Gender & History ISSN 0953-5233

Lauren E. Talalay, ’A Feminist Boomerang: The Great Goddess of Greek Prehistory’,

Gender & Hisfory, Vo1.6 No.2 August 1994, pp. 165-183.

A Feminist Boomerang: The Great Goddess

of Greek Prehistory
LAUREN E. TALALAY

Although women’s roles in prehistory have been the subject of debate for
well over a century, interest in gender ideology has emerged in the archae-
ological literature only within the last decade.’ While the ultimate contri-
bution of this newly articulated perspective must await the test of time, it is
clear that the burgeoning literature is challenging some of the central
epistemological assumptions of modern archaeology and redefining a p
proaches to the study of women in prehistory.2
Surprisingly, prehistoric figurines from the Mediterranean, many of which
are female, have not been tossed headlong into this revisionist ‘rnalestrom’.
Rather, much of the recent work on these early representations either has
revived the nineteenth-century notion that, in early societies, power was
initially vested in women or has side-stepped the issue of gender and women
altogