Campbell, Jr. (Atlanta: Scholars Press), pp. 154-184.

Dommershausen, W., 1995, “Lehem” Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament 7, pp. 521-29. Rowan, Y.M. and Ebeling, J., 2004, “The Archaeology of the Daily Grind: Ground Stone Tools and Food Production in the Southern Levant”, Near Eastern Archaeology 67, pp. 108-117.

Meyers, C., 2002, “Having Their Space and Eating There Too: Bread Production and Female Power in Ancient Israelite Households”, Nashim 5, pp. 14-44. Meyers, C., 2003a, “Engendering Syro-Palestinian Archaeology: Reasons and Resources”, Near Eastern Archaeology 66, pp. 185-197.

Ebeling, J., forthcoming a, “The Ground Stone Artifacts [from Nabratein]”, in C. Meyers and E. Meyers (eds) Excavations at Ancient Nabratein: Synagogue and Environs (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns)

Meyers, C., 2003b, “Material Remains and Social Relations: Women’s Culture in Agrarian Households of the Iron Age”, in W. G. Dever and S. Gitin (eds.) Symbiosis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel, and Their Neighbors from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palestine, (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns), pp. 425-444.

Ebeling, J., forthcoming b, “The Ground Stone Artifacts [from Sepphoris]”, in C. Meyers, E. Meyersand J. Reed, Excavations of the Joint Sepphoris Project, 1985-89 [tentative tile]. Frankel, R., 2003a, “Mills and Querns in Talmudic Literature–A Reappraisal in Light of Archaeological Evidence, Cathedra 110, pp. 43-60

Meyers, C. y Meyers, E. M., 1997, “Sepphoris”, Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East 4, pp. 527536.

Frankel, R., 2003b, “The Olynthus Mill: Its Origin, and Diffusion: Typology and Distribution”, American Journal of Archaeology 107, pp. 1-21.

Meyers, C. y Meyers, E. M., forthcoming, Excavations at Ancient Nabratein: Synagogue and Environs. (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns)

Freyne, S., 1996, “Christianity in Sepphoris and Galilee”, in R. M. Nagy, C. L. Meyers, E. M. Meyers, and Z. Weiss (eds.), Sepphoris in Galilee: Crosscurrents of Culture, (Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Museum of Art), pp. 67-73.

Meyers, E. M., 2003, “Roman Period Houses from Galilee: Domestic Architecture and Gendered Space”, in W. G. Dever and S. Gitin (eds.) Symbiosis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel, and Their Neighbors from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palestine (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns), pp. 487-499.

Ilan, T., 1995, Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Palestine: An Inquiry into Image and Status. (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, Paul Siebeck). Levine, L. I., 1989, The Rabbinic Class of Roman Palestine in Late Antiquity, (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America)

Miller, S., 1984, Studies in the History and Traditions of Sepphoris. Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity, 37, (Leiden: Brill)

London, G., 1992, “Tells: City Center or Home?” Eretz Israel 23, pp. 71-79.

Miller, S., 1992, “R. Hanina bar Hama at Sepphoris”, in L. I. Levine (ed.) The Galilee in Late Antiquity, (New York and Jerusalem: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America)

Meyers, C., 1983, “Procreation, Production, and Protection: Male-Female Balance in Early Israel”,

73

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES Miller, S., 1996a, “Hellenistic and Roman Sepphoris: The Historical Evidence”, in R. M. Nagy, C. L. Meyers, E. M. Meyers, and Z. Weiss (eds.), Sepphoris in Galilee: Crosscurrents of Culture, (Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Museum of Art), pp. 21-27.

Storck J. and teague, W. D., 1952, Flour for Man’s Bread, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press)

Miller, S., 1996b, “Jewish Sepphoris: A Great City of Scholars and Scribes”, in R. M. Nagy, C. L. Meyers, E. M. Meyers, and Z. Weiss (eds.), Sepphoris in Galilee: Crosscurrents of Culture, (Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Museum of Art), pp. 59-65.

Wegner, J. R., 1998, “Women in Classical Rabbinic Judaism”, in J. Baskin (ed.), Jewish Women in Historical Perspective, (Detroit: Wayne State University Press), pp. 73-100.

Watts, M., 2002, The Archaeology of Mills and Milling, (Stroud and Charleston: Tempus)

Williams, G., 1996, “Representations of Women in Literature”, in D. E. E. Kleiner and S. B. Matheson (eds.), I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome, (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery)

Miller, S., forthcoming, Ancient Sepphoris: Literary Images of a Galilean City. Molleson, T., 1994, “The Eloquent Bones of Abu Hureyra”, Scientific American 271, pp. 70-75. Moritz, L.A., 1958, Grain-mills and Flour in Classical Antiquity, (Oxford: Clarendon Press) Netzer, E. and Weiss, Z., 1996, “Hellenistic and Roman Sepphoris: The Archaeological Evidence”, in R. M. Nagy, C. L. Meyers, E. M. Meyers, and Z. Weiss (eds.), Sepphoris in Galilee: Crosscurrents of Culture, (Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Museum of Art), pp. 29-37. Peacock, D. P. S., 1989, “The Mills of Pompeii”, Antiquity 63, pp. 205-14. Peskowitz, M., 1997, Spinning Fantasies: Rabbis, Gender, and History, (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press) Postman, N., 1995, The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf.) Postman, N., 1998, Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change. Lecture, Denver, CO (http://itrs.scu.edu/tshanks/pages/Comm12/12Postman.ht m). Rostsovtzeff, M., 1937, “Two Homeric Bowls in the Louvre”, American Journal of Archaeology 41, pp. 8696. Reed, J. L., 2000, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus: A Re-examination of the Evidence, (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Pres International) Rutter, G. P., 2003, Basaltic-rock Procurement Systems of the Southern Levant. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Durham. Safrai, Z., 1994, The Economy of Roman Palestine, (London and New York: Routledge) Sperber, D., 1978, Roman Palestine 200-400 The Land: Crisis and Change in Agrarian Society as Reflected in Rabbinic Sources, (Ramat-Gan, Israel: Bar-Ilan University) 74

10. Changing foodways: new strategies in food preparation, serving, and consumption in the Bronze Age of the Iberian Peninsula Margarita Sánchez-Romero and Gonzalo Aranda Departamento de Prehistoria y Arqueología, Universidad de Granada, Spain Introduction: the perception of maintenance activities

iconography (Brumfiel 1991). The carrying out of this work must leave traces on the archaeological record of prehistoric societies, not only in the material culture that is manufactured, transformed, consumed, stored or thrown away, but also in the bodies of women who carried out these activities. Several anthropological studies done on Bronze Age societies of the Iberian Peninsula (Al-Oumaqui et al. 2004; Jiménez-Brobeil et al. 2004) show different patterns of paleopathologies and stress markers that are different between men and women and must be related to the manner they carry out different activities (Sánchez Romero 2008a; Aranda et al. forthcoming).

Human activities have a space-time dimension that has varied throughout history as a consequence of social and technological changes (Carrasco et al. 2003: 67). Also susceptible to these transformations are maintenance activities, which can be defined as practices related to the care and sustenance of life in human groups that take place within the framework of daily life  food, childcare, hygiene, and public health (Picazo 1997; Montón 2000:52). In the course of daily life, human societies create a world of food, refuge, clothing and other commodities, full of physical experiences (Bray 1997:2). Much of this material culture is shaped through maintenance activities and represents a large amount of the archaeological record that is analysed to understand prehistoric societies. However, it has been traditionally thought that the work that constitutes daily life and the economic functions and social dynamics that are associated with it do not change (Meyers 2003). In other words, these activities remain unchanging and independent of other social and economic movements that affect societies.

Several factors could influence the fact that the domestic sphere is identified with this social and productive immobility. The analysis of work-time in mercantile terms has predisposed the negative consideration of the processes of production and maintenance of the domestic spheres of prehistoric societies. Even today, women use in the development of these activities this “non-mercantile time,” time that is not remunerated or paid so that it becomes invisible (Nelson 1997:87; Carrasco et al. 2003: 9). Moreover as Hernando has recently stated (2005b; this volume), the importance of maintenance activities and the role of women have been denied due to the fact that history has emerged as a legitimising discourse based on individuality, in particular, male individuality, which implies a contradiction in the role of the social group. Hence, activities associated with care, maintenance, and reproduction of the group will not be considered crucial because these are structurally opposite those associated with power and personal achievements.

This opinion is justified by the depreciatory consideration of those labour designated as domestic, which is intimately linked to our contemporary notion and sustained by a series of preconceived ideas and premises, thus conferring upon domestic work a low social significance and perceiving it as irrelevant for explaining the social dynamics of prehistoric groups (Curiá and Masvidal 1998:228). The domestic sphere is explained by generalities, dichotomies, and even concepts that are not defined in the same way by all researchers, in such a way that an ambiguous and undefined space is created that is not favourable to reflection; the domestic becomes a universal category associated with a particular class of uniform and unchanging individuals: women (Brück 2005:143). In this way, the meaning of the material culture associated with domestic space is expressed exclusively through typologies and descriptions, instead of serving as a source of reflection on how people organise and value their activities and their relationships with other members of the group (Meyers 2003:428). For this reason, the debate over the meaning of domestic space (Montón 2000) and the time, cycles, and routines that it involves (Picazo 1997) and the consideration of maintenance activities (Carrasco et al. 2003) and the possible roots of this situation (Hernando 2005a; Sánchez Romero 2008a) have special relevance. Traditionally, these activities and these spaces have been considered as connected to women, an idea that has been supported by our knowledge of ethnography (Hernando 2001; Meyers 2003:431), literature (Mirón 2005; Cabré 2007), and

Maintenance activities as an expression of social change The technology of maintenance activities One of the main problems regarding the consideration of maintenance activities is the idea that these tasks do not require any type of technology, any instruction, learning or experience. This is an essential point in the recurring representation of the domestic work; words such as technique and technology have been essentially tied to the male world. The history of technological and anthropological studies has paid attention to the political, cultural, and even cosmological dimensions of technical projects; it has focused on modern industrial and military technologies, reflecting the social realities of the engineering and business worlds and reinforcing the idea of ‘Man the Tool-Maker’ (Bray 2007: 39). Nevertheless, the first definition of technology given in the The Concise Oxford English Dictionary is the application of scientific 75

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES knowledge for practical purposes; etymologically, it defines the knowledge of a technique, where the technique is the collection of procedures and resources that serve a science or an art and the skill to practice them. However, while it is usual to find the word technology tied to concepts like metallurgy, stone tool production or pottery, it is more difficult to find it used in the context of food production, basketry, or textiles, when similar processes are carried out by which specific raw material is transformed through a series of techniques, knowledge, and skills to achieve a manufactured product.

produce, as all technologies do, innovations and changes. Many times, the fact that these activities are tied to the most basic needs of society  biological and relationship needs , has meant that their technologies are naturalised, making them less visible (McGaw 1996). However, we must consider the social context of production, not the effects of technology on society but the effects of society on technology, the social uses that individuals make of the technology, the effect on their everyday lives, and the change in social structure as a result of the collective use and response toward a technology.

The archaeological discipline has also been quite sensitive when analysing technological advances as something linked to the male realm; it is not unintentional that the different periods that indicate the “progress of humanity” are structured using technical terminology: stone tool production and metallurgy (Wright 1999:176), activities connected to men in the traditional archaeological literature (Sánchez Romero 2005; Sánchez Romero and Moreno 2005). From this perspective, technology is disconnected from other social processes and therefore, it cannot be influenced by other strategies of social organisation like gender relationships; hierarchical positions are established such that metallurgy becomes more important than the production of food or textile (Wright 1999:176). Feminist technology studies have tried to debunk these ideas (Bray 1997; 2007; Cowan 1989; McGaw 1996; Wajcman 1991; 2002; 2004); for example, Judith McGaw has been concerned not only about the way that gender assumptions have shaped technology but also by the way that gender notions shape the way technological history has been written; she points out that the gender ideological component attributes polarities in the domain of men and women in technological studies, men are typically shown to be producers of technology and women are mere consumers (McGaw 1996); as Francesca Bray has stated, it has been considered that “women may have to use machines, in the workplace or in the home, but they neither love nor seek to understand them” (2007:38) .

Changes in socioeconomic organisation have been observed in societies with respect to urbanism and funerary practices. However, maintenance activities also influence how domestic space is managed, how time is organised, and even how identities are created. Any change in the economic organisation modifies everything related to the food that is consumed, how it is prepared, how it is stored, and how it is served (Montón 2005). Changes in social organisation are expressed in how people dress, what ornaments they wear, and how their identity is represented through the modification of their body (Sánchez Romero forthcoming b). Interpersonal relationships are also modified, and through changes in the urban system, we can assume who lives with whom, how many people inhabit a domestic unit, and how the materiality of architecture plays a primordial role in letting people experience the place where they live (Brück 2005:136). Similarly, transformations in the symbolic world and ideology are reflected in the daily lives of people since they can change how they situate themselves within the social group, their feelings of belonging to a community, and their relationship with their ancestors. The symbolic and technological importance of food consumption As we have seen, we need a new definition of technology that emphasizes the net of social, material, and symbolic dimensions of material culture technology (Pfaffemberg 1988:250; Dobres 1995:26) and in which gender relationships are present. We must demystify technologies by removing them from the world of ‘high-tech’ science to everyday practices. Food preparation and consumption could be an interesting arena in which these ideas can be tested. Culinary practices, as a part of maintenance activities, are key in the sustenance of human groups and its study is important not only because food is utterly essential to human existence, but also because the subfield has proved valuable for debating and advancing anthropological and archaeological theory and research methods (Mintz and Dubois 2002; Aranda and Esquivel 2006; 2007; Sánchez et al. 2007). Food and eating studies have illuminated broad societal processes such as political-economic value creation, symbolic value creation, and the social construction of memory in anthropology; habits associated with food and eating carry a multitude of meanings and play a crucial role in the construction and performance of identities (Mauss 1967; Goody 1982; Weismantel 1988; Mintz and Dubois 2002; Corr 2002). We consider food

From feminist perspectives on technology, in order to redefine the relationship between gender and technology, we must include the rectification of the historiographical omission of the contributions of women in technological innovation, design, and use; the consideration of technologies that have been ignored or dismissed because they are related to women’s sphere, such as domestic technologies; the reflection about the historical exclusion of women from the domain of technology, particularly in the labour process; and the deliberation about the importance of technologies based on women (Shade 2002:8). Moreover, we must analyse in which way technology and, more specifically, that related to maintenance activities, not only can sustain societies but also create and maintain social identities (Costin 1998). The preparation of food, the manufacture of textiles, and caring for other members of a group require a series of technical skills and an accumulation of experiences that will 76

M. SÁNCHEZ-ROMERO AND G. ARANDA: CHANGING FOODWAYS: NEW STRATEGIES IN FOOD PREPARATION… quotidian life. The foods we eat become organically and socially embodied, and the assumption that ‘we are what we eat’ refers to both our cultural and biological beings. Food consumption has been used constantly to generate, maintain, and legitimize authority and power; through it, we build social relationships and transmit technological, ideological, and social knowledge. For example, communal food and drink consumption is a useful strategy in the construction of social order not only because of their biological and physiological effects but also of psychological and emotional ones (Sánchez et al. 2007; Aranda forthcoming.).

consumption as a cultural construction and, through this practice people define material culture used in the creation and maintenance of social relationships. Food is a basic element in the construction of identity, is an evidence of sociological differences with variables such as gender, age, status, ethnicity, or religion. Not only does it regard the individual identity, but also the communal identity and the sense of belonging to a collective with links reinforced through food. These identities are configured not only through practices, ideological discourses, or symbolic representation but also through physical experiences and material culture. How people are involved in the preparation of their own food, the foods that people choose to eat, and the vessels in which food is served can vary due to both deliberate means of social expression and reflections of social differences (Turkon 2004). In spite of its relevance, technologies related to food preparation and consumption hardly have been looked at as a technological system important enough to be considered (some exceptions are Firth 1966; Bruneton 1975; Godoy 1994; Colomer 1996; Montón 2005).

Hence, although food and drink are among the essential needs of human beings, their consumption is not merely a biological act. Quite the contrary, it is full of normative meanings. Food is important for structuring time and social relationships, forming and reproducing identities, forging power relationships, negotiating sex and age, as well as providing society with intricate symbols and metaphors (Sherrat 1996; Parker 2000; 2003). If we accept that the choice of food and drink and the way in which it is cooked and presented can be understood as indicators of cultural, social, and political identity, the choice of domestic pottery can be equally understood as a reflection of these identities (Goldstein 2003).

From a technical point of view, food preparation has three different types of action: (a) obtaining those components critical to the preparation of foodstuffs such as water and fuel, distributing the work within the community, and organising maintenance activities (for example, the time spent by women gathering fuel and water can be very significant); (b) raw material processing in order to obtain a social and material edible food that include boiling, frying, roasting, steaming, smoking, marinating, or fermenting and other activities such as milling; and finally, (c) maintenance of structures (ovens, hearths, storage areas, rubbish dump) and tools related to these activities. However, as mentioned earlier, technological advances, knowledge, and experiences derived from the development of these activities have not been considered; nevertheless, they require learning processes and skills that include an understanding of properties of different raw materials; knowledge of different processes of food preparation; the appropriate food for each circumstance (age, illness, etc.); familiarity with temperatures, timing, type of fuel, and so on, which are essential for the success of the food preparation practice (Monton 2005). Recent studies on ethnographic societies have shown that women in developing countries spent between 2.5 and 4.5 hours per day in processing and cooking food, and between 1 and 3 hours gathering water and fuel (Mulokozi 1999).

Ritualisation of specific practices of consumption has traditionally been the perfect way to naturalise differential access to goods of production. As an example, we can analyse the evidences of feasting and funerary ritual in the Argaric societies (southeast of the Iberian Peninsula). There are two main archaeological evidences. The first is the production of special ritual pottery vessels with a high degree of standardisation linked to the presentation and consumption of food and drink. In these vessels, the visual and display properties have been clearly emphasised, which reflect their performance in social practices based on display and dramatisation (Aranda and Esquivel 2006; 2007). As second evidence, we can mention the regular appearance of meat offerings in Argaric tombs, which enables us to point out that the slaughter and consumption of cattle and sheep or goat took place as part of rituals of commensality. The type of meat consumed in these rituals was linked to the social status of the Argaric people. Cattle would be slaughtered during the commensal practices associated with the highest social groups in contrast to that in the lowest social levels that include goat or sheep but never cattle. The ritual of commensality in Argaric societies would contribute to maintaining the social solidarity at the same time that it legitimised and naturalised a clear situation of social asymmetry. In this context, the slaughter and consumption of meat in Argaric funerary rituals could be understood as a symbolic expression that reproduces and legitimises asymmetrical social relationships. At the same time, these rituals imply the creation of cohesion and solidarity links across the different social groups. Therefore, rituals of commensality are one of the most important ways in which power in Argaric societies is based on (Aranda and Esquivel 2006; 2007).

We must consider aspects related to the everyday life of preparation and consumption not only regarding technology (Colomer 1996; Hendon 1996; Colomer et al. 1998; Crown 2000; Montón 2005) but also consider ideology and memory. Food consumption generates the reinforcement of links and the construction of networks of physical and psychological survival in the social group. We must bear in mind that the reason for most political and economic decisions is precisely the maintenance of daily life conditions (González and Picazo 2005:147). Food consumption is full of symbolic and ideological meaning not only in its ritual use but also in multiple aspects of 77

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES areas whose main characteristic was the control of the routes of communication that connected different territories. These settlements have some urban and constructive characteristics that indicate an abandonment of the system of terraces and the massive use of stone that characterised Argaric settlements. During the Late Bronze Age, settlement planning was characterised by independent structures and houses, usually oval or rectangular in shape, and scattered throughout the settlements, apparently without any internal divisions. Although of different sizes, houses were, generally speaking, large and did not appear to be compartmentalised. One of the most significant features is that the inner faces of the wall were covered with yellowish stucco plaques, rectangular in form and decorated with geometric motifs (Fig. 1) (Molina 1978; 1983; Martinez and Botella 1980; Contreras 1982; Ros 1989; González 1990; Lomba 1993; Aranda and Molina 2005).

In this paper, we will analyse changes produced in the maintenance activities in Bronze Age societies in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula, focusing on how activities related to the processing and consumption of food are transformed. Different and interrelated factors conditioned the way in which food was produced, distributed, consumed, and thrown away; social identities involve every aspect of life, especially in the way that people conduct their everyday lives. The effects of broad societal changes on eating patterns, and vice versa, are of growing interest to ethnographers (Harris and Ross 1987; Pelto and Vargas 1992; Macbeth 1997; Lentz 1999; Wu & Tan 2001; Cwiertka and Walraven 2002) and other researchers exploring changes in intergroup relations within societies; mass production of foods; biotechnology; movements of peoples; increasing globalisation of foods themselves; and war. These themes are dealt with in turn (Mintz and Dubois 2002). For all these reasons, we consider food consumption as a cultural construction that defines material culture for the creation and maintenance of social relationships and, obviously, it must leave traces in the archaeological record of past societies (Sánchez et al. 2007). From an analysis of the properties of pottery groups from the Late Bronze Age, it is possible to present the performance of new forms of preparation, presentation, and consumption of food and drink. The changes documented in the ceramic vessels point out to a different organisation of domestic work and social relationships with new contents and settings of representation, reproduction, and modification.

Funerary rituals also presented some strongly differentiated characteristics with respect to the Argaric world. Although there are only a few documented necropolises, the practices showed a high degree of standardisation; they are characterised by the incineration ritual with the remains placed in funerary urns covered with carinated vessels and located in pits or cists. The burial offerings are mainly ornamental elements, such as bracelets, earrings, necklace beads, and most unusually, fibulae. The necropolises are usually located on hills or promontories, always separated from the settlement (Molina 1978; Carrasco et al. 1980; González 1983; Ros 1986; Hernández and Gil 2004).

The cultural framework of the Late Bronze Age societies on the southeast Iberian Peninsula Bronze Age societies on the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula have been grouped into two large cultural periods, which succeeded each other. They have been systematised as the El Argar culture (Siret and Siret 1890) and the Late Bronze Age culture of the southeast Iberian Peninsula (Molina 1976; 1978), between 2200 and 900 B.C. The cultural traces of both periods can be characterised by important differences between these societies. These differences affect not only the ways of life but also the scale of research that has focused on both cultural developments. From the very beginning, research has mainly concentrated on the societies of the Copper Age and El Argar culture (local name of Bronze Age Culture). The reason for this interest devolves upon the richness and spectacular nature of both cultures. The most drastic differences in research have been those related to the Late Bronze Age, especially in the last years where the situation can be qualified as suspended, while important advances have occurred in our knowledge about Argaric societies (Aranda and Sánchez 1999).

Material culture such as ceramic, metal, and lithic tools have typological and technological characteristics that again illustrate a change with Argaric societies. The pottery assemblage is characterised by the introduction of new types and shapes, as analysed below (Molina 1978; 1983; Aranda 2001). Regarding the metallurgic production, we must highlight the use of the alloy of copper and tin, instead of the previous copper and arsenic. From a typological perspective, the most common are axes with loops, tongue swords, arrowheads, and ornamental elements like fibulae. All these metallic products have been linked to contacts and exchanges on a Mediterranean or even Atlantic scale, not known in earlier periods (Molina 1978, 1983; Carrasco et al. 1987; 2002; González 1990). Differences observed in the material culture also affected other elements on a local scale; this is the case of the loom weights, which presented new morphological characteristics such as a biconical shape and a central notch (Molina 1978). During the Late Bronze Age, therefore, a new type of perfectly defined society appeared; whose materiality did not have elements of connection or transition with Argaric societies. This cultural discontinuity posed important questions about the causes and consequences of the disappearance of Argaric culture and about the origin and formation of Late Bronze Age societies. Attempts to

Despite these important differences, current knowledge about both societies is enough to support the existence of two social models with their own cultural manifestations that are intensely different from each other. In short, during the Late Bronze Age, there was a change in the organisation of settlements, which began to be located in 78

M. SÁNCHEZ-ROMERO AND G. ARANDA: CHANGING FOODWAYS: NEW STRATEGIES IN FOOD PREPARATION…

FIG. 1. Typical oval shape domestic structure from the Late Bronze Age site of Cabezuelos (Ubeda, Jaén) (After Contreras 1982)

interpret this process have been fundamentally based on a normative point of view, where the changes are the results of influences from different sources that generate processes of acculturation of the indigenous substrate. In this context, the Late Bronze Age has even been considered to be a stage of cultural involution and a move backward to the typical organisational patterns of Copper Age societies (Pellicer 1992-93; Eiroa 1989; Martínez and Botella 1980). In our view, the change is related to some new forms of the representation of power. During the Late Bronze Age, social relationships and their cultural manifestations disappeared from traditional scenarios and moved to other spheres with different forms that w ere much more interconnected with other cultural developments.

manufacturing techniques, morphological properties, and composition of the clays (Braun 1983; Welch and Scarry 1995). The ethnographic comparison of the form-function correlation bears out the existence of clear tendencies where specific physical and formal properties are associated with equally specific uses (Henrickson and McDonald 1983; Smith 1988). Although the specific uses for pottery can be varied, the main functionality of these products consists of storage, transportation, preparation, and service of both foods and liquids. Considering this, changes in the types and capacities of containers have been traditionally considered as an indicator of changes in the foods consumed, in the transmission of knowledge about foods, and in the social context of preparation and consumption (Braun 1983; Mills 1989; 1999).

Changing foodways: Late Bronze Age pottery

Changes documented in pottery vessels during the Late Bronze Age must be related to new methods of cooking and changes in food consumption practices both in the development of daily life  therefore on a domestic scale  and in episodes of commensality practices. Generally speaking, the differences between Argaric assemblages and those of the Late Bronze Age affect both formal and technological characteristics, with a considerable incidence of decoration in pottery from the Late Bronze Age. Regarding typology, during this period, we found an increase of open shapes and flat bottoms, in contrast to the rounded bases and closed shapes characteristic of Argaric pottery. Another distinguishing element of Late Bronze Age pottery is the important difference in the technique and in the properties of tableware vessels manufactured with high-quality clays and extremely

The functional interpretation of pottery assumed that form is strongly influenced by its intended function. The relationship between form and function suggests that certain physical and formal properties represent the most efficient way to obtain certain functional requirements. This relationship has been defined as primary functions (Ericson et al. 1972; Henrickson and McDonald 1983; Aranda 2004). Characteristics such as dimension, stability, volumetric capacity, composition of clay, easy access to contents, ease of removing contents, convenient pouring, efficiency in absorbing heat, thermal resistance, evaporation rate, and others determine the possible functionality. The effectiveness of the development of certain tasks is therefore conditioned by the 79

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES

FIG. 2. Serving/eating vessels from Late Bronze Age of southeast of Iberian Peninsula (After Molina 1978; Molina et al. 1983 and Aranda 2001).

As to carinated forms, three sizes of serving/eating bowls have been identified after the morphological analysis.1 For the first vessel group, the maximum diameter/height ranged from 100–140 mm to 42–55 mm; for the individual size vessels, the ratio spanned between 170 and 220 mm in diameter and 60–91 mm high; and finally, for communal size ware, between 240 and 380 mm in diameter and 70–135 high. The ratio between the maximum diameter and height varied between 2.1 and 2.6 for the first vessel assemblage with a mean of 2.2 versus the interval of 2.2 and 3.8 that characterised the individual and communal size ware with an average of 2.9. These differences that showed a tendency of greater depth in the first vessel group can be related to their use as a container of liquids for drinking. The smaller size and deeper depth define morphological conditions suitable for this function. To conclude, the ratio of individual/communal size vessels, carinated or not, were extremely uniform, ranging from 2.9 to 3. This implied a relationship of maximum Diameter three times greater than the maximum height2 (Aranda 2001).

burnished surfaces that produced a uniform and very glossy surface, as opposed to cooking vessels and storage pots with a smoothed surface treatment that gave a more or less fine-textured but non-glossy appearance (Molina 1978; Aranda 2001). Considering in more detail serving and eating vessels during the Late Bronze Age, we found very open forms characterised by its simple or carinated shape (Fig. 2). The trend with these types is toward shallow and open shapes in which the maximum diameter is typically equivalent to the rim diameter. The morphometric analysis of the pottery assemblages from Late Bronze Age at the settlement of Cerro de la Encina (Granada) showed this tendency (Aranda 2001). Serving and eating bowls tended to be made specifically for either individual or communal use. In the vessels with simple shape, this meant wares that were without any change in the direction of the pottery walls, the individual-sized vessels were characterised by a relationship between the diameter of the rim and the height that varied from 180–200 mm to 58–66 mm. In contrast, the communal capacity bowls had a diameter of 240–300 mm to 81–106 mm high. The ratio of maximum diameter to vessel height can be used to analyse the relationship among these properties. Based on this statement, the ratio between the maximum diameter and the maximum height ranged from 2.2 to 3.4, with a mean of 3. Thus, both sizes of tableware tended to have a maximum diameter three times wider.

Regarding carinated forms, three sizes of serving/eating bowls have been identified during the morphological

1

These three sizes correspond to typological groups X, XI, and XII of the morphometrical analysis (Aranda 2001). 2 The pottery assemblage analysed consisted of 31 whole vessels or at least complete or nearly complete profile, which yielded sufficient information on vessel shape (Aranda 2001).

80

M. SÁNCHEZ-ROMERO AND G. ARANDA: CHANGING FOODWAYS: NEW STRATEGIES IN FOOD PREPARATION… analysis.3 For the first vessels group, the maximum diameter/height ranges from 100-140 mm to 42-55 mm; for the individual size vessels the ratio span between 170220 mm in diameter and 60-91 mm high; and finally for communal size ware, between 240-380 mm in diameter and 70-135 high. The ratio between the maximum diameter to height varies between 2.1 and 2.6 for the first vessel assemblage with an mean of 2.2 versus the interval of 2.2 and 3.8 that characterises the individual and communal size ware with an average of 2.9. These differences that show a tendency of greater depth in the first vessels group can be related to their use as containers of liquids for drinking. The smaller size and deeper depth define morphological conditions suitable for this function. To conclude, the ratio of individual/communal size vessels, carenated or not, are extremely uniform range from 2.9 to 3 that implies a relationship of maximum diameter three times greater than the maximum height4 (Aranda 2001).

FIG. 3. Carenated vessel decorated with hemispheric bronze buttons placed over spool support

Furthermore, these serving/eating vessels were characterised by the highly burnished surfaces which, as indicated above, contrast with the cooking vessels and storage pots. Also, they appeared frequently decorated using different techniques such as polished decorations of geometric motifs that were usually located on the inner surface of the vessels (in some cases also found on the outer face). Another decorative technique was based on painted motifs that were also geometric, in red or a combination of red and yellow, and located on both the internal and external surfaces. Also noticeable was a decoration that consisted of incrustations of hemispheric bronze buttons on the exterior surface of the vessels forming lines (Fig. 3). We found two other less common decorative techniques: incisions drawing geometric motifs and red-slipped decoration (Pellicer and Schüle 1966; Molina 1978; Martínez and Botella 1980; Carrasco et al. 1981; 1987; Molina et al. 1983; González 1990).

ceramic vessels during the serving and consumption processes. The finishing of these pottery types was highly burnished and often decorated with the techniques analysed above. All these elements emphasised the manner in which food was served and consumed. The importance that the form of consuming food acquired would imply changes in the social ways of consumption and the creation of a new scenario for representing social relations. Thus, the domestic context achieved an important relevance in the definition, reproduction, and handling of the social identity of the individuals and social groups. Changes in the pottery forms may also be related to new strategies in the preparation and processing of foods, at that time, possibly with a preference for solid or semi-solid foods. These new social requirements also showed changes in the form of the organisation of domestic work.

Changes in pottery production during the Late Bronze Age implied the introduction of new, open, flat-bottom, and shallow vessels, which emphasised stability and different decorative treatments that highlight aspects such as social identity, power exhibition, ritual codes, and so on. All these implied new forms of presentation and consumption of food associated with new social strategies. During the Late Bronze Age, vessels were designed not only to contain but fundamentally to show their contents. This emphasis on visibility was revealed both by the change in the morphology of the ware and by the decorations found not only on the external but also on the internal surfaces, which showed the importance of both content and container. Furthermore, during the Late Bronze Age, a new ceramic form with a spool shape has been documented (Fig. 3). This type of pottery, unknown during the previous period, was used to support other

Concluding comments One of the most relevant changes that took place within Late Bronze Age communities with respect to earlier Argaric societies occurred in the sphere of maintenance activities, a field traditionally linked to women’s work. The new forms that domestic units acquired during this time, characterised by independent houses, usually oval shaped and without internal compartments, were accompanied by changes in the method of preparing, serving, and consuming food. These changes were represented by new ceramic forms, especially certain types of shallow, individual and communal size vessels characterised by an open shape and very carefully finished treatment that implied intensely burnished and decorated surfaces. These new types of vessels accentuated characteristics such as the visibility of both the contents and the container  i.e., in addition to being containers, their formal and visual properties strongly emphasised the

3

These three sizes correspond to typological groups X, XI and XII of the morphometrical analysis (Aranda 2001). 4 The pottery assemblage analysed reach 31 whole vessels or at least complete or nearly complete profile which yielded sufficient information on vessel shape (Aranda 2001).

81

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES alimentos y bebidas, Cuadernos de Prehistoria y Arqueología de la Universidad de Granada 18, (Granada).

form in which food was served and consumed. In the same way, the appearance of new ceramic forms with outstanding visual properties, such as spool supports related to hold other wares, also intensified the importance that the presentation and consumption of food products reached. The broad development of visual characteristics of vessels and the appearance of pottery especially designed for supporting food was related, therefore, to new social forms of consumption. This also meant that there was a change in the organisation of domestic work where the presentation of food became as important as or more important than its preparation. Evidently, these transformations implied an organisation of domestic work and maintenance activities that differed from those of earlier period. During the Late Bronze Age, the importance given to the performance by which food was consumed revealed the significance that the domestic context had as a setting for defining and reproducing the social identity of the individuals.

Aranda, G., Montón, S., Sánchez Romero, M. and Alarcón, E. forthcoming. Death and everyday life: the Argaric societies from South-East Spain. Journal of Social archaeology Braun, D.P., 1983, “Pots as tools” in J.A. Moore and A.S. Keene (eds.) Archaeological hammers and theories (New York: Academic Press), pp. 108-134. Bray, F., 1997, Technology and gender. Fabrics of power in Late Imperial China. (Berkeley: University of California Press). Bray, F., 2007, “Gender and technology” Annual Review of Anthropology 36: 37-53. Brück, J., 2005, “Homing instinct. Grounded identities and dividual selves in the British Bronze Age”, in C. Fowler (ed.). The archaeology of plural and changing identities. Beyond identification (Londres: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers), pp. 135-160.

References Al-Oumaoui, I., Jiménez-Brobeil, S. and P. d. Souich, 2004, “Markers of activity patterns in some populations of the Iberian Peninsula” International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 14: 343-359.

Bruneton, A., 1975, “Bread in the region of the Moroccan High Atlas: a chain of daily technical operations in order to provide daily nourishment”, in Arnott, M. L. (ed.) Gastronomy: the anthropology of food and food habits (The Hague, Mouton), pp. 275-285. Brumfiel, E.M., 1991, “Weaving and cooking: women's production in Aztec Mexico”, in W.M. Conkey, W.M. (ed.). Engendering archaeology: women and prehistory (Oxford: Basil Blackwell), pp. 224-254.

Aranda, G., 2001, “El análisis de la relación formacontenido de los conjuntos cerámicos del yacimiento arqueológico del Cerro de la Encina (Granada, España)” British Archaeological Reports. International Series 927 (Oxford). Aranda, G., 2004, “Craft specialization in pottery production during the Bronze Age in south-eastern Iberia” Journal of Iberian Archaeology 6: , pp. 157-179. Aranda, G. and Esquivel, J. A., 2006, “Ritual funerario y comensalidad en las sociedades de la Edad del Bronce del Sureste peninsular: la cultura de El Argar” Trabajos de Prehistoria 63:117-133.

Cabré, M., 2007, “Women or healers? Household practices and the categories of health care in Late Medieval Iberia”, Bulletin of History of Medicine 82: 1851.

Aranda, G. and Esquivel, J. A., 2007, “Poder y prestigio en las sociedades de la cultura de El argar. El consumo comunal de bóvidos y ovicápridos en los rituales de enterramiento” Trabajos de Prehistoria 64: 95-118.

Carrasco, C., Alabart, A., Coco, A., Dominguez, M., Martínez, À., Mayordomo, M., Recio, A., Serrano, M., 2003, “Tiempos, trabajos y flexibilidad: una cuestión de género” (Madrid: Instituto de la Mujer).

Aranda, G. and Molina, F., 2005, “Intervenciones arqueológicas en el yacimiento de la Edad del Bronce del Cerro de la Encina (Monachil, Granada)” Trabajos de Prehistoria 62(1): 165-180.

Carrasco, J., Pastor, M., Pachón, J.A., Lara, I., 1980, “Hallazgos del Bronce Final en la provincia de Jaén. La necrópolis del Cerro Alcalá, Torres (Jaén)” Cuadernos de Prehistoria de la Universidad de Granada 5: 221-235.

Aranda, G. and Sánchez, M., 1999, “Etapas y evolución de la investigación de campo en la Alta Andalucía y Sureste de la Península Ibérica” XXIV Congreso Nacional de Arqueología, pp. 269-278.

Carrasco, J., Pastor, M., Pachón, J.A., 1981, “Cerro de la Mora, Moraleda de Zafayona. Resultados preliminares de la segunda campaña de excavaciones (1981). El corte 4” Cuadernos de Prehistoria de la Universidad de Granada 6: 307-354.

Aranda Jimenez, G., fortcoming, "Cohesión y distancia social. El consumo comensal de bóvidos en el ritual funerario de las sociedades argáricas," in G. Aranda (ed.) Poder y prestigio en las sociedades prehistóricas peninsulares: el contexto social del consumo de

Carrasco, J., Pastor, M., Pachón, J.A. and Gámiz, J., 1987, “La espada de "lengua de carpa" del Cerro de la Mora (Moraleda de Zafayona) y su contexto arqueológico. Nuevas aportaciones para el conocimiento

82

M. SÁNCHEZ-ROMERO AND G. ARANDA: CHANGING FOODWAYS: NEW STRATEGIES IN FOOD PREPARATION… Goldstein, P., 2003, “From stew-eaters to maize-drinkers: the Chicha economy and the Tiwanaku expansion”, in T.L. Bray (ed.) The Archaeology and Politics of Food and Feasting States and Empires (New York: Plenum), pp. 143-172.

del Bronce Final en el sudeste peninsular” (Granada: Universidad de Granada). Carrasco, J., Pachón, J.A., Adroher, A. and López, A., 2002, “Taller metalúrgico de fines del bronce en Guadix (Granada): contribución a la contextualización de las fíbulas de codo tipo Huelva en Andalucía Oriental” Florentia Iliberritana 13: 357-385.

González, A., 1990, Nueva luz sobre la protohistoria del Sudeste (Alicante: Universidad de Alicante). González, A., 1993, “La necrópolis del Bronce Final de la Peña Negra de Crevillente, Alicante” XVI Congreso Nacional de Arqueología, pp. 285-294.

Colomer, L., 1996, “Contenidors ceràmics i processament d´aliments a la prehistòria” Cota Zero 12: 47-60. Colomer, E., González, P. and Montón, S., 1998, “Maintenance activities, technological knowledge and consumption patterns: a view of Northeast Iberia (2000500 Cal BC)” Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 11: 53-80.

González, P. and Picazo, M., 2005, "Arqueología de la vida cotidiana," in M. Sánchez Romero (ed.) Arqueología y género (Granada: Universidad de Granada), pp. 141158.

Contreras, F., 1982, “Una aproximación a la urbanística del Bronce Final en la Alta Andalucía. El Cerro de Cabezuelos (Úbeda, Jaén)” Cuadernos de Prehistoria de la Universidad de Granada 7: 30-331. Corr, R., 2002, “Reciprocity, communion, and sacrifice: food in Andean ritual and social life” Food & Foodways 10: 1-25. Costin, C. L., 1998, "Introduction: craft and social identity" in C. L. Costin and R. P. Wright (eds) Craft and social identity (Arlington: Archaelogical papers of the American Anthropological Association), pp. 3-16.

Goody, J., 1982, Cooking, cuisine and class: a study in comparative sociology (New York: Cambridge University Press). Harris, M. and Ross, E.B., (eds.), 1987, Food and evolution: toward a theory of human food habits. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press). Hendon, B., 1996, “Archaeological approaches to the organization of domestic labour: household practice and domestic relations” Annual Review of Anthropology 25: 45-61.

Cowan, R. S., 1989, More work for mother: the ironies of household technology from the open hearth to the microwave. (London: Free Association Books).

Henrickson, E. and McDonald, M.M.A., 1983, “Ceramic form and function: an ethnographic search and an archaeological application” American Anthropologist 85: 630-643.

Crown, P. L. 2000, "Women's role in changing cuisine," in P. L. Crown (ed) Women and men in the prehispanic southwest (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press), pp. 221-266.

Hernández, L. and Gil, F., 2004, “La necrópolis del Bronce Final del Collado y Pinar de Santa Ana de Jumilla (Murcia)”, in L. Hernández and M. Hernández (eds.) La Edad del Bronce en tierras levantinas y zonas limítrofes (Alicante: Ayuntamiento de Villena), pp. 441-454.

Curiá, E. and Masvidal, C., 1998, “El grup domèstic en arqueologia: noves perspectives d´anàlisi” Cypsela 12: 227-236.

Hernando, A., 2001, Arqueología de la identidad (Madrid: Akal).

Cwiertka, K.J. and Walraven, B., (eds.), 2002, Asian food: the global and the local (Surrey, Curzon).

Hernando, A., 2005a, “Mujeres y prehistoria. En torno a la cuestión del origen del patriarcado” in M. Sánchez Romero (ed.). Arqueología y género. (Granada: Universidad de Granada), pp. 73-108.

Dobres, M.A., 1995, “Gender and prehistoric technology: on the social agency of technical strategies” World Archaeology 27: 25-49. Eiroa, J. J., 1989, Urbanismo protohistórico de Murcia y el Sureste (Murcia: Universidad de Murcia).

Hernando, A., 2005b, "¿Por qué la historia no ha valorado las actividades de mantenimiento?," in P. González, S. Montón and M. Picazo (eds.) Dones i activitats de manteniment en temps de canvi Treballs d´Arqueologia 11 (Barcelona), pp. 115-133.

Ericson, J.E., Reed, D.W. and Burke, C., 1972, “Research design: the relationships between the primary functions and the physical properties of ceramic vessels and their implication for ceramic distribution in an archaeological site” Anthropology 3(2): 84-95.

Jiménez Brobeil, S., Al-Oumaoui, I. and Esquivel, J.A, 2004, “Actividad física según sexo en la cultura argárica. Una aproximación desde los restos humanos” Trabajos de Prehistoria 61: 141-153.

Firth, R., 1966, Housekeeping among Malay peasants (New York: Humanities Press). 83

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES Molina, F., Mendoza, A., Sáez, L., Arteaga, O., Aguayo, P. and Roca, M., 1983, “Nuevas aportaciones para el estudio del origen de la cultura Ibérica en la alta Andalucía. La campaña de 1980 en el Cerro de los Infantes”. Congreso Nacional de Arqueología XVI, pp. 689-708.

Lentz, C., (ed.), 1999, Changing food habits: case studies from Africa, South America, and Europe (Amsterdam: Harwood Academy). Lomba, J., 1993, “Un nuevo yacimiento del Bronce Final con cabañas de planta oval en Murcia: la Serrecica (Totana)” XXII Congreso Nacional de Arqueología (Zaragoza), pp. 95-98.

Montón, S., 2000, “Las mujeres y el espacio: una historia del espacio sin espacio en la historia”, in P. González (ed.). Espacios de género en Arqueología, Arqueología Espacial 22 (Teruel), pp. 45-59.

Macbeth, H., (ed.), 1997, Food preferences and taste: continuity and change (Providence: Berghahn). Martínez, C. and Botella, M., 1980, El Peñón de la Reina (Alboloduy, Almería). Excavaciones Arqueológicas en España 112 (Madrid).

Montón, S., 2005, "Las prácticas de alimentación: cocina y arqueología," in M. Sánchez Romero (ed.) Arqueología y género (Granada: Universidad de Granada), pp. 159175.

Mauss, M., 1967, The gift: forms and functions of exchange in archaic societies (New York: Norton).

Mulokozi, G., 1999, "Simple technologies for improving women´s economic and nutritional status in developing countries." Women farmers: enhancing rights and productivity (Bonn).

McGaw, J.A., 1996, “Reconceiving technology: why feminine technologies matter”, in R.P. Wright (ed.) Gender and archaeology (Philadelphia: University of Pensilvania Press), pp. 52-75.

Nelson, S. M., 1997, Gender in archaeology. Analyzing power and prestige (London: Altamira Press).

Meyers, C., 2003, “Material remains and social relations: women´s culture in agrarian households of the Iron Age” in S. Mitin (ed.) Symbiosis, symbolism, and the power of the past. Canaan, ancient Israel, and their neighbours from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palestina (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns), pp. 425-444.

Parker, M., 2000, “Eating money. a study in the ethnoarchaeology of food” Archaeological Dialogues 7(2): 217-232.

Mills, B.J., 1989, “Integrating functional analyses of vessels and sherds through models of ceramic assemblage formation”,¡ World Archaeology 21(1): 133-147.

Parker, M., 2003, “Food, culture and identity: an introduction and overview” in M. Parker (ed.) Food, culture and identity in the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, British Archaeological Reports 117 (Oxford), pp. 130.

Mills, B.J., 1999, “Ceramics and the social contexts of food consumption in the Northern Southwest” in J.M. Skibo and G.M. Feiman (eds.) Pottery and people. A dynamic interaction. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press), pp. 99-114.

Pellicer, M., 1992-93, “El Bronce Reciente e inicios del Hierro en Andalucía Oriental” Bajo Aragón Prehistoria IX-X, pp. 339-363. Pellicer, M. and Schüle, W., 1966 El Cerro del Real (Galera, Granada). Madrid.

Mintz, S. and Du Bois, C., 2002, “The anthropology of food and eating” Annual Review of Anthropology 31: 99119.

Pelto, G.H. and Vargas, L.A., (eds.), 1992, Perspectives on dietary change: studies in nutrition and society–Ecol. Food Nutr. 27(3-4).

Mirón, Mª.D., 2005, “La casa griega antigua: género, espacio y trabajo en los ámbitos domésticos” in M. Sánchez Romero (ed.) Arqueología y género (Granada: Universidad de Granada).

Pfaffenberger, B., 1988, “Fetishised objects and humanised nature: towards an anthropology of technology” Man 23: 236-252.

Molina, F., 1976, Las culturas del Bronce Final del Sudeste de la Península Ibérica. Granada: Unpublished PhD thesis.

Picazo, M., 1997, “Hearth and home: the timing of maintenance activities” in J. Moore and E. Scott (ed.) Invisible people and processes. Writing gender and childhood into European archaeology (London: Leicester University Press), pp. 59-67.

Molina, F., 1978, “Definición y sistematización del Bronce Tardío y Final en el sureste de la Península Ibérica” Cuadernos de Prehistoria de la Universidad de Granada 3, pp. 159-233.

Ros, M., 1986, “El Bronce Tardío y Final”, Historia de Cartagena II. Primeros poblamientos del sureste. (Murcia: Historia de Cartagena), pp. 317-352.

Molina, F., 1983, “La Prehistoria”, in F. Molina and J.M. Roldán (eds.) Historia de Granada I. De las primeras culturas al Islam. (Granada: Quijote), pp. 11-131. 84

M. SÁNCHEZ-ROMERO AND G. ARANDA: CHANGING FOODWAYS: NEW STRATEGIES IN FOOD PREPARATION… Ros, M., 1989, Dinámica urbanística y cultura material del hierro antiguo en el valle del Guadalentín. (Murcia: Universidad de Murcia)

Turkon, P., 2004, “Food and status in the prehispanic Malpaso Valley, Zacatecas, Mexico” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 23: 225-251.

Sánchez Romero, M., 2005, "Cultural material y actitudes de género: el utillaje lítico tallado," in Sánchez Romero, M. (ed) Arqueología y género. (Granada: Universidad de Granada), pp. 219-244.

Wajcman, J., 1991, Feminism confronts technology (Cambridge: Polity Press). Weismantel, M.J., 1988, Food, gender, and poverty in the Ecuadorian Andes (Illinois: Waveland Press).

Sánchez Romero, M. and Moreno, A., 2005, “Mujeres y producción metalúrgica en la prehistoria: el caso de Peñalosa (Baños de la Encina, Jaén)” in Sánchez Romero, M (ed.). Arqueología y género. (Granada: Universidad de Granada), pp. 261-282.

Welch, P.D. and Scarry, C.M., 1995, “Status-related variation in foodways in the Moundville Chiefdom” American Antiquity 60(3): 397-420. Wright, R.P., 1999 “Tecnología, género y clase: mundos de diferencia en Mesopotamia durante el periodo de Ur III” in L. Colomer, P. González, S. Montón, M. Picazo (eds.) Arqueología y teoría feminista, Icaria (Barcelona), pp. 173-214.

Sánchez Romero, M., Aranda, G. and Alarcón, E., 2007, "Gender and age identities in rituals of comensality. The argaric societies," in P. González, S. Montón and M. Picazo Interpretar las prácticas domésticas. Reflexiones sobre el papel social y cultural de las actividades de mantenimiento desde la arqueología y la historia, Treballs d´Arqueologia 13 (Barcelona), 69-89

Wu, D. and Tan, C.B., (eds.) 2001, Changing Chinese foodways in Asia (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press).

Sánchez Romero, M., 2008a, “Actividades de mantenimiento, espacios domésticos y relaciones de género en las sociedades de la prehistoria reciente”, in L. Prados and Clara Ruiz I Jornadas Internacionales de Arqueología del Género. (Madrid, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid). Sánchez Romero, M. 2008b, "An approach to learning and socialisation in children during the Spanish Bronze Age," in Dommasnes, L. H. and Wrigglesworth, M. (eds) Children, identity and the past. (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing), pp.113-124 Shade, L. R., 2002, Gender and community in the social construction of the Internet (New York: Peter Lang). Sherrat, A., 1996, “Alcohol and its alternatives: symbol and substance in pre-industrial cultures” in J. Goodman and J. Lovejoy, A. Sherrat (eds.) Consuming habits: drugs in history and anthropology. (London: Routledge), pp. 11-46. Siret, E. and Siret, L., 1890, Las primeras edades del metal en el sudeste de la España (Barcelona). Smith, M.F., 1988, “Function from whole vessel shape: a method and an application to Anasazi Black Mesa, Arizona”, American Anthropologist 90: 912-923. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 2006, “Technology” in C. Soanes and A. Stevenson (ed.). Oxford Reference Online. (Oxford, Oxford University Press) 5 February 2008

85

11. “On a whirling wheel their hearts were made”. Women between ideology and life in the Nordic past Liv Helga Dommasnes Bergen Museum, University of Bergen, Norway Roman Iron Age is largely unknown over most of the country, particularly in the Western and Northern parts. We know from botanical evidence and a few archaeological finds that people did in fact live here, and that there was some contact with regions to the south. But there is no general agreement as to whether these parts of Norway were also part of the cultural complexes defining the Northern Bronze Age and the South Scandinavian Iron Age. The finds are too few and scattered for a firm opinion. In particular, there are (or were until recently) very few dwelling places known, and even fewer housegrounds. Long houses, along with a great number of well equipped graves, occur from about 200 AD onwards, and in increasing numbers through the Roman and Migration periods. This is also the starting point of the story of a Germanic (western) Norway.

Introduction Hávamál is old Norse, and means “sayings of the high one”. The high one in this case is Odin, the most important God in the old Norse pantheon. Hávamál is a high medieval textbook disseminating the learning of the times and in particular codes of behaviour among the educated classes. Written down on Iceland in the 1200ds, it is supposed to mirror the values and standards of Medieval Scandinavia, drawing on pre-Christian, Viking ideals. And here we find women mentioned. The complete stanza sounds like this (translated by Carolyne Larrington 1996): “The words of a girl no one should trust, nor what a woman says; for on a whirling wheel their hearts were made, deceit lodged in their breasts”.

In Western Norway especially, the first Germanic graves, identified through their grave gifts, like the golden pendant (Fig. 1), were those of women. It is worth noting that, with a very few Bronze Age exceptions, this is also the first time that gender was marked in the graves in a way that we can recognise. Male graves with similarly international equipment tend to occur a generation or two later. From now on, gender seems to have played an important role as a structuring principle in society.

Obviously such words must have been spoken from within a strongly paternalistic universe. Modern scholars have tried to soften the impression, explaining that the poet´s concern was that a heart spun on a wheel – possibly referring to a potter´s wheel (Holm-Olsen 1975: 315) - must be very fragile and need extra care. However one wants to understand this particular passage, it is only one among a total of 164 in a strong and beautiful poem. Its moral is often described as pragmatic. I find it at times fiercely ideological. As for archaeological evidence of Germanic/Norse culture, we need to go back almost exactly one thousand years in time from the Hávamál poem to detect its beginnings in North-West Scandinavia, which is the standpoint from which I present my case. I shall be concentrating on connections between women´s maintenance work in particular and contemporary ideologies. I shall base my discussion on a mix of historical, literary and archaeological sources. Background: the earliest evidence of Germanic influence in Western Norway

FIG. 1. Gold pendant from woman´s grave ca. 200 AD. © Bergen museum/Svein Skare

The term “Germanic” is in itself controversial. In Scandinavia, it opens a discussion of whether Germanic culture developed locally or was brought by migrating people. From an archaeological point of view, the question is very relevant in Norway. Due to lack of finds, the material culture of the Bronze Age and also the pre-

Soon after the appearance of the first Germanic burials, the settled farm based on cultivation and animal husbandry had become the core unit in the economic and social structure of West-Norwegian society. Grave mounds (Fig. 2) were placed on the farm itself, not too far 87

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES

FIG. 2. Grave mound, old Iron Age © Bergen museum/Liv Helga Dommasnes

changes in the cultural domain, as opposed to the natural. It is often associated with power: powerful persons can fulfil their intentions and bring about important changes. Although we do realise that some changes are not for the better, and some seem to have no specific cause, one always tends to seek for explanations, and often in terms of power and persons. In many ways change and maintenance are conceptual opposites. Change is dynamic, intentional, powerful, positive: masculine.

from the houses. Burials were as a rule well equipped, suggesting that those buried here were the farmers themselves, and in some cases the housewives. This tradition formed the basis/dominant element in the successful Viking culture that followed. I am going to discuss the development within this cultural setting, and touch upon the interaction between these communities and others, of different cultural affiliations. As a whole, the time from approximately 200 - 1000 AD seems to have been one of constant innovation and unrest in Scandinavia, culminating in the Viking expansion and later a high Medieval Norwegian mini-empire, including the Atlantic islands1. Was this an all male achievement?

Maintenance, change and standpoints Did people in Western Scandinavia value maintenance and change in the same ways that we do? In the following I shall trace maintenance work – mostly women´s work – through farms and graves and in different spheres of life during the Nordic Iron Age, with special attention to the relationship between daily life and ideology.

Maintenance and change, some basic considerations Maintenance is consistently associated with women, in the present and in the past. Ideologically, this association has to do with the way that we think of both women and maintenance. Broadly, the concept of maintenance includes all kinds of activities that are needed to keep us going from day to day. Maintenance is about keeping the status quo, it is everything that is by definition not innovative, but often hard, grinding work, where persistence is the main qualification. In Western cultures at least, maintenance has not been considered very rewarding. It is quite often associated with the domestic sphere, not the public or religious, as we understand them. Maintenance is feminine.

Looking at change and maintenance work thus involves not only a different perspective. In many cases it also means taking on a whole new standpoint, integrating the views and values of those who did not have the power to define those values and rewards themselves. In our case, the archaeological record tends to favour the upper classes, or at least the well established farmers and heads of households. We need to be aware of this bias. Households in the early Iron Age We shall return to the households of the early Iron Age in Western Norway. In this period, houses were always parts of farms. The self-supporting, independent and quite often isolated farm has been the standard settlement in Norwegian landscapes probably from approximately AD 200 until industrialisation changed the economic and structural framework in the 1800s. This farm was the

Change, on the other hand, is conceptually associated with development, a linear evolution towards ever better solutions. Change is innovative. In many cases, change is also seen as intentional. This is particularly the case with 1

Orkneys, Shetland, Hebrides

88

L.H. DOMMASNES: ”ON A WHIRLING WHEEL THEIR HEARTS WERE MADE”. WOMEN BETWEEN IDEOLOGY... basic economic and social unit of Norse society, closely bound to the family, or ætt.

Rigstula It is quite undramatic to state that in real life, maintenance is in fact carried out by both men and women. An equally important division follows class lines.

The closest model for understanding life on the farm comes from Icelandic sagas. Although these must be read as fiction written in the high Middle Ages, they contain references indicating that the tradition goes back to the times and landscapes that the immigrants left at the end of the 9th century/beginning of the 10th. Many of the immigrants to Iceland came from Western Norway.

Germanic and later Norse societies were stratified, based on families. This is described in another medieval poem, the Rigstula3. Rigstula, or The List of Rig, is the story of what happened when one of the gods, Heimdallr (Rig), visited the humans, and how the social classes: thralls, independent farmers and the aristocracy, came into being. Of particular interest here is the description of their work. The thralls did heavy and dirty outdoors work, carrying wood, spreading manure in the fields, looking after the pigs and herding goats. Thrall women served simple and undelicate food.

Based on sagas, we can assume that an average farm housed not only the farmer and his wife and children, but also some relatives and dependants, a number of farm workers with families, and slaves. In addition, there would often be a number of guests, and some farms may have been centres of special activities, like trading or raiding in the Viking Ages. The main thing to keep in mind is that there was no alternative to living on a farm until the first marketplaces started developing into towns during the Viking Age. All the necessities for life must be produced, stored and redistributed within the framework of the farm, and everybody who lived there, had to take part in the work.

The free-standing farmers were better off. The men of this class are described as doing many different kinds of woodwork, everything from indoor tasks to building houses. Taming oxen and plowing the fields was also man´s work, while the women were occupied with spinning and weaving, and serving food.

One of the Icelandic family sagas, the Laxdøla saga, comments on the gendered division of work between farmer and his wife: in a good days work the husband had killed a man, while his wife had spun a yarn to twelve alen2. More generally, it is assumed that the male farmer was responsible for outdoors work, while the housewife was responsible for everything indoors, symbolised by the keys in her belt (Fig. 3). The household as such was quite large, and tasks were probably also distributed according to e.g. age and rank.

The aristocratic couple occupied themselves with what we would call leisure activities. In fact, the aristocratic woman is described as doing very little, except for laying the table with linen and silver and serving abundant and exquisite food. Male activities in this class were hunting, sports and fighting. The first thing one notices, is the division along what I have, for want of a better term, called class lines. The second observation is that, with the exception of serving food, work among the slaves was not gendered. In this society, gendering was a question of social class. The List of Rig describes the different classes as living in different places. In real life they probably all lived on the same farm, if it was a big one, or only the two lowest classes, in most cases. Archaeological evidence: Iron Age burials As for burial customs, one trait developed into a true Norwegian characteristic over the centuries: the custom of equipping the dead with tools, seemingly representing their work in life. In the Viking period, tools were even more common in graves than jewellery and weapons. This constitutes solid evidence – or does it not? – of the different kinds of work that women and men respectively did do, at least in the upper and middle strata of society – low status did not merit graves with any kind of equipment.

FIG. 3. Spinning whorl and keys from woman’s grave © Bergen museum/Ann-Mari Olsen

One way of understanding this custom is to regard the tools as gifts of personal equipment, necessary for the 3

2

The age of the Rigstula is uncertain. Anything from the 800eds to the 1200eds has been suggested

Old unit of measure, 0,6275 m

89

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES considered a maintenance task, although sometimes a more prestigious one, as it produced tangible and lasting results. Generally, textile skills were valued because they were fundamentally important. In a Northern climate, warm clothing is indispensable.

dead to lead the same kind of existence in afterlife as before. If the tools in graves reflect work and responsibilities in life, they tend to confirm the picture painted by the sagas, of women working in the home, indoors, while men work outdoors, in cultivation and as carpenters, boatbuilders, smiths, warriors and tradesmen. And there were also areas including both women and men: cooking utensils are common in the graves of both genders, as are harvesting tools (sickles). Scale weights are also quite common in women´s graves, indicating her participation in trade. There are also examples of arrows for hunting and a boatbuilder´s tool (Dommasnes 1982; Stalsberg 1996).

Excavations of farm houses Most of the farm houses that have been excavated are from the Roman and Migration periods. A farm would typically consist of one or two very long houses, and perhaps one smaller one (Fig. 5). One will also find the cultivated infields and the areas outside of the fence where the animals grazed. A cow´s gate leading from one of the long houses is a regular feature.

Textile work The one kind of equipment, apart from fighting weapons, that occurs in the graves of one gender only, is textile tools. Wool combs, spindle whorls, weaving battens, loom-weights and sewing needles are found only in women´s graves. Here, on the other hand, they are among the very commonest grave gifts. I think we can safely assume that textile work was not only a feminine privilege or women´s work. It was also one of the ways that one constructed femininity, in modern terms. Most of these graves were built for high born women. We remember from the List of Rig that it was the farm housewife who was occupied with spinning and weaving. The Rigstula does not mention embroidery. We know that the technique was known, at least among the aristocracy. Fig. 4 shows a piece of embroidery from the Oseberg burial in Eastern Norway, constructed around AD 834 (Christensen, A. E. et al. 1992). I shall return to the Oseberg burial later.

FIG. 5. Reconstructed farm houses, Ullandhaug © Arkeologisk museum i Stavanger/Terje Tveit

Normally, when analysing Iron Age settlements, focus is either on the farm itself as a social or economic unit, or on the houses as architectural structures. Far less attention has been paid to the work and life that is supposed to have taken place there, with the possible exception of analyses of the rooms and their functions. If one takes a look from inside, so to speak, the first thing one would notice is that part of the house was for animals. The rest could be one big room, often with several fireplaces (Fig. 6). The finds in such houses are few: pieces of ceramics close to the fire places, a few spindle whorls, loom weights along the walls. All are artefacts associated more with women than with men, and confirm our suspicions that the indoors was women´s domain. But what the finds also tell us, is that there seems to have been common living space for both women and men, in most cases probably including servants and slaves. Everyone needed a place indoors during long and cold winters. The many fireplaces gave light for winter activities for both genders. Men would repair tools and utensils, women probably did spinning, weaving, sewing and cooking.

FIG. 4. Oseberg embroidery © Kulturhistorisk mueum, University of Oslo/Eirik Irgens Johnsen

Textile work thus could be anything from basic necessities (sails and warm clothes would be two examples) to fine and time-consuming embroideries or woven bands. There seems to have been hierarchical differences between women as to who did what in textiles. Textile production for household use can also be

90

L.H. DOMMASNES: ”ON A WHIRLING WHEEL THEIR HEARTS WERE MADE”. WOMEN BETWEEN IDEOLOGY...

FIG. 6. Plan long house, Ullandhaug © Arkeologisk museum i Stavanger

hidden in the house is known from many Iron Age farms. In all probability it is ritualistic, a way to keep in touch with the past, or to keep a “full circle” of time, from birth to death and rebirth in what can be loosely defined as a fertility cult.

Rituals and maintenance in household settings Iron Age people in the North had to be self reliant. Unlike people in warmer climates, they could not catch and harvest day by day. Each autumn, nature would more or less close down. What you did not by then have in your stores, you could not get hold of until next year. The housewife was in charge of the household economy, responsible for preserving and managing food supplies for a great number of people so that it would last through the winter, with some extras for special occasions, if it was a grand household.

Fertility is central to the maintenance of life in nature and of course among people. In one sense or another, I believe, this is the case in every (preindustrial) culture and can be read into much of what people do. In some cases there can be no doubt about the intention, however. Once again we shall let the Old Norse literature be our guide, through the Volsetotten, or the short verse about Volse. On the surface, this is a story written in the high Middle Ages, relating how King Olav (died 1030) visited a lonely farm somewhere in the north of Norway. Here he witnessed a fertility rite led by women, venerating Volse. Two historians of religion (Steinsland and Vogt 1991) have analysed the text, and concluded that its origins date back to heathen times. In the old version the visitor was Odin, supreme god in the Norse pantheon. The function of the story probably was to maintain a balance between conflicting interests.

There were also the furs and textiles to think of. If she failed in this, there would be a crisis, as there was nowhere else to go for supplies, even if you were rich. The “spring crisis” is a live term even today, a reminder of conditions in the past. The housewife held the fate of the household in her hands. The sagas also describe women as those who looked after old people and healed the sick. This role as healer may be reflected in the grave of a woman buried at Kvåle in West Norway during the Migration period: by her head was found a stone axe, two pieces of rock crystal, a piece of flint, seven small round white stones etc. In later folk tradition such stones have been used as protection against witchcraft and evil (Ringstad 1988)

And who was Volse? It turns out that Volse was the phallus of a slaughtered horse, conserved and venerated by the women of the farm. In the evenings Volse would be presented to the household, but the story tells us that the men were indifferent, or even hostile to the rite. The visitor, Odin, in fact became so angry he grabbed Volse and threw it to the dogs to eat.

Rural life in the Nordic past is one of many examples where the spheres of the sacred and the profane merged. The central placing on the farm of the graves with their gifts of tools testify to the connection between profane and sacred spheres, as does also one of the Migration period houses at the Ullandhaug farm in the county of Rogaland. Here, in a pit close by one of the big fireplaces, a Bronze Age flint dagger was found (Myhre 1980:195). This phenomenon of keeping something old

The story probably is a memory of conflicting cult systems, an old one upheld by women and a younger one represented by the warrior (ása) god Odin and his religion of war with which the men identified. The housewife was Volse´s cult leader, while an old slave woman seems to have had a particularly close relationship to the cult. 91

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES language, so to speak, is in any case a strong testimony to the ideological importance of women´s household work, and perhaps also in upholding the balance between the conflicting forces of life and death.

Is there any material evidence of this house cult in the Iron Age? Yes, there is. In a woman´s grave at Fløksand north of Bergen in Western Norway, a bone tool, interpreted as a knife or scraper was found. A runic inscription, linalaukar (linen and onions), places the burial firmly within the Germanic tradition. It seems that in many parts of Europe both linen and onions have been ascribed powers of protection and conservation. So it makes perfect sense that the Volse should have been wrapped in a linen towel with onions to prevent deterioration. Perhaps in this case the fourth century housewife and cult leader herself was given this tool as a gift for the next world. A similar tool with a similar inscription, only about a hundred years younger, was found at Tysnes, somewhat further to the south (Dommasnes 2006: 102).

The association between farm houses and graves is a recurring theme: quite often, in different parts of Scandinavia, we find that grave mounds are built over relatively recent housesites. This is the case too on Ullandhaug, where, in one case, two long barrows had been built inside an older deserted house, and in another case a mound covered the site of a house that was only slightly older (Myhre 1980; 1983; 1988). In the last case, there seems to be no possibility that the grave-builders can have been unaware of the older house. Could the intention be to underline the connection between the (long) barrows and the (long) houses? Do the graves (with very few finds) house the former tenants? Or does the choice signify continuity between past and present, through elements of women´s lifeworld?

I suggest that since fertility cults are almost universal, its rites would become a meeting point of women from different traditions during the Roman period, an interest in common and a concern where they felt superior to the men and their ways. Runes as well as conservation techniques based on southern customs could have been among the newcomers´ contributions to the cult, strengthening their authority as heads of households. In a relatively short time, the tradition that the newcomers represented would become the very dominant partner in the mix developing into what we know as Viking culture. Somehow, a few of the old gods (of the Vanir family) survived, and became fertility gods in the Viking´s Ásadominated pantheon.

A well known example of the central role of women in burial rites is the story told by Ibn Fahdlan, messenger of the Baghdad caliph, who witnessed a Viking burial in Russia in 922 (Birkeland 1954). The central agent – apart from the deceased - in this burial was an old woman, called the Angel of Death. She prepared new clothes for the deceased, a Viking merchant, and laid him out for burial. A young slave woman was chosen to die with her master, and the two daughters of the Angel of Death were appointed to look after her so that she did not escape. At one point, tells Ibn Fahdlan, the young girl was lifted up in the air and asked to tell what she could see on the other side – she was supposed to have received powers of clairvoyance, and thus became a mediator between the realm of the living and that of the dead. After having sexual relations with several of the men, the chosen one was strangled by the Angel of Death and laid in the grave, which in this case was a boat burial, and burned with her master.

An ideological connection between houses and graves? The farms, the farm houses and many of the well equipped graves that I have referred to earlier, all belong to the Migration period when the new fashions, new burial customs and new gods had taken over or were at least challenging, old ways. As already mentioned, the graves were as a rule prominently placed on the farm itself: the ancestors were part of the farm. Among these ancestors were many men and a number of women, varying from about one fourth to one tenth of the total (Dommasnes 1982).

It is interesting in this connection to note the motif of women and ships on a piece of tapestry (Fig. 8) from the very rich Oseberg burial from southern Norway. This high status burial for two women dates back to 834 AD. The tapestry should perhaps not be viewed as a delicate piece of decoration only. It seems very possible that its motif is not accidental, but shows a burial scene – a procession with several women in front. The prominent roles of women in funeral contexts is thus indicated in different geographical locations and at different times, a hundred years apart (Ingstad 1982).

Grave mounds and houses In this connection it is interesting to take a look at the outer characteristics of the graves. In Western Norway graves are placed on the infields of farms. The mounds are often round, but long barrows occur regularly. When this phenomenon is looked into, it becomes evident that there is a close affinity between long barrows and women´s burials. It has been suggested (Farbregd 1988; Gustafson 1993) that the long barrows symbolise the long farm houses, the life world of women. But after all, only a few women were buried in long barrows. The symbolism must go beyond the households. It has been suggested that these women were priestesses in the service of Frøya, the Vanir fertility goddess (Gustafson 1993). The inclusion of women´s world in the burial

The last burial discussed here was a high status public event, in that respect different from the many local burials that seem to have become increasingly a part of local farm life over the centuries. But once again, we note that the Vikings saw connections between life and death. Women were absolutely central in keeping the balance and preventing the destructive powers from taking over.

