From the Ground Up: Beyond Gender Theory in Archaeology: Proceedings of the Fifth Gender and Archaeology Conference, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, October 1998 9781841710259, 9781407351445

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BAR  S812  1999   WICKER & ARNOLD (Eds.)   FROM THE GROUND UP: BEYOND GENDER THEORY IN ARCHAEOLOGY

B A R

From the Ground Up: Beyond Gender Theory in Archaeology Proceedings of the Fifth Gender and Archaeology Conference University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, October 1998 Edited by

Nancy L. Wicker and Bettina Arnold

BAR International Series 812 1999

From the Ground Up: Beyond Gender Theory in Archaeology Proceedings of the Fifth Gender and Archaeology Conference University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, October 1998 Edited by

Nancy L. Wicker and Bettina Arnold

BAR International Series 812 1999

Published in 2016 by BAR Publishing, Oxford BAR International Series 812 From the Ground Up: Beyond Gender Theory in Archaeology

© The editors and contributors severally and the Publisher 1999 The authors' 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 9781841710259 paperback ISBN 9781407351445 e-format DOI https://doi.org/10.30861/9781841710259 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 197 4 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 1999. This present volume is published by BAR Publishing, 2016.

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Contents List of Figures and Tables List of Contributors Acknowledgments

page ii

iv v

1. Introduction Nancy L. Wicker and Bettina Arnold

2. Color and Gender in Ancient Painting: A PanMediterranean Approach Mary Ann Eaverly

11. "Peopling" the Farm-Engendering Swedish Iron Age Farm Susanne Axelsson

5

3. The Aegean Landscape and the Body: A New Interpretation of the Thera Frescoes Paul Rehak

11

Life at a

12. Husbandry and Seal Hunting in Northern Coastal Sweden: The Amazon and the Hunter Lillian Rathje

23

5. Images of Women in Ancient Chorrera Ceramics: Cultural Continuity across Two Millennia in the Tropical Forests of South America Elka Weinstein 31

103

13. The Gendered Nature of Living and Storage Space in the Canadian Subarctic Robert Jarvenpa and Hetty Jo Brumbach

4. Figurines and Social Change: Visualizing Gender in Dark Age Greece Susan Langdon

93

107

14. Haute Couture: Cotton, Class, and Culture Change in the American Southwest Jillian E. Galle

125

15. Redefining Craft Specialization: Women's Labor and Pottery Production-An Iroquoian Example Holly Martelle

133

16. Shell Midden Archaeology: Gender, Labor, and Stone Artifacts

6. Classic Maya Elite Parentage and Social Structure with Insights on Ancient Gender Ideology Joel W. Palka

41

7. Women in the Mixtec Codices: Ceremonial and Ritual Roles of Lady 3 Flint Monica L. Bellas

49

8. Gendered Graffiti from Madagascar to Michigan William Griffin 67

9. Women's Ritual Sites in the Interior of British Columbia: An Archaeological Model Gina Marucci

75

10. The House and the Woman: Re-reading Scandinavian Bronze Age Society Helena Victor

83

Michael J. Klein

143

Figures and Tables

Chapt. 2: Eaverly, "Color and Gender"

page

Fig. I. Attic black-figure lekythos. Metropolitan Museum of Art 56.11.1. Fig. 2. Tomb of Nakht (Theban tomb 52), Thebes, Egypt, facsimile painting, Metropolitan Museum of Art 15.5.19b.

Fig. 5. Zouche-Nuttall 15: Peregrination of Lady 3 Flint and Lord 5 Flower with a council of four priests. 60 Fig. 6. Zouche-Nuttall 15: Lady 3 Flint exchanges gifts with Lady I Eagle. 61 Fig. 7. Zouche-Nuttall 15: Lady 3 Flint and Lord 5 Flower making offerings at Jaltepec. 61 Fig. 8. Zouche-Nuttall 16: Lady 3 Flint gives birth to her daughter Lady 3 Flint the Younger and visits with Lady I Eagle and Lord 1 Grass. 62 Fig. 9. Zouche-Nuttall 16: Lady 3 Flint and Lord 5 Flower make offerings before a sacred bundle. 63 Fig. 10. Zouche-Nuttall 17: Lady 3 Flint directs sacrifices made by Lords I Rain and 7 Rain. 63 Fig. 11. Zouche-Nuttall 17: Lady 3 Flint and Lord 5 Flower participate in ritual offerings. 64 Fig. 12. Zouche-Nuttall 17-18: Lady 3 Flint and Lord 5 Flower participate in the ritual creation of the first fire and creation of the sun. 65

9

10

Chapt. 3: Rehak, "The Aegean Landscape & the Body" Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

1. Xeste 3, Akrotiri: isometric reconstruction. 2. Room 4: monkey frieze. 3. Minoan sealstone from Knossos. 4. Room 3: lustral basin scene. 5. Room 3: closet with male figures. 6. Room 3: upper floor, goddess with girls. 7. Room 3: upper floor, detail of goddess. 8. Room 3: upper floor, processional woman.

17 18 18 19 20 21 21 22

Chapt. 4: Langdon, "Figurines and Social Change" Fig. 1. Figurines representing various male types. Fig. 2. Figurines representing various female types.

Chapt. 8: Griffin, "Gendered Graffiti" Fig. I. Hip Hop graffiti piece by "Fosix," under the Fuller Street bridge, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Fig. 2. Percentage of total graffiti for each location type (women's vs. men's bathrooms), by topic. Fig. 3. Percentage of total graffiti for each location type (bathrooms vs. library carrels), by topic. Fig. 4. Roadside graffiti. Female figure with zigzag. Fig. 5. Portable radio with eight batteries. Fig. 6. Headless female figure with genitalia Fig. 7. Malagasy hump-backed Zebu cow. Fig. 8. Diamond with hole symbolizing female genitalia, along with radio and house.

28 29

Chapt. 5: Weinstein, "Images of Women in Ceramics" I. A small lime pot depicting the Burden Carrier. 2. Female dwarf figurine. 3. Female dwarf figurine with horns. 4. Yage Woman figurine with headdress flaps, holding a smaller human figure on her lap. Fig. 5. Yage Woman figurine holding a smaller human figure on her lap--Rio Chico type figurine. Fig. 6. Yage Woman figurine holding a smaller human figure on her lap. ·

Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

37 38 38 39

71 71 71 72 72 73 73 73

39 40

Chapt. 9: Marucci, "Women's Ritual Sites" Fig. 1. First Nation cultures of northwestern North America.

Chapt. 6: Palka, "Classic Maya Elite Parentage" Fig. I. Limestone Panel from the Region of Palenque, Chiapas. 47 Fig. 2. Scheme ofTzotzil Maya symbolic classification. 48 Fig. 3. Dual symbolic classification among the Gogo of Tanzania. 48

82

Chapt. 10: Victor, "The House and the Woman" Fig. I. A black and yellow painted house-shaped um from Stora Hammar, Scania, Sweden. Fig. 2. Ritual houses from Uppland, Sweden. Fig. 3. Dwelling houses from the early Bronze Age.

89 90 91

Chapt. 7: Bellas, "Women in the Mixtec Codices" Fig. I. Zouche-Nuttall 3: War of Heaven at Yucuiiudzahui and Yucuita. Fig. 2. Zouche-Nuttall 20: Lady 9 Grass and Lord 9 Wind battle the tay nuhu during the War of Heaven. Fig. 3. Selden 8-I-II: Sacrifice of Lord 2 Crocodile Backrack and Lord 6 Lizard Twisted Mountain by Lady 6 Monkey. Fig. 4. Zouche-Nuttall 13: Emergence of Lady 3 Flint Shell Quechquemitl and Lord 5 Flower.

Chapt. 11: Axelsson, "'Peopling' the Farm" 57 Fig. I. Timescale: The Swedish Iron Age. Fig. 2. Map of south Scandinavia with Sund location. Fig. 3. List of items found, implicated activities, or crafted artifacts, with their contexts of action. Fig. 4. Model for contexts of action. Fig. 5. Map of the excavations from 1959 and 1964. Fig. 6. A proposed model of the annual cycle of textile production.

58

58 59 11

98 98 99 100 101 102

Figures and Tables

Chapt. 13: Jarvenpa and Brumbach, "The Gendered Nature of Living and Storage Space" Table 1. Habitation structures and storage features at seventeen Chipewyan historic sites. Table 2. Comparison of Chipewyan habitation structures and storage features at seventeen historic sites and one contemporary settlement. Table 3. Mean sizes in floor space for Chipewyan habitation structures and storage feature at selected historic sites and one contemporary settlement. Table 4. Floor space per capita at Chipewyan settlements. Fig. 1. Network of historical archaeological sites in Southern Chipewyan territory. Fig. 2. Short-tenn moose-hunting encampment for husband-wife team at Knee Lake in 1992. Fig. 3. Chipewyan woman at moose-hunting encampment with homemade wall tent and pyramidal pole-frame sunshade at Knee Lake, 1929. Fig. 4. Historic Chipewyan winter staging community (Cree Lake 17), occupied by six families in the 1940s. Fig. 5. Historic Chipewyan winter staging community (Cree River), occupied by ten families from the late 1930s to mid-1940s. Fig. 6. Contemporary (1970s) Chipewyan settlement with dwellings and women's and men's storage facilities for ten families. Fig. 7. Women co-operate in removing hair and flesh from a moosehide. The stretching rack is attached to their log smoking and storage cache. Fig. 8. At a log warehouse, men assemble their early winter catch of fur. Snowshoes, stretching boards and hoops, snowmobile, freight toboggans, and other essential items are ready for use.

115

115

115 115

116 117

118

119

120

121

122

123

Chapt. 15: Martelle, "Redefining Craft Specialization" Fig. l. Southern Ontario, Canada, and northeastern United States showing the historic position of the Huron and other Iroquoian groups. Fig. 2. Incised bear bone husking pin. Fig. 3. The meal or hominy sifter. Fig. 4. Stone mortar and muller used in grinding corn.

141 141 142 142

Chapt. 16: Klein, "Shell Midden Archaeology" Fig. 1. Map of the Potomac Valley illustrating the location of the sites discussed in the text. Fig. 2. Scattergram of the relationship between sherd density and the coefficient of variation for Potomac Valley shell middens.

153

154

111

Contributors Bettina Arnold is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She co-edited Celtic Chiefdom, Celtic State (Cambridge University Press, 1995), and her research focuses on the reconstruction of social organization and the archaeology of gender in the central European Iron Age.

Gina Marucci, a Master's student in the Gender Studies program at the University of Northern British Columbia, specialized in archaeology in her undergraduate career at the University of Toronto. She is completing her thesis entitled

Lake Babine Women's Rites of Passage: An Archaeological Inquiry.

Susanne Axelsson is working on her licentiate dissertation entitled The Art of Excavating Gender: On Archaeological Cultural Heritage Management and Gender Research in Sweden at the Department of Archaeology, Goteborg University, Sweden.

Joel W. Palka received his Ph.D. in anthropology at Vanderbilt University in 1995, and he is now Assistant Professor in Anthropology and Latin American Studies at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Palka's research interests include Classic Maya settlements, social organization, and hieroglyphic writing.

Monica L. Bellas is a Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Riverside, and is currently engaged in research with the Mixtec codices. She is also researching gender and sexuality among Native American two-spirits.

Lillian Rathje is writing her doctoral dissertation provisionally entitled "The Amazon and the Hunter-Gender Strategies of the North" at the Department of Archaeology and Sarni Studies ofUmea University, Sweden.

Hetty Jo Brumbach is Associate Curator of Anthropology at the State University of New York at Albany. She has carried out research in the northeastern United States, Canada, and Alaska.

Paul Rehak has a B.A. from the University of Michigan and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College. He teaches archaeology and ancient art at Duke University. His main area of research and publication is the Aegean Bronze Age, and he currently is co-editor of Book Reviews for the American Journal of Archaeology.

Mary Ann Eaverly is a classical archaeologist and Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Florida. She is the author of Archaic Greek Equestrian Sculpture (University of Michigan Press, 1996) and is currently working on a book about color and gender in ancient painting.

Helena Victor is working on a doctoral dissertation called The House and the Women: Changes and Continuity in Society and Religion during the Scandinavian Bronze Age at the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala University, Sweden.

Jillian Galle is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Virginia and a research Archaeologist at The Hermitage, Home of Andrew Jackson. She is currently writing her dissertation entitled The Architecture of Slavery: Subfloor Pits as Expressions of Household Change.

Elka Weinstein has just defended her doctoral dissertation entitled The Serpent's Children; The Iconography of Late Formative Ceramics from Coastal Ecuador at the St. George Campus of the University of Toronto.

William Griffin is currently writing his dissertation at the University of Michigan on the archaeology of the Matitanana River Valley, Madagascar.

Nancy L. Wicker is Associate Professor of art history and archaeology in the Art Department and Scandinavian Studies Program at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She has published on Scandinavian Migration Period jewelry and on female infanticide during the Viking Period.

Robert Jarvenpa is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the State University of New York at Albany. His research interests include ecological and social change in Circumpolar societies and Central America. Michael J. Klein is Principal Investigator with the Center for Historic Preservation and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Historic Preservation at Mary Washington College, Fredericksburg, Virginia. Susan Langdon an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She has explored aspects of the art and society of Early Iron Age Greece in various publications and in the 1993 exhibition From Pasture to Polis: Art in the Age of Home. Currently she is preparing a book on gender and art in early Greece. Holly Martelle is in the final stages of writing her doctoral dissertation entitled Huron Potters and Archaeological Constructs: Researching Ceramic Microstylistics at the Scarborough Campus of the University of Toronto. IV

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the various offices, organizations, and individuals who made possible both the conference, "From the Ground Up: Beyond Gender Theory in Archaeology" and its resulting eponymous publication. For the conference held at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) in October 1998 we express gratitude to the UWM Office of the Dean of Letters and Science, the UWM Department of Anthropology, the UWM Anthropology Student Union, and the Art Department of Minnesota State University, Mankato, for providing financial and other support. Many individuals contributed to the smooth functioning of the conference, especially Thomas H. Hruby who designed and maintained the website, Diane Grubisha who acted as conference fmancial expert, and Rebecca Steffens who designed the conference program. We would like to thank the many UWM students who volunteered to provide assistance of various kinds for the conference. This publication of selected papers from the conference was, first of all, made possible by the participation of scholars who presented their research at the Gender and Archaeology Conference in 1998. Completing this volume has required an enormous amount of co-ordination between the authors and the editors. We are grateful to the authors for contributing their papers and for meeting alarmingly short deadlines, especially over the summer when most archaeologists are otherwise engaged. The task could not have been completed in a timely fashion without e-mail. Special thanks are due to the Art Department at Minnesota State University, Mankato, for supporting paper, printing, photocopying, faxing, telephoning, and mailing expenses. Finally, we would like to thank Matthew L. Murray for his encouragement, support, and patience throughout the whole process.

Nancy L. Wicker, Mankato, Minnesota and Bettina Arnold, Milwaukee, Wisconsin I September I 999

V

1. Introduction Nancy L. Wicker and Bettina Arnold This publication is based on a selection of papers presented at the Fifth Gender and Archaeology Conference entitled "From the Ground Up: Beyond Gender Theory in Archaeology," held at the University of WisconsinMilwaukee in October 1998 and organized by the editors. The central theme of this conference was the practical application of the theoretical introspection that has characterized much of the emphasis on gender in archaeological studies (for instance, Claassen I 992; Conkey and Spector 1984; Dobres 1988; Gilchrist 1991; Nelson 1997; Wright 1996; Wylie 1991a, 1991b, 1992). The theoretical discussion has grown out of a broader consideration of women and gender in anthropology (Dahlberg 1981; Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974; Moore 1988, 1994; Morgen 1989; Ortner and Whitehead 1981; among others). However, the goal of this conference was to explore doing-rather than simply talking about doing-engendered archaeology by presenting concrete examples of how gender theory can be applied in archaeological praxis. Although the Swedish scholar Oscar Montelius ( 1898) had already contemplated the role of women in prehistory by the end of the nineteenth century, research on gendered archaeology has rapidly expanded only during the past fifteen years. This compilation of essays demonstrates that the move away from an archaeology of women (such as Gero and Conkey 1991; Gilchrist 1991) toward a gendered archaeology has been accomplished (cf. Bacus et al. 1993; Claassen 1992; Moore and Scott 1997; Nelson 1997; Walde and Willows 1991; Wright 1996). We have moved beyond both the androcentric critique and the remedial research of the "add women and stir" phase of feminist prehistory to reach a more nuanced and integrated approach. The essays in this anthology are unified by the acceptanceof gender as a core construct in the structure of human societies and the interpretation of their pasts. Archaeological studies of gender have been extensively surveyed (see Bacus et al. 1993; Claassen 1994), and the biological basis of sex and gender has also been investigated (see Hager 1997). The present collection of papers builds on the background of these previous works. The contributions represent a broad survey of recent research in which the authors apply various theoretical and methodological frameworks as they analyze gender in different archaeological contexts; yet in essence all these writings investigate how gender is communicated through material culture. The result is a consideration of gender in archaeology from disparate perspectives, with examples illuminating nuances of how gender can be represented and how it functions in the maintenance and negotiation of social order. The papers included in this volume are broad in geographic as well as temporal scope and varied in topical coverage. The authors apply critical methodologies to material remains ranging from the Mediterranean to the Americas and from Madagascar to Scandinavia. Chronologically, the case studies cover a span from the third millennium BC to the present. Papers are devoted to the analysis of gender in imagery and representation, including iconography and

writing systems; ritual buildings or spaces; domestic activity areas; and, finally, craft production and specialization. The present juxtaposition of Old World and New World research illustrates various approaches to similar processes in different cultures. A special feature of this volume is the inclusion of the works of both North American and European scholars. Ruth Whitehouse (1998) has recently bridged the Atlantic by bringing together contributions of American and British scholars researching the limited geographic area of Italian archaeology, but the present collection expands the range to include Swedish and Canadian authors as well as Americans. Though the English-language audience is perhaps more familiar with British (such as Arnold et al. 1988; Gilchrist 1991, 1994; Moore and Scott 1997) and American (see above) approaches to gender in archaeology, Scandinavian researchers have made valuable contributions to this field (including articles in the Norwegian publication KAN, from 1985 onwards; Arwill-Nordbladh 1998; Bertelsen et al. 1987; Dommasnes 1990, 1991; Engelstad 1991; Hj0rungdal 1991; and Stig S0rensen 1988; among others). We hope that this publication will bring mutual increased attention to research on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly in cases in which archaeologists are probing similar problems, as in the Canadian subarctic and northern Scandinavia. In addition to bringing together investigations of scholars trained on two continents, this collection also contains essays by authors schooled in such diverse disciplines as classical studies, art history, and anthropology, in addition to archaeology. The diverse perspectives of these distinct traditions may be enriched by cross-disciplinary exchange of ideas and approaches. While anthropologically trained archaeologists have produced several collections of papers concentrating on the theoretical foundations of gender analysis as well as case studies of specific sites during the past decade (for instance, Claassen 1992; Claassen and Joyce 1997; Gero and Conkey 1991; Walde and Willows 1991), classicists have only recently turned to issues of gender in archaeology with considerable research focusing on written and visual texts (such as Fantham et al. 1994; MacAusland and Walcot 1996). In particular, several classical archaeologists and art historians have examined visual representation, applying critical methodologies of gender to investigate how it is communicated and interpreted (see examples in Cameron and Kuhrt 1983; Kampen 1996; Koloski-Ostrow and Lyons 1997; Reeder 1995). It is hoped that the publication of this set of papers will facilitate a dialogue between classicists and anthropological archaeologists, two groups whose research has traditionally been characterized by disparate methodologies and little cross-communication. Organization of the Volume

A variety of organizing principles-geographic, temporal, or thematic-could be used to arrange the contributions to this volume. We chose a topical arrangement similar to the

Nancy L. Wicker and Bettina Arnold

organization of the paper presentations at the conference. Our rationale for this order was to provide individuals working on analytically similar problems in different geographic and culture areas with a chance to hear each other's papers. Individual "mini-sessions" attempted to create this sort of synergy. We believe that the mix of papers proved stimulating and thought-provoking, and, in keeping with the conference presentation goals, we have used a similar philosophy to guide the arrangement of papers in this collection. The chapters are ordered thematically though purposefully not divided into separate sections in order to encourage recognition of overlaps in topical treatment.

with light skin in many cultures of the ancient Mediterranean world. She connects this fundamental signifier of difference between men and women to broader issues of gender and status in these cultures. It is fitting to begin the whole volume with a paper that boldly reviews a pan-Mediterranean phenomenon to underscore that ancient societies did not exist in a vacuum. The interconnections that she points out for Egypt, the Aegean, Greece, Etruria, and Rome parallel associations that we hope readers of this volume will make between papers in this collection. Rehak also studies representation and color, specifically in ritual behavior related to saffron use as displayed in Late Bronze Age Aegean fresco paintings. He treats these paintings as social documents, raising gender issues that challenge traditional art-historical conclusions. From a visual analysis, he identifies four agegrades for both men and women. From an investigation of the iconography of blood and crocus blossoms, he identifies spheres of women's activities and their powers with medicinal plants. Representation and ritual behavior are also discussed by Langdon in her analysis of the cult development of Early Iron Age Greek anthropomorphic bronze figurines. She counters the relatively conservative scholarly tradition within research on ancient Greece, bringing a gendered approach to these figurines whose nudity allows an essentially straightforward categorization according to sex. Through these figurines, she notes a shift in roles of men and women from the fall of Bronze Age palace society to the rise of the Archaic city states. Anthropomorphic representation is studied as evidence of mythic and cultic continuity by Weinstein in her research on prehistoric Chorrera ceramics from Ecuador. She interprets the cosmology of this society and makes connections between women and the use of hallucinogenic substances by shamans.

Geographic Scope The Old World coverage includes papers by Mary Ann Eaverly, Paul Rehak, and Susan Langdon that focus on the ancient Mediterranean, while Scandinavia is represented by Susanne Axelsson, Lillian Rathje, and Helena Victor. William Griffm links the Old World and New World by juxtaposing case studies treating modem graffiti in Madagascar and Michigan. Just over half of the papers concentrate on the New World, with Elka Weinstein examining South America; Joel W. Palka and Monica L. Bellas investigating Mesoamerica; Jillian Galle and Michael J. Klein researching disparate examples in the United States; and Robert Jarvenpa and Hetty Jo Brumbach, Gina Marucci, and Holly Martelle exploring Canadian case studies. Temporal Range and Source Materials Many of the papers combine archaeological analysis with written and ethnographic sources, while those treating prehistoric periods rely solely on archaeological evidence of various kinds as their sources of information. Eaverly, Rehak, and Langdon focus on the ancient Mediterranean world and scrutinize periods that have some written sources. Langdon notes that research on ancient Greece has often been overwhelmed by the written sources and that the early period which she examines has little relevant writing beyond dedicatory inscriptions. Victor analyzes Scandinavian material that is entirely prehistoric, while Axelsson is concerned with the protohistoric Iron Age informed by postViking Period written sources. Rathje investigates how the study of prehistoric Iron Age Scandinavia may be enriched by later ethnological sources as well as paleoecological data. While examining South American prehistoric figurines, Weinstein discovers continuity through ethnographic sources. Palka and Bellas deal extensively with Mesoamerican written source material and ethnographic perspectives. Griffin's paper on gendered graffiti brings us up to modem Hip-Hop culture. He interviews informants to make connections to the recent past, similar to the approaches of Marucci and of Jarvenpa and Brumbach who employ ethnographic informants to shed light on how to understand the archaeological past in their studies of the Canadian interior. Galle, too, refers to the ethnohistoric record in tracing changes from the prehistoric to the Spanish colonial period in the southwestern United States. Although Martelle and Klein explore a prehistoric period, the Late Woodland, they both also refer to ethnographic sources for clues about earlier times, with Klein adding paleoenvironmental perspectives as well.

Still under the rubric of symbolic representation, the next three papers inspect images as well as inscriptions. Palka looks at political and social structure as revealed through Maya hieroglyphic writing and art. He makes use of historical, archaeological, and ethnographic sources to trace the iconography of gender ideology and its relationship to status and symbolic classification among the Maya elite. He finds gender complementarity based on contrasts between as well as interconnectedness of men and women in this society. Political and ceremonial roles in ethnohistoric perspective are further considered by Bellas who analyzes women depicted in Late Postclassic Mixtec codices to extract information about women's political and military roles in Mixtec society. Griffin's paper dealing with images and inscriptions in Michigan and Madagascar is a double model that is applicable to rock-art studies. His analysis of graffiti in sex-segregated restrooms in Michigan allows an element of control rarely possible in archaeological research, examining gendered production of graffiti according to assumed adherence to sex-segregated restrooms. Similarly, Palka and Bellas benefit from texts with named individuals, which are identified as male or female. Griffm concludes that graffiti exemplifies alternative discourses in the reproduction of gender roles within a hegemonic culture, and by extension, he suggests that Paleolithic and other rock art may also reflect alternative voices. Griffin's paper on graffiti acts as a thematic bridge in this collection between studies of ritual behavior and ritual buildings or spaces. The paper authored by Marucci is the first of two on Canadian and Scandinavian ritual sites and structures that address the use of engendered space. Marucci explores archaeological evidence of puberty and the onset of

Thematic Coverage The first four papers probe symbolic representation in various guises, and all except the first also focus on ritual behavior. Eaverly opens the collection with an examination of the convention of representing men with dark skin and women 2

Introduction

Epilogue

womanhood in British Columbia in the twentieth century by investigating categories of evidence that may reveal the presence of women's seclusion sites. The topic of ritual behavior for the dead in Bronze Age Scandinavia is discussed by Victor. While both Marucci's and Victor's contributions emphasize rituals, they implicitly deal with settlement since they are concerned with how ritual structures relate to the daily lives of the respective societies. Victor examines gender complementarity and deconstructs how traditional assumptions about passive women and active men, interior and exterior spaces, and private and public actions have colored archaeological explanation. She focuses on dwelling houses and ritual buildings in Bronze Age Scandinavia, connecting the use of similar structures for both the living and the dead.

The central questions that these papers address include how men and women lived in the past and how their lives differed due to the infinite complexities of social constructions of gender, handling basic issues that are of vital concern to modern societies. Research into past gender constructs has significant implications for contemporary policy-making, for the shaping of public opinion, and even for our expectations of the new millennium. Compilations of papers presented at previous Gender and Archaeology Conferences have also been published (Claassen 1992; Claassen and Joyce 1997), so with the publication of this volume and another more specialized collection of studies on burial and gender (currently in preparation), we continue the tradition that papers presented at these conferences will be available to as wide an audience as possible to further inform a discussion of the social and material construction of gender.

Next follows a series of three Scandinavian and North American case studies that inspect domestic activity areas associated with settlements. This topic is introduced by Axelsson's analysis of the reproduction of gender roles at an Iron Age farm and cemetery in west central Sweden. She discovers traces of gender negotiations and gendered work groups, while paying attention to spatial requirements of gendered tasks in her effort to bring this farm alive in our imagination. The theme of task differentiation is also taken up by Rathje, who looks at production and reproduction of gender roles in the coastal culture farther north in Sweden than Axelsson's study area. She examines the roles of men while seal-hunting and women at the shielings (the places where women kept livestock and made dairy products during the summer) in cultural reproduction from the Iron Age up to the sixteenth century. Through ethnographic sources, she describes continuity in the organization of gendered and cooperative tasks. Jarvenpa and Brumbach follow change over a period of fifty years in social roles and gender patterning through residential and storage structures of the subarctic Dene (Chipewyan) communities in northwestern Saskatchewan. This study's focus on structures of minimal archaeological visibility has parallels with Marucci's examination of seclusion huts in the Canadian interior and to Rathje's investigation of shielings in northern Sweden.

LiteratureCited Arnold, Karen; Roberta Gilchrist; Pam Graves; and Sarah Taylor. 1988. "Women and Archaeology." Archaeological Review from Cambridge 7, 2-8. Arwill-Nordbladh, Elizabeth. 1998. Genuskonstruktioner i nordisk vikingatid, forr och nu. GOTARC Ser. B, Arkeologiske Avhandlingar, No. 9. Goteborg: University of Goteborg. Bacus, Elizabeth A.; Alex W. Barker; Jeffrey D. Bonevich; Sandra L. Dunavan; J. Benjamin Fitzhugh; Debra L. Gold; Nurit S. Goldman-Finn; William Griffm; and Karen M. Mudar; eds. 1993. A Gendered Past: A Critical Bibliography of Gender in Archaeology University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology Technical Report 25. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. Bertelsen, Reidar; Arnvid Lillehammer; Jenny-Rita Nress; eds. 1987. Were They All Men? An Examination of Sex Roles in Prehistoric Society. Ams-Varia 17. Stavanger: Arkeologisk museum i Stavanger.

The topic of domestic activity areas leads naturally to the last three papers, which comment upon craft specialization as a reflection of the history and prehistory of the household. The division of labor between men and women in the spheres of action relating to cotton growth and textile production among the Pueblo peoples of the American Southwest is the topic of Galle' s study. She scrutinizes the disjuncture in sociopolitical and gender roles that accompanied changes from the protohistoric to the colonial period. Holly Martelle also investigates gendered labor, specifically pottery production and specialization among the semisedentary horticulturalist Late Woodland Iroquois. She considers the multifunctionality of hearths and women's tools such as bone pins, sieves, and grinders, discussing qualitative and quantitative indicators of changes that took place with the evolution from household to specialist production. Klein also deals with the Late Woodland division of labor, studying task specialization through shell midden refuse heaps from the Potomac River. He consults ethnoarchaeologcial sources to discuss gendered agency in the creation of middens, examining the contribution of female task groups to the relations of production and consumption. He also hypothesizes that the expedient use of ubiquitous stone materials may reflect women's task-specialization.

Cameron, Averil, and Amelie Kuhrt, eds. 1983. Images of Women in Antiquity. Detroit: Wayne State University. Claassen, Chery 1. 1992. "Questioning Gender: An Introduction." In Exploring Gender through Archaeology, Monographs in World Archaeology, No. 11, edited by Cheryl Claassen, pp. 1-9. Madison: Prehistory Press. Claassen, Cheryl, ed. 1994. Women in Archaeology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Claassen, Cheryl, and Rosemary A. Joyce, eds. 1997. Women in Prehistory: North America and Mesoamerica. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Conkey, Margaret W., and Janet D. Spector. 1984. "Archaeology and the Study of Gender." In Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, Vol. 7, edited by Michael Schiffer, pp. 1-38. New York: Academic Press. Dahlberg, Frances, ed. 1981. Woman the Gatherer. New Haven: Yale University Press.

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Nancy L. Wicker and Bettina Arnold Dobres, Marcia-Anne. 1988. "Feminist Archaeology and Inquiries into Gender Relations: Some Thoughts on Universals, Origin Stories and Alternative Paradigms." Archaeological Review from Cambridge 7, 30--44.

Nordisk tidskrift for vetenskap, konst och industri, Arg. 1898, 1-30, 95-122. Moore, Henrietta L. 1988. Feminism and Anthropology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.

Dommasnes, Liv Helga, 1990. "Feminist Archaeology: Critique or Theory Building?" In Writing the Past in the Present, edited by Frederick Baker and Julian Thomas, pp. 24-31. Lampeter: Saint David's University College.

Moore, Henrietta L. 1994. A Passion for Difference: Essays in Anthropology and Gender. Bloomington: Indiana University.

Dommasnes, Liv Helga. 1991. "Women, Kinship, and the Basis of Power in the Norwegian Viking Age." In Social Approaches to Viking Studies, edited by Ross Samson, pp. 65-73. Glasgow: Cruithne Press.

Moore, Jenny, and Eleanor Scott, eds. 1997. Invisible People and Processes: Writing Gender and Childhood into European Archaeology. London: Leicester University. Morgen, Sandra, ed. 1989. Gender and Anthropology: Critical Reviews for Research and Teaching. Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association.

Engelstad, Ericka. 1991. "Images of Power and Contradiction: Feminist Theory and Post-Processual Archaeology." Antiquity 65, 502-514.

Nelson, Sarah Milledge. 1997. Gender in Archaeology: Analyzing Power and Prestige. Walnut Creek: AltaMira.

Fantham, Elaine; Helene Peet Foley; Natalie Boymel Kampen; Sarah B. Pomeroy; and H. Alan Shapiro. 1994. Women in the Classical World: Image and Text. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ortner, Sherry B., and Harriet Whitehead. 1981. "Introduction: Accounting for Sexual Meanings." In Sexual Meanings: The Cultural Construction of Gender and Sexuality, edited by Sherry B. Ortner and Harriet Whitehead, pp. 1-27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gero, Joan M., and Margaret W. Conkey, eds. 1991. Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehistory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Reeder, Ellen D. 1995. Pandora: Women in Classical Greece. Baltimore: Walters Art Gallery.

Gero, Joan M., and Margaret W. Conkey. 1991. "Tensions, Pluralities, and Engendering Archaeology: An Introduction to Women and Prehistory." In Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehistory, edited by Joan M. Gero and Margaret W. Conkey, pp. 3-30. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Rosaldo, Michelle Zimbalist, and Louise Lamphere, eds. 1974. Woman, Culture and Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Gilchrist, Roberta. 1991. "Women's Archaeology? Political Feminism, Gender Theory, and Historical Revision." Antiquity 65, 495-501.

Stig Sorensen, Marie Louise. 1988. "Is There a Feminist Contribution to Archaeology?" Archaeological Review from Cambridge 7, 9-20.

Gilchrist, Roberta. 1994. Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women. London: Routledge.

Walde, Dale, and Noreen D. Willows, eds. 1991. The Archaeology of Gender. Calgary, Alberta: Archaeological Association of the University of Calgary.

Hager, Lori D., ed. 1997. Women in Human Evolution. London: Routledge.

Whitehouse, Ruth D., ed. 1998. Gender and Italian Archaeology: Challenging the Stereotypes. Accordia Specialist Studies on Italy, 7. London: Accordia Research Institute, University of London.

Hjorungdal, Tove 1991. Det skjulte kjonn: Patriarkal tradisjon og feministisk visjon i arkeologien belyst med fokus pa en jernalderkontekst. Acta Archaeologica Lundensia, Series in 8°, No. 19. Lund: Lund University.

Wright, Rita P. 1996. "Introduction: Gendered Ways of Knowing in Archaeology." In Gender and Archaeology, edited by Rita P. Wright, pp. 1-22. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Kampen, Natalie, and Bettina Ann Bergmann, eds. 1996. Sexuality in Ancient Art: Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. K.A.N., 1985-present. = Kvinner i Arkeologi (Women in Archaeology in Norway), Bergen.

Wylie, Alison. 1991a. "Gender Theory and the Archaeological Record: Why is There No Archaeology of Gender?' In Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehistory, edited by Joan M. Gero and Margaret W. Conkey, pp. 31-54. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

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Koloski-Ostrow, Ann Olga, and Claire L. Lyons, eds. 1997. Naked Truths about Classical Art: Women, Sexuality, and Gender in Classical Art and Archaeology. London: Routledge.

Wylie, Alison. 1991b. "Feminist Critiques and Archaeological Challenges." In The Archaeology of Gender, edited by Dale Walde and Noreen D. Willows, pp. 17-23. Calgary, Alberta: Archaeological Association of the University of Calgary.

McAuslan, Ian, and Peter Walcot, eds. 1996. Women in Antiquity. Greece and Rome Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wylie, Alison. 1992. "The Interplay of Evidential Constraints and Political Interests: Recent Archaeological Research on Gender." American Antiquity 57, 15-35.

Montelius, Oscar. 1898. "Hurn Hingehar kvinnan betraktats som mannens egendom? Ett Blad ur Kvinnans Historia." In 4

2. Color and Gender in Ancient Painting: A Pan-Mediterranean Approach Mary Ann Eaverly

An often observed but seldom analyzed given of ancient painting is that men are painted with dark skin and women with light. This same phenomenon holds true for Egypt, Greece, Rome, and Etruria, in a remarkably consistent pattern given the otherwise dissimilar nature of the artistic production of these areas. A black-figure vase dated to the sixth century BC, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA 56.11.l, Para 66, Gift of Walter C. Baker, 1956) illustrates the Greek variant of the phenomenon, showing what was a very common practice in black-figure vasepainting, namely using white to indicate female flesh and black for male (Fig. 1).

investigating the underlying pan-Mediterranean ideas about the status of women and for investigating methods of cultural transmission of gender- and culture-related ideas. (I hesitate to say that it provides the chance to find the "origin" of certain gender ideas because "origin" is an intellectually loaded word, suggesting among other things cultural diffusionism, but certainly we can trace lines of artistic influence and examine whether cultural ideas always accompanied the artistic images.)

On the body of the vase a wedding procession is depicted. The flesh of all the female participants is painted in added white while the flesh of the men is dark, the black color of Athenian glaze. A scene of men and women dancing, painted on the neck of the vase, follows the same convention. Approximately a thousand years earlier, an Egyptian XVIIIth dynasty wall-painting from the tomb of Nakht (MMA 15.5.19b facsimile of scene in the hall of the tomb ofNakht, Theban Tomb 52, Rogers Fund, 1915) also displays the dark/light convention for indicating gender (Fig. 2). In the central scene Nakht and his wife gaze upon their landholdings and busy agricultural workers. Nakht's flesh is painted a dark brown while his wife's is a much lighter yellowish-beige. The workers are also similarly differentiated. The female servants have light flesh, the men dark.

Thus far no systematic attempt has been made to connect color differentiation to underlying attitudes concerning the nature and status of women in each of the ancient Mediterranean societies that used this stylistic feature. The obviousness and ubiquity of the dark/light color convention may explain why it has largely been ignored by the scholarly world and taken as an unexamined and unchanging given of ancient painting. Yet the very obviousness and ubiquity of the color convention indicate that it has a strong connection to the manner in which men and women in these societies related to one another. Clearly, something so widespread should no longer be overlooked by the scholarly community. One would not mistake an Egyptian painting for a Roman one on the basis of other stylistic features: each has a distinctive style. But they do share the color/gender convention. Does this mean that they share underlying cultural and or gender-specific beliefs about women, or are they sharing an artistic style, without however sharing the meaning that underlies it?

The convention itself has not gone unnoticed. All books on ancient painting by either art historians or archaeologists mention it, but usually in reference to the art of a particular region, Classical Greece for example, and not in a transregional, pan-Mediterranean context. Even more surprising is the fact that only the most cursory attempt has been made to connect this fundamental signifier of difference between men and women to the broader issues of gender and the status of women in the ancient Mediterranean.

Taking a broader approach to this topic yields three important results: 1) a new, cross-cultural approach to the question of gender roles in the ancient Mediterranean region transforms earlier scholarly notions of gender and culture in the region, 2) a re-evaluation of an artistic convention that has often been mentioned but seldom analyzed is dealt with in a scholarly and cross-disciplinary manner, and 3) a new analysis of the methods of cross-cultural transmission of artistic forms emerges.

This is not to say that classical archaeologists as a whole have ignored the role of women in antiquity. Indeed, Sarah Pomeroy's ground-breaking 1975 work on women in classical antiquity shocked classical archaeologists into remembering that women, too, had lived in ancient Greece and Rome and had played a part in their societies (Pomeroy 1978). After Pomeroy's work, numerous important studies examining a variety of different aspects of ancient gender roles followed. I will mention only a few among many. Leslie Ann Dean-Jones ( 1994), using a text-based approach, examined ancient medical writing to discover the biological underpinnings of Greek male attitudes toward women. Representations of women in art provided a wealth of material for studies of depictions of female sexuality (Cohen 1996; duBois 1998). Yet these studies, too, are primarily focused upon one geographical region. The widespread use of the color convention provides the perfect medium for

This paper is both a call to arms and a framework for studying male/female flesh color differentiation in ancient painting and the broader implications of this convention for our understanding of gender roles both within specific ancient societies and in the Mediterranean region in general. Two quotations, one ancient and one modem, illustrate the need for a broader pan-Mediterranean study of the color convention as a key to unlocking underlying gender constructions in the Ancient Mediterranean world. First, the Roman writer Pliny (first century AD) mistakenly attributes the color convention to a sixth-century BC Greek artist, one otherwise unknown Eumaros. Eumaros of Athens, the artist who first distinguished the male sex from the female sex in painting. Pliny, N.H. 35.55-56. (Pollit 1993, 125) Despite Pliny's assertion, dark tones for male flesh and light

5

Mary Ann Eaverly

for female were used in Greece and elsewhere well before the sixth century BC. Third-millennium Egyptian tombs and statuary are filled with examples that amply illustrate prior use of the convention as do Minoan and Mycenaean frescoes.

scandalous example of which is the fact that they dine with their husbands rather than separately. Etruscan tomb paintings, such as those found in the tomb of Hunting and Fishing at Tarquinia, illustrate this co-ed dining (Spivey 1997, fig. 100) and use the dark/light color convention. Greek writers such as the historian Herodotus also talk about Egyptian women having greater freedom than women in their own societies.

The second quotation is from the twentieth century art historian Martin Robertson in a discussion of Greek painting in his invaluable work A History of Greek Art: The distinction [here he is referring to the dark/light color convention] is based on a differenceof ideal and no doubt to some degree on actuality; the sun-burned frequenter of market-place and sports ground, field, sea and campaign; and the shadow-bred woman whose place is in the house. (Robertson 1975, 125) Does this description hold for all areas employing the convention? While this may be documentable for Classical Athens, is it also the case for the women of Etruria who are portrayed using the same convention, but who scandalized ancient Greek writers by the freedom and liberality of their lifestyles? Or the women of ancient Egypt?

Although much scholarly attention has been devoted to the representation of gender in ancient art in recent years, scholars have tackled the problem of understanding the status of women depicted in sculpture and painting primarily by analyzing the types of scenes in which women appear. Recently, however, important work has also been done to define the role that the ancient viewer played in decoding gender roles in art that feminist scholars have identified as the "determining male gaze." That is, images of women were created for male viewers whose ideas about femininity, sexuality, and proper roles were the force that shaped and informed the ways in which women were portrayed, which often led to a definition of women as "other" and "outsiders." (For a summary of this work see Brown 1997).

The above quotations, then, bring into focus the major themes that need to be addressed in order to gain a clearer picture of gender roles in the ancient Mediterranean world: 1) the origin and transmission of the tradition of color as a gender indicator, and 2) what its use reveals about the status and role of women. Nothing illustrates the importance of this convention more than its remarkable persistence. Its use dominates ancient painting from Old Kingdom Egypt from roughly the third millennium BC all the way to Imperial Roman Pompeii (first century AD), and yet no convincing explanation of its use has been attempted by the scholarly community nor has the question been seriously posed.

For archaeologists, art historians, and anthropologists, posing questions is one thing: answering them quite another. The methodology proposed for a study of the color gender phenomenon is first to trace the chronological and geographical distribution of the color convention and then to try to assess its meaning in each of the societies that uses it by comparing the preserved ancient images with what we know from other sources-literary and archaeological-about the status of women in the ancient Mediterranean. I specifically focus upon the areas that employ the color convention-Egypt, Bronze Age Crete and Greece, Post Bronze Age Greece, Etruria, and Rome.

The standard handbook explanation for the color differentiation in Archaic and Classical Greece (as illustrated by the Robertson quotation above) is that men are shown as darker because their lives are conducted outdoors, while women are shown as pale because of their confinement to the home. My own interest in the topic grew out of a question posed by a persistent undergraduate in my survey course in Classical Archaeology at the University of Florida. I had given the usual indoor/outdoor explanation, but one student remained unconvinced and asked, "But the women portrayed in the paintings we see in class are outside and they aren't all Greek. Why do they color them all the same?" Why

At first glance this might seem a very broad undertaking. Why not confine the study to Greece alone? It has become increasingly clear that Greece did not exist in a cultural, societal, or even geographical vacuum in antiquity. The use of such artistic conventions is precisely the kind of phenomenon that highlights the interconnections among civilizations of the ancient Mediterranean and emphasizes the need to understand shared artistic and even cultural traditions.

indeed?

Egyptian painting is the earliest of the ancient Mediterranean societies to use the male/female color convention in its art. The convention is widespread and can be seen not only in tomb paintings but in numerous sculptural groups depicting couples or families excavated from tomb sites. Examples include the painted limestone statues ofRahotep and his wife Nofer, from their IVth dynasty tomb at Meidum and now in the Cairo Museum, and of the official Katep and his wife Hetepheres, possibly from Giza and now in the British Museum (Robins 1997, figs. 51 and 69).

The question raises important issues about the status of women in ancient Mediterranean societies and of the transmission of ideas and forms from one society to another within shared temporal and geographic boundaries. Is the color convention shared because all women in all ancient Mediterranean societies were in fact kept indoors? Was the color convention something that was imitated without regard to underlying meaning or did it represent the reality of all these women's lives? If not, why was the color convention employed and considered so important that it was consistently used throughout the Mediterranean over several millennia? Was there an underlying need to define women as "other" in all of these societies and to do so in the same manner?

Certainly the role of Egypt in the formation of ancient Greek culture has been a hotly debated topic in recent years. Martin Bernal' s Black Athena (1991) attempted to attribute much that had previously been considered purely Greek, such as philosophy and religious beliefs as we!! as architectural and sculptural forms, to the older culture of Egypt. Reaction to his theory has been strong and primarily negative. Mary Lefkowitz's Not Out of Africa (1996) is a prime example of the negative scholarly reply to Bernal's work. Part of the

Certainly the ancient literary sources do not suggest that women's lives were identical in each of these ancient societies. Ancient Greek writers are shocked by what they see as the freedom given to Etruscan women, the most 6

Color and Gender in Ancient Painting

problem is that, to support his theory, Bernal relies upon complex linguistic parallels that are often hard to prove and upon a model of Egyptian conquest-rather than influence. Even more difficult is that the entire discussion has become absorbed by the more complex and often very emotional discussion of race in America and the not unjustified belief of African-Americans that the role of Africa in history has been neglected by scholars. I do not presume to untangle racial politics but to present and discuss in a scholarly forum a path of cultural transmission using the color convention to explore whether cultures transform artistic devices to fit their own societal needs or whether, in some instances, they import them wholesale along with their meaning.

come from funerary contexts. The same can be said of Etruria. Very little wall-painting survives from post-Bronze Age Greece. There are literary descriptions of lost paintings, but color is not often the primary concern of the author of the description. I have used vase-painting as a necessary supplement, mindful, however, of the fact that its color palette is much more limited than monumental painting. I have also examined wherever possible the pigmentation used in sculpture as further evidence for the application of the color convention. For this, Valentina Manzelli's 1994 study proved very helpful. The usefulness of Roman wall-painting is influenced by the question of whether or not the Roman paintings are original works or copies of lost Greek images. An example of a debated painting is a fresco from the basilica at Herculaneum, depicting a dark brown-skinned Hercules confronting a pale female personification of Arcadia (Deiss 1989, 157). However, the fact that the Romans found these works pleasing enough to copy suggests that the color convention had some meaning for them.

One aspect that I felt was vital to an understanding of the gender message behind the color convention was the degree of rigidity with which it was applied in different time periods and different regions. I was interested in determining whether a sharper differentiation between the two sexes in the visual arts reflected a similar sharp definition of gender roles within their respective societies. In particular, I looked at how strictly the convention was applied within the art of individual Mediterranean societies and began to correlate the rigidity of its application with other sources, such as literature, that give us information about the status of

Literary sources contemporary with the visual evidence are often harder to come by due to variations in the form and volume of written material from different periods and societies. In discussions of the Bronze Age, for example, our primary source is the archaeological record since we have no literature from that time per se. Our understanding of the lives of Etruscan women must always be filtered through Greek and Roman sources since we have few long Etruscan texts at our command. For Classical Greece, poetry proved useful since it often uses the same convention to describe men and women (see Irwin 1974, for literary examples). But even in societies for which there is a relative abundance of literary sources (Rome, for example), our information is primarily recorded by male authors. Therefore, although we may not arrive at an understanding of how women viewed themselves, we can examine how society viewed them--or at least wished to have them viewed, which surely had a powerful impact on women's self image. One further caveat is that for each of these societies we are dealing with images commissioned by the aristocratic elite that do not necessarily reflect the lives of lower-class women, although it does not seem beyond the realm of possibility that they would have shared their societies' view of women.

women.

Variation in the rigidity of the convention has been noted in passing by other scholars but never systematically studied. In the first part of this century, British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans, in his discussion of the frescoes from the Bronze Age (second millennium BC) Palace of Minos at Knossos, observed: This male convention offers even a somewhat stronger contrast to the white complexion of the other sex than in the Egyptian school from which it was doubtless adopted, (Evans 1928, 2) but he did not pursue this further. Among the more startling images from Knossos is a painting showing bull-jumping in which figures are clearly differentiatedby flesh color as male and female, but the "female" figures are shown wearing what appear to be codpieces (Biers 1986, fig. 2.20). More recently in the excellent publication of the newly discovered Egyptian paintings from Tell el-Dab'a showing bull-jumping, a theme usually considered to belong to the Minoan artistic repertoire, Lyvia Morgan raises anew the question of the rigidity of application of the color convention. "The pale yellowish skin raises the question of the flexibility of color conventions in ancient art" (Morgan 1995, 42). In fact there are periods in Egyptian art during which the convention is not strictly followed, and they seem to coincide with periods in which women have very prominent roles, in particular in the art of the Amarna Period (1353-1355 BC). The daughters and wife of the heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten (XVIIIth dynasty) are often shown with flesh painted the same dark color as males (Arnold 1996, fig. 49). However, Morgan's article is primarily concerned with the startling fact that these Egyptian frescoes portray a scene, bull-jumping, which is usually considered to be purely Minoan; thus she, too, does not pursue the question of the color convention.

Finally, we cannot always identify the nationality of artists who created some of the works studied. A growing body of evidence suggests that Greek artists were very active in Etruria (Spivey 1997). Is the use of the color convention in that region a reflection of the stylistic traits of Greek artists, rather than the ideology of their Etruscan patrons? The recent discovery of tomb paintings from Tel El-Dab'a, mentioned above, which have a Minoan bull-jumping theme in an Egyptian building, suggests, however, that meaning as well as form may also travel. Despite these problems, a wealth of material is available to analyze and interpret. Fortunately, the primary archaeological and literary source material is now augmented by a number of important new studies on the status of women in specific ancient societies. While the status of women in the GraecoRoman world has been a major scholarly topic in the two decades following Pomeroy's work, only recently have Egyptian women become the focus of similar studies (Robins 1993; Tyldesley 1994).

There are of course limitations to the source material under analysis. Preservation is not uniform in each area, and context also varies from area to area. While a great deal of Egyptian wall-painting is preserved, most of our examples

By analyzing the development and use of color conventions in each of these societies, we can come to understand these 7

Mary Ann Eaverly Case for Tell cl-Dab'a." In Egypt, the Aegean and the Levant, edited by W. Vivian Davies and Louise Schofield, pp. 29-53. London: British Museum Press.

societies' specific attitudes toward women as well as establishing pan-Mediterranean ideas about the status of women in general. For too long the ancient world has been studied as if each group existed in a vacuum. Now is the time to move beyond gender theory that is confined to national borders to find new ways to look at the role of women in the ancient Mediterranean world.

Pollit, Jerome J. 1993. The Art of Ancient Greece: Sources and Documents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pomeroy, Sarah. 1978. Goddesses, Wives, Whores and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. New York: Schocken.

Acknowledgments

Robertson, Martin. 1975. A History Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nancy Wicker has my gratitude for her perceptive and helpful suggestions in the preparation of this article. I owe an enormous debt to Ava Chitwood who was an invaluable scholarly reader and critic. I also wish to thank the Metropolitan Museum of Art Departments of Greek and Roman Art, and Egyptian Art, in particular Elizabeth Milleker and Marsha Hill, for their help with the photographs. As always I thank my husband Wayne A. Losano for his editing skills.

of

Greek Art.

Robins, Gay. 1993. Women in Ancient Egypt. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Robins, Gay. 1997. The Art of Ancient Egypt. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Spivey, Nigel. 1997. Etruscan Art. New York: Thames and Hudson.

Literature Cited

Tyldesley, Joyce. 1994. Daughters of Isis. London: Penguin Books.

Arnold, Dorothea. 1997. The Royal Women of Amarna. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. Biers, William. 1986. The Archaeology of Greece. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Bernal, Martin. 1991. Black Athena, Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Vol.

2.

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Brown, Shelby. 1997. '"Ways of Seeing' Women in Antiquity: An Introduction to Feminism in Classical Archaeology and Ancient Art History." In Naked Truths, edited by Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow and Claire Lyons, pp. 12-42. New York: Routledge. Cohen, Ada. 1996. "Portrayals of Abduction in Greek Art: Rape or Metaphor?" In Sexuality in Ancient Art, edited by Natalie Kampen, pp. 117-135. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dean-Jones, Leslie Ann. 1994. Women's Bodies in Classical Greek Science. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Deiss, Joseph Jay. 1989. Herculaneum. Malibu: J. Paul Getty Museum. duBois, Page. 1998. Sowing the Body: Psychoanalysis and Ancient Representations of Women. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Evans, Sir Arthur. 1928. The Palace of Minos at Knossos. London: Macmillan.

Irwin, Eleanor. 1974. Colour Terms in Greek Poetry. Toronto: Hakkert. Lefkowitz, Mary. 1996. Not Out of Africa. New York: Basic Books. Manzclli, Valentina. 1994. La Policroma Nella Statuaria Greca Arcaica. Studia Archacologica 69 Rome: Bretschneidcr. Morgan, Lyvia. 1995. "Minoan Painting and Egypt: The

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Color and Gender in Ancient Painting

Figure I. Attic black-figure lekythos. Metropolitan Museum of Art 56.11.1, Gift of Walter C. Baker, 1956. (Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.) 9

MaryAnn Eaverly

Figure 2. Tomb of Nakht (Theban tomb 52), Thebes, Egypt, facsimile painting, Metropolitan Museum of Art 15.5.19b, Rogers Fund, 1915. (Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.) 10

3. The Aegean Landscape and the Body: A New Interpretation of the Thera Frescoes Paul Rehak Fresco paintings from the late Bronze Age Aegean world provide a rich source of information about the prehistoric cultures of Minoan Crete, the Mycenaean mainland, and the Cycladic Islands (Immerwahr 1990). Since 1967, excavations at the buried town of Akrotiri on Thera have provided an unparalleled opportunity for archaeologists to attempt a detailed reconstruction of an ancient society by examining the buildings at the site and their contents (Doumas 1983; Marinatos 1984). Although continuing excavation and restoration will surely modify our view of Akrotiri, the publication of several structures is already well underway and some preliminary observations can be made. I would like to focus attention here on some aspects of the fresco program of Xeste 3, a large free-standing public building of approximately thirty rooms, constructed on at least two levels (Doumas 1992, 127-131; Palyvou 1990) (Fig. 1). Most discussions of the Xeste 3 paintings, however, have minimized the gender issues raised by the paintings or have employed traditional masculinist methodologies of art historical and archaeological analysis and interpretation to interpret the scenes either as religious or as purely decorative, like wallpaper (for various opinions, see e.g., Hagg 1985; Marinatos I 985; Niemeier I 992; Kontorli-Papadopoulou 1996; Rehak 1997). In this paper, I would like to attempt a more balanced reading by analyzing the representations of the human figure in landscape as social documents (see also Rehak and Snihurowych 1997).

matronly woman holding a similar sword and scabbard (Fig. 3). The adjacent ground floor room 3 has been subdivided into compartments by pier and door partitions, a Minoan architectural feature that allowed the selective opening and closing of areas within a room. One painted compartment is a sunken "lustral basin," so-called although we do not know its exact purpose, approached by a short descending flight of steps (Marinatos and Hagg 1986; Nordfeldt 1987). The basin is painted on two walls with a Minoan-style shrine fucade surmounted by horns covered with red streaks (Marinatos 1984, 75 fig. 33; D'Agata 1992; Gesell, forthcoming) and a composition of three women in a rocky landscape that includes crocuses (Doumas 1992, pis. 100--108) (Fig. 4). Another painted compartment is a small, closet-shaped space with four male figures. Recent work on body morphology, scale, costume, jewelry, and pose allows us to analyze the human figures (Lee, forthcoming; Televantou 1982; 1984; 1988; Marinatos 1987b; Withee 1992; Rehak 1996; 1999; Younger 1992; Effinger 1996). In the lustral basin scene, the "Necklace Swinger" and seated "Wounded Woman" have similar coiffures of long hair, firm chins, shallow breasts, and anklelength skirts that indicate that they are fully pubescent and sexually mature, about 14-16 years of age (Doumas 1992, pis. 101, I 05). The "Veiled Girl" to right is in early pubescence, age 12-14: we cannot see her chest because she extends her arms in front of her body, but her short, calflength skirt and partially shaved head with a few long locks indicate that she is not yet an adult. A shared groundline and physical proximity link the Wounded Woman and Veiled Girl in the area before the shrine facade; the Necklace Swinger stands apart at a lower level, as if approaching the sanctuary with an offering of jewelry.

Many of the frescoes from the building make repeated visual referencesto crocus sativus, a cultivar whose bulbs need to be replanted on a six- to seven-year-cycle (Amigues 1988). These plants blossom in October over just a few days, when their yellow-orange stigmas are harvested by hand and dried for use. In the Thera frescoes, the artists have taken certain liberties. The stigmas are painted red, the color they take when dried, and the crocuses originally had brilliant purple petals which have faded or turned gray; therefore, we must now use our imagination to reconstruct the vivid, glowing colors on the walls in their original state.

Both the Wounded Woman and Veiled Girl have attributes that are presently unique in the iconography of Aegean wall painting. The former wears hairpins with floral finials and a draped but untied apron with lappets that somewhat recalls a hula skirt (Doumas 1992, pis. 105, 106). Similar garments have been connected by Elizabeth Barber to the prehistoric "string skirt" used to advertise sexual maturity and readiness for marriage in some European societies (Barber 1994, 4270). In Iliad Book 14, the goddess Hera borrows such a garment from Aphrodite when she sets out to seduce Zeus on Mt. Ida.

The visitor to the building first saw a frieze in ground floor room 4 that depicts a rocky landscape with swallows, their nests, and young, along with blue monkeys or African vervets that wield swords and scabbards or hold gold lyres (Doumas 1992, pis. 95-99; Rehak, forthcoming 1) (Fig. 2). These blue monkeys are exotic creatures, imported from Egypt to Crete and thence to other islands like Thera as part of extended trade networks (Parker 1997; Strasser 1997). Thus, their presence immediately signals that the visitor has entered a liminal, supernatural zone and suggests that the iconography of the scenes may reflect close contacts with Minoan art. Both on Crete and in Egypt, blue monkeys are often associated with women and female sexuality. While we tend to think of swords as male implements, they were symbols of status and authority on Crete and many were dedicated as votive objects in Minoan caves. A contemporary sealstone from the palace at Knossos on Crete even shows a

Blood streams from the foot of the Wounded Woman over a single, large crocus blossom. Since this blossom is not attached to a plant and simply hangs in space as a sign or symbol (Potts 1996, 18), the juxtaposition of blood and flower could be a metaphor for several types of female bleeding, including menstruation, the rupture of the hymen, or childbirth-all female rites of passage that followed one another in quick succession in most ancient societies (Buckley and Gottlieb 1988; Demand 1994; Dowden 1989; 11

Paul Rehak

King 1983; Knight 1991; Sissa 1990). Because no man or infant appears in the scene, a literal representation of the last two possibilities can be excluded in favor of the first.

presents crocus stigmas (Marinatos 1987a) and a leashed griffin with a red collar. The seated woman is thus a Mistress of Animals or Potnia Theron, an impression heightened by the presence of a nature scene on the adjoining wall (Vlachopoulos 1998). But her shallow breast and facial features are so similar to those of the Necklace Swinger and Wounded Woman from the lower floor that all three individuals must be the about the same age, 14-16 years old (Fig. 7). The relative youth of this divinity and he association with young girls strongly recalls the functions of the historical Artemis, who protected women of all ages but especially young girls (Burkert 1985, 149-152). As if to emphasize the close relationship between the girls and goddess, all wear a forehead band which no other woman in Xeste 3 possesses.

The Veiled Girl averts her eyes from this bloodshed, although her red-spotted yellow drapery suggests that she too is undergoing a transition (Doumas 1992, pis. l07, 108). Saffron-dyed yellow costumes in historical Greece included the wedding veil and the garment called the krokotos, which takes its name from the crocus used to produce the dye. The krokotos was worn by prepubescent girls who served Artemis at the sanctuary of Brauron, east of Athens, in preparation for their assumption of adult roles and duties (Cole 1984). Despite the differences among them, the Iustral basin women share a common link: all three have costumes embroidered or woven with crocus. The Necklace Swinger and Veiled Girl have blouses decorated with blossoms and stigmas, while the Wounded Woman's unusual belt carries a repeating pattern of crocus buds (Rehak, forthcoming 2).

An opposite wall of this room shows a file of maturewomen with full breasts and hair tied in kerchiefs or snoods, reminiscent of the woman on the Cretan sealstone mentioned above (Doumas 1992, pis. 132-134). Most carry different bouquets of flowers, and one holds a basket like those of the flower-picking girls opposite. Like the goddess, the woman with the basket also wears a crocus blossom over one ear, perhaps signaling a special relationship between them or indicating that the matron had served as a flower-picker in her youth (Fig. 8).

A nearbyground floor compartment depicts four male figures who are shown against a blank background, without landscapefeatures (Doumas 1987; 1992, pls. l09-111) (Fig. 5). Their body types and facial features indicate that they are shown at four distinct age grades: a prepubescent boy (8-10 years of age), a lad in early pubescence ( 10-12), a young man in full pubescence ( 16-18) and a mature man with a slight paunch. Only one individual is clothed and none wears jewelry, indicating that all are of relatively low status, particularly when we compare them to the richly adorned women from the building. Nevertheless, the adult male is seated, an unusual pose for either gender in Aegean art (Rehak 1995). Each male figure holds a metal vessel or piece of fabric; the gold cup held by the youngest boy unfortunately has been erased. The orange-yellow skin color of this youngest boy differs from the older males who have red skins; I shall return to this anomaly later.

How are we to interpret this wealth of pictorial data from Xeste 3? Previously, scholars have focused on the economic importance of gathering saffron for a food and dyestuff (Amigues 1988), or have identified the pictorial ·program of the building as a general representation of puberty rites (Marinatos 1993, 203-209, 211). I believe that a more nuanced reading is possible and that the images bear significantly on our attempts to reconstruct this prehistoric island society. While Aegean art generally shows men and women in sexually segregated groups, it seems noteworthy that all of our diagnostic visual criteria: pose, costume, hairstyle, and jewelry, call attention to the role ofwomenparticularly younger women-as protagonists within the building. At the same time, these features are used to call attention to the existence of four parallel age grades for both men and women. For women, these are particularly clearly marked: prepubescence (coinciding with a period of service to a goddess), early pubescence, full pubescence (the Necklace Swinger and Wounded Woman), and matronly status (the processional women, who are least elaborately adorned-note their lack of gold earrings).

In room 3 on the upper floor, in an area corresponding to the lustral basin below, a composition covering two walls depicts young girls gathering crocus blossoms in a mountainous landscape and offering them in baskets to an apparent goddess enthroned on a high platform set atop incurved bases (Doumas 1992, pls. 116-130) (Fig. 6). Because the girls wear short skirts and have snub noses, receding chins, partially shaved heads, and flat chests with barely budding nipples, they must be prepubescent, about 810 years of age.

A stage of early pubescence represented by the Veiled Girl in the lustral basin seems to indicate the existence of a separate, different course open to some girls as they mature: she continues to shave parts of her head long after the prepubescent girls from the upper floor have started growing theirs in short curls, and she veils herself and averts her eyes from the bloodshed associated with full pubescence and lacks the long coiffure signaling physical maturity. She is thus different, "other," and perhaps-like the mythological Iphigenia-destined for the status of virgin priestess.

Slight variations exist among the girls in terms of hairstyle, though physiognomy suggests that they are close to one another in age. One, whose head has only recently been shaved, has short stubble that has just started to grow (Doumas 1992, pis. 120-121). Two others at a slightly more advanced stage of hair growth have short curls which are emphasized by lines incised into the plaster of the wall (Doumas 1992, pis. 118-119, 130). The fourth wears short curls that are starting to merge into a fluffy mass (Doumas 1992, pis. 123-124); eventually these will become long locks like those of the Necklace Swinger and the Wounded Woman in the lustral basin scene.

At the same time, references to saffron crocus abound for all of these women, whatever their age and status within this sisterhood. These are so pervasive as to suggest that this flower carries a specific meaning or meanings. In fact, a wide range of uses for saffron is known or suggested in the medical pharmacopiae, past and present, from around the world: it can reportedly be used as a eupeptic, stimulant, aromatic,

The goddess is richly dressed, coiffured, and bejeweled (Doumas 1992, pis. 122, 125, 126). She wears a crocus blossom over one ear. Her supernatural status is signaled by the heraldic animals that flank her, another blue monkey who 12

The Aegean Landscape and the Body

aphrodisiac, emmenagogue, abortifacient, and narcotic; in high doses, it is said to cause insanity and death though no clinical documentation known to me supports this claim. Its scientifically recorded properties have been largely ignored but may be significant.

pubescence. Note too that the hairstyles of the youngest boy and youngest girls are nearly identical, suggesting that prior to pubescence children form a single gender, as they do in our modem terminology for "children" and "kids." Even the mature women, who have plain white corneas, must have received adequate amounts since their eyes show no signs of the reddening associated with vitamin A or riboflavin deficiency.

In an article published some years ago, Ellen Davis called attention to an unusual detail in the way the eyes of some figures in Xeste 3 were depicted (Davis 1986). Several individuals have dilute blue streaks in the comers of the corneas, which Davis interpreted as a sign of relative youth, while the red streaks in the corneas of other figures were identified as a sign of age. Now that more of the figures have been published in detail, it is clear that this hypothesis does not adequately explain the evidence. The goddess and her young girls, along with all the lustral basin women and the youngest boy, have blue-streaked corneas. The matrons all have plain white corneas. Two youthful males and one adult man have red-streaked eyes. (The eyes of the fully pubescent young man, unfortunately, are not preserved). If the red and blue streaks indicate age and youth, respectively, then the matronly women should have red, not plain white corneas, and two male youths should have blue-streaked, not red eyes. Clearly, a different explanation must be sought for this feature.

Since an adequate supply of vitamins A and Bis essential to good health, careful control of a saffron-rich diet contributes directly to high birth weights in babies and thus promotes reproductive success (Sebrell and Harris 1967, 28; Diplock 1985, 44); its use as an ernmenagogue would have allowed women to regulate their own menses and thus afforded some control over conception (Madan, Kapur, and Gupta 1966; Lewis and Elvin-Lewis 1977, 325-329; Kamboj 1988). High levels of these vitamins promote good eyesight and general health, and may reduce the risk of some cancers, lower the incidence of coronary disease, and retard aging (Burton 1988). If the women of Thera had a detailed knowledge of the medicinal properties of saffron, such knowledge may have been an important source of women's power and ability to control their bodies. The frescoes from Xeste 3 reveal an extraordinary attention to details of women's bodies in terms of physiognomy, breast development, hair-growth, and-if my hypothesis about the red and blue-streaked eyes is correct-about observable symptoms associated with specific dietary supplements. If this interpretation is correct, Xeste 3 could be the first surviving Aegean building designed and decorated primarily for women. Although it has never been suggested, we ought at least to consider the possibility that the paintings were executed by women for women, especially given their emphasis on female rites that largely exclude men or show them in subordinate roles. In Xeste 3, therefore, we seem to have a building that was intended to be used by women at all stages in their lives, and not just for rites of passage at puberty.

A possible solution is provided by the medicinal properties of saffron from the crocus plants which are ubiquitous in the decoration ofXeste 3. In addition to its well-documented use as a food and dye stuff, saffron is extremely rich in vitamins A and B (riboflavin), and in carotenes (Madan, Kapur, and Gupta 1966; Garrison 1985, 45)-all of which are lacking from most of the foods that we know were consumed in the Bronze Age Aegean, where the diet consisted largely of grains, legumes, oil, and wine (McGeorge 1987a; 1987b, 1990). A marked symptom of vitamin A or riboflavin deficiency is a clinically distinct red streaking of the corneas, which, if untreated, can lead to significant ocular problems. The modem remedy for this condition, however, is simple: dietary supplementation with normal required doses of vitamins A and B. Individuals with diets high in these two vitamins tend to have better visual acuity and healthier eyes.

It may not be a coincidence that some of the other plants represented in Aegean wall paintings like lilies, cystus (rose), iris, and myrtle, also have documented medicinal properties and were associated with the rites of specific goddesses in historical times (Warren 1985). Myrtle, for example, was specifically associated with marriage, but throughout history has been used as well to induce abortions. The prevalence of these and other plants in Bronze Age frescoes on Thera and Crete leads us to wonder what such landscapes really meant (Chapin 1997). Are they simply indicators that the Minoans were the earliest "hippies" or "flower-lovers" (Starr 1984), or might they instead illustrate one of the spheres of women's activities and powers (Riddle 1992; 1997)? If the latter, then rooms painted with floral landscapes may have designated gathering places for women, like the ground floor room at Akrotiri painted with the famous "spring fresco"(Doumas 1992, pls. 66-76).

Saffron is also very high in carotenes. An occasional temporary side effect of high carotene levels (sometimes now caused by eating too many carrots) is a condition resembling jaundice, in which the color of the skin turns yellow (caretenemia). The youngest boy, the only male figure in Xeste 3 with blue-streaked corneas, in fact exhibits just this trait (Doumas 1992, pl. 112): his skin is painted a unique yellow-orange instead of the brick red color used for the other male figures. Because carotene is turned into vitamin A in the body, a high carotene diet translates to a diet high in vitamin A, which results in good ocular health (Sebrell and Harris 1967; Garrison 1985, 45). So unlike jaundice, in which the eyes tum yellow, this condition results in bright, healthy eyes, and the yellow skin typically disappears when the dietary level of carotenes is reduced. Although none of the women is depicted with a yellow skin, many of them have yellow lips, finger- and toenails, palms and soles, clearly implying that they have been handling saffron, even eating and walking in it. I suggest, therefore, that the frescoes are directly telling us that Theran women had access to large amounts of vitamins A and B through the saffron that they ingested at all stages in their lives and that the youngest boys did as well before they entered

Moreover, if the Thera lustral basin painting indicates that the lustral basin was for women's rites, and if the Xeste 3 basin was used in the same way as the many examples in Cretan palaces and villas (Gesell 1985, 22-26), these unusual architectural features should all have some connection with female rituals. If this identification is correct, the many lustral basins in Neopalatial palaces and villas on 13

Paul Rehak

Crete further underscore the central importance of elite women in Minoan society.

Burkert, Walter. 1985. Greek Religion. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Interestingly, no lustral basins were constructed in the Mycenaean Greek palaces on the mainland, and the frescoes of the later patriarchal Mycenaeans virtually abandon the subject of natural landscapes with plants .and flowers in favor of militaristic and hunting scenes or repetitive depictions of processional figures, only a few of them with women mechanically grasping tired-looking nosegays of flowers (lmmerwahr 1990, 196-197 Py No. 6; 200-201 Th No. I; 202 Ti No. 7).

Burton, Benjamin T. 1988. Human Nutrition: A Textbook of Nutrition in Health and Disease. New York: McGrawHill. Chapin, Anne P. 1997. "A Re-Examination of the Floral Fresco from the Unexplored Mansion at Knossos." Annual of the British School at Athens 92, 1-24. Cole, Susan G. 1984. "The Social Function of Rituals of Maturation: The koureion and the arkteia." Zeitschrift far Papyrologie und Epigraphik 55, 233--44.

By the historical period in Greece, women with detailed knowledge of plants and their properties were often considered potential poisoners or witches like the princess Medea. Aged "wise women" who possessed extraordinary knowledge or "sight" were viewed as threatening even by the men who sought their advice, like Perseus when he visited the Graiai, old women who told him where to find the gorgon, Medusa. At Athens, attempts were made by men to legislate and regulate how and when women associated with one another, even at festivals like the Thesmophoria where men were excluded. The language of the play Thesmophoriazousai by the comic poet Aristophanes reflects male anxieties about the nature of the festival and what exactly went on in women's homosocial environments.

D' Agata, Anna Lucia. 1992. "Late Minoan Crete and Homs of Consecration: A Symbol in Action." In EIKON. Aegean Bronze Age Iconography: Shaping a Methodology, Aegaeum 8, edited by Robert Laffmeur and Janice Crowley, pp. 247256. Liege: Universite de Liege. Davis, Ellen. 1986. "Youth and Age in the Thera Frescoes." American Journal of Archaeology 90, 399-406. Demand, Nancy H. 1994. Birth, Death and Motherhood in Classical Greece. Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University Press.

In classical Greece, descriptions of the sexualized female (and

Diplock, Anthony T. 1985. Fat Soluable Lancaster, PA: Technomic Publishing.

even the adolescent male) body are often couched in terms of the natural landscape or compared to flowers, with a complex interweaving of images (Sergent 1986, 81-101 ). In mythology, the flowery meadow is the locus where violence and bloodshed intersected for young women. Poseidon raped Medusa in such a setting. Persephone in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter was seized and carried off by her uncle Hades as she gathered flowers in another meadow. Only a powerful, mature goddess like Hera could tum the tables on Zeus in the passage from the Iliad mentioned above, when she seduces him in a field of crocus and other flowers, and not the other way around. Such mythological stories might represent the deliberate suppression of memories of a period in the prehistory of Greece, when women's knowledge and use of plants gave them power over their bodies, their reproductive functions, and enhanced their general health and quality of life.

Vitamins.

Doumas, Christos. 1983. Thera: Pompeii of the Ancient Aegean. London: Thames and Hudson. Doumas,

Christos. 1987. "H ~EOTll 3 Kal ol KuavoKEq:>aAOL 0T17v TEXVYJTTJS0tjpas ." In EIAAITINH. Festschrift for N. Platon, pp. 151-159. Athens: Vikelaia Vivliothiki.

Doumas, Christos. 1992. The Wall-Paintings of Thera. Athens: The Thera Foundation. Dowden, Ken. 1989. Death and the Maiden: Girls' Initiation Rites in Greek Mythology. London/New York: Routledge. Effinger, Maria. 1996. Minoischer Schmuck. BAR International Series 646. Oxford: Tempus Reparatum.

While the Thera frescoes alone cannot be construed as evidence for a matriarchy where women exercised sole political control (Thomas 1973), they suggest that a more balanced and complementary division of women's and men's roles was recognized publicly and affirmed communally during one period of the Aegean Late Bronze Age.

Garrison, Robert H. 1985. The Nutrition Desk Reference. New Canaan, CT: Keats Publishing. Gesell, Geraldine. 1985. Town, Palace, and House Cult in Minoan Crete. Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 67. Goteborg: Paul Astrom.

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Amigues, Suzanne. 1988. "Le crocus et le safran sur une fresque de Thera." Revue Archeologique, 227-242. Barber, Elizabeth. 1994. Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years. New York: Norton.

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14

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Rehak, Paul. 1996. "Aegean Breechcloths, Kilts, and the Keftiu Paintings." American Journal of Archaeology l 00, 35-51.

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Rehak, Paul. 1997. "The Role of Religious Painting in the Function of the Minoan Villa: The Case of Ayia Triadha." In The Function of the "Minoan Villa, " Skrifter utgivna av Svenska Institutet i Athen, 4 °, 46, edited by Robin Hagg, pp. 163-174. Stockholm: Svenska Institutet i Athen.

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Rehak, Paul. 1999. "The Construction of Gender in Late Bronze Age Aegean Art-A Prolegomenon." In Redefining Archaeology: Feminist Perspectives, edited by Mary Casey, Denise Donlon, Jeanette Hope, and Sharon Wellfare, pp. 191-198. Sydney: ANH Publications.

Marinatos, Nanno. 1987b. "Role and Sex Division in Ritual Scenes of Aegean Art." Journal of Prehistoric Religion I, 23-34. Marinatos, Nanno. 1993. Minoan Religion. Ritual, Image, and Symbol. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.

Rehak, Paul. Forthcoming I. "The Monkey Frieze from Xeste 3, Room 4: Reconstruction and Interpretation." In Festschrift for Malcolm Wiener, Aegaeum 20. Liege: Universite de Liege.

Marinatos, Nanno, and Robin Hagg. 1986. "On the Ceremonial Function of the Minoan Polythyron." Opuscula Atheniensia. Annual of the Swedish Institute at Athens 16, pp. 57-73. Stockholm/Jonsered: Svenska institutet i Athen/Paul Astrom.

Rehak, Paul. Forthcoming 2. "Crocus Costumes in Aegean Art." In Festschrift for Sara A. lmmerwahr. In preparation. Rehak, Paul, and Roman Snihurowych. 1997. "Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture? Medicine, Myth and Matriarchy in the Thera Frescoes." American Philological Association Abstracts of Papers Presented at the One

McGeorge, Tina. 1987a. "Nfo OTOLXEla yw TO µfoo opo (u)tjs