92

L.H. DOMMASNES: ”ON A WHIRLING WHEEL THEIR HEARTS WERE MADE”. WOMEN BETWEEN IDEOLOGY... The farm was the basic unit of Early Iron Age society. The extent of the local chief´s power in territorial organisations at this stage is unknown. So is their gender, if we really want to examine the evidence (Hjørungdal 1991). There was no central authority until the Viking Age. In my opinion, the influence of the women dominating the farm, this basic social unit, must have been very important in the development of societies in the north. As already mentioned, Edda poems and Icelandic sagas describe marriages as alliances between families, making the bride a connecting link between her husband´s family and her own. Old Norwegian laws tell that a bridal gift, the heimanfylgja (dowry) remained a woman´s property throughout the marriage, and was her security in case of conflict. It also gave women some bargaining power, as taking her money and leave could put her husband´s family in a difficult situation. Medieval sources cannot automatically be cited in support of much earlier times, but they can encourage us to wonder where and when this custom originated.

FIG. 7. Tapestry, Oseberg burial © Kulturhistorisk mueum, University of Oslo/Eirik Irgens Johnsen

Interpreting processes: Learning, maintenance and change The cultural processes that were to bring North and West Scandinavia from contemporary anonymity and later archaeological invisibility towards a rich Migration Age and later the expansive Viking development, seem to have started in the mid-Roman period. In the region that I have now been discussing, Western Norway, the first indications of this change are associated with foreign women, or at least women with new kinds of jewellery (Dommasnes 2006: 115f). Much as I would have liked the women to have come as e.g. independent merchants, it is probably wiser to accept the testimony of the few written sources that tell of women´s roles in connecting wealthy families through marriage. It is easy to believe that the rich graves from late Roman and Migration periods may be the graves of women brought to these parts as brides in efforts to form alliances with Germanic tribes further south.

Textiles and ideological maintenance Archaeologically speaking, we find that much of the work that women did was in perishable materials. Spinning and weaving are examples. They are also examples of qualified work requiring long learning processes. Textiles are fragile. Very little is left of prehistoric textiles, women´s most important work apart from cooking. The few that we have indicate both a variety of techniques and a very high quality in West Norwegian textiles (Bender Jørgensen 1986). It has been suggested that the cloth known as “Frisian” was in fact made in West Norway (ibid.). In that case we have moved from maintenance to production for trade.

Those brides were probably well born and did not take part in all kinds of work. But they would not have come alone. In their company would have been maids and helpers. If one tries to take the standpoint of the foreign women, we realise that they would have had to find a balance between their own culture and the new one. Women and men move in different ways in cultural landscapes. The ways that some women had to adapt to new cultural environments in the early Middle Ages must in fact have created a number of new arenas for exchanging skills and learning in tightly knit working communities. In a world without writing, person to person contact was the only way of learning. Meeting these women from foreign cultural traditions were probably the only opportunities local people had to find new impulses, and we must believe they were eager to learn. The distribution of the finds in question suggests that the foreign impulses must have reached a great number of farms in western Norway more or less at the same time. The collective impact must have been massive.

At the other end of the scale, one finds sails. The Vikings used big, square, woollen sails for their ships. It has been estimated that the preparation of one sail amounted to five years´ work. It was one of the most expensive items in any Viking expedition. Women´s part in the preparation is testified to in the Huvudlausn poem, dating back to around 1000 AD: “The sail spun by women played at the ship´s mast” (Bender Jørgensen 1999: 65). Where textiles were really indispensable however, was in daily life, and as protection against cold and rain in all situations. Making everyday textiles and keeping them in order also became an arena for developing and refining the techniques necessary for such widely different purposes as mentioned above. No wonder weaving and spinning utensils are among the tools most often found in both farmhouses and women´s graves. Perhaps my colleague was right when she suggested that the spinning wheels occurring so regularly in the graves of well-born women from Roman times onwards had a deeper symbolic meaning, referring to woman´s role in the 93

ENGENDERING SOCIAL DYNAMICS. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES (dowry) as well as women´s skills and the ideological association between those and the continuation of life in active power strategies. The poet´s outburst thus becomes a sign of frustration over women´s power and lack of submission.

continuation of life and world order (Hofseth 1985). In a setting where time itself was conceived as circular, she argues, the spindle whorl may have been a symbol of the constant circle of birth, death and renewal of life. Following her train of thought, one could argue that within such a way of thinking, certain areas of maintenance work itself could be symbolic in the same way. In fact, there seems to have been a strong connection between maintenance work and ideological power. In Norse cosmology, the world itself was conceived as a circular disc with the giant tree Yggdrasil in the centre. Closest to the centre lived the gods. People lived in the middle, while giants, or trolls, lived closer to the edge. And under the tree, we are told, sat three norns, spinning the thread of life. Norns in the Old Norse mythology were supernatural beings, maidens in charge of the destinies of gods and humans. Maintenance, change, women and men reconsidered The conclusion to our analysis of maintenance and change must be something like this: maintenance work can be an opportunity to develop and cultivate some skills to the point where they become fine art, paving the way for change. In most cases such changes are long term, slow, and may not even be felt as changes by those who make them. In real life, there is often a fine line between continuity and change. The slow change is the normal one, possibly a feminine way of change.

FIG. 8. Spindle whorl ©Arkeologisk museum i Stavanger/ Ragne Johnsrud

References

In my opinion, we may have to rethink the concepts of maintenance and change when applied to societies with ideas of time different from ours. This is particularly relevant for the sets of values we associate with them. If the point was not to disturb the circle of time, maintenance, even when it was repetitive and to our minds boring, may have been highly valued just because it was necessary, in daily life and in ideology, to prevent dramatic changes.

Bender Jørgensen, L., 1986, Forhistoriske textiler i Skandinavien. Prehistoric Scandinavian textiles. (Copenhagen: Det kongelige nordiske oldskriftselskab). Bender Jørgensen, L., 1999, “Textiles of seafaring: an introduction to an interdisciplinary research project”, in Pritchard, F. and J. P. Wild, (eds.) Northern Archaeological Textiles Nesat VII , (Oxford, Oxbow Books), pp. 65-69.

Sudden, dramatic change is often negative for women, as in victims of war. In spite of this, historians, working with linear time, tend to see sudden change as big achievements, necessary in the development of societies. Positive sudden change has got a masculine bias. Sometimes women have been active agents in such cases as well. The Vikings are an example: no sails or warm and water-resistant clothing, no overseas travels, no trade, no raids and no discoveries! But in order to realise this, one has to look behind the drama to the slow and patient work.

Birkeland, H., 1954, Nordens historie i middelalder etter arabiske kilder, Skrifter utgitt av Det Norske Videnskabsakadmi i Oslo II. Hist.-Filos. Klasse II, Oslo. Christensen, A. E., Ingstad, A.S. and Myhre, B., 1992, Osebergdronningens grav: vår arkeologiske nasjonalskatt i nytt ly, Oslo: Schibsted. Dommasnes, L. H., 1982, ”Late Iron Age in Western Norway. Female Roles and Ranks as deduced from an analysis of burial customs”, Norwegian Archaeological Review 15, pp. 70-85.

And returning to the Hávamál: on a whirling wheel their hearts were made. I suggest that the wheel was not a potter´s wheel as suggested by Holm-Olsen (1975), but a spindle whorl (Fig. 9). In charge of the spinning were women, not fragile, but strong and powerful enough to rule over destinies. No doubt that strength was also felt in daily life, where they may have used the heimanfylgja

Dommasnes, L. H., 2006, Vestnorsk forhistorie. Et personlig perspektiv, (Bergen: Vigmostad og Bjørke). Farbregd, O., 1988, ”Gåtefulle kvinnegraver på Jøa. Årbok for Namdalen”, Namdalen historielag, pp. 3-11. 94

L.H. DOMMASNES: ”ON A WHIRLING WHEEL THEIR HEARTS WERE MADE”. WOMEN BETWEEN IDEOLOGY...

Gustafson, L., 1993, ”Kvinnene i langhauger”, K.A.N. – Kvinner i Arkeologi i Norge 16, pp. 47-71. Hjørungdal, T., 1991, Det skjulte kjønn. Acta Archaeologica Lundensia. Series in 8◦. Nr. 19, (Lund). Holm-Olsen, L., 1975, Den eldre Edda, (Oslo: J.W. Cappelens forlag). Hofseth, E. H., 1985, ”Spinnehjul – symbolet for kvinne”. Frå Haug og Heidni, pp. 213-216. Stavanger. Ingstad, A.S., 1982, ”Osebergdronningen – hvem var hun?”, Viking XLV, pp. 49-65. Larrington, C., 1996, The Poetic Edda, (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Laxdøla Saga, transl. by Didrik Arup Seip. Norrøn Saga vol. 2. Oslo 1996. Lillehammer, G., 1996, ”Death, family and gender. Life´s starting point?” K.A.N. – Kvinner i Arkeologi i Norge 21, pp. 83-103. Myhre, B., 1980, Gårdsanlegget på Ullandhaug I. AmSSkrifter 4. (Stavanger: Arkeologisk museum i Stavanger). Ringstad, B., 1988, ”Steiner brukt som amuletter i forhistorisk tid – et eksempel fra Kvåle i Sogndal”, in S. Indrelid, S. Kaland and B. Solberg, B. (eds) Festskrift til Anders Hagen, Arkeologiske Skrifter fra Historisk Museum 4, (Bergen: Universitetet i Bergen), pp. 325 – 341. Stalsberg, A., 1996, “Varangian women in old Rus`- who were they?”, K.A.N. – Kvinner i Arkeologi i Norge 21, pp. 83-103. Steinsland, G., 1985, ”Kvinner og kult i vikingtid”, in R. Andersen, L.H. Dommasnes, M. Stéfánsson and I. Øye (eds) Kvinnearbeid I Norden fra vikingtiden til reformasjonen, (Bergen,), pp. 31-42. Steinsland, G. and Vogt, K., 1981, Aukinn ertu Uolse ok vpp vm tekinn,. Arkiv för nordisk filologi 96, pp. 87-106.

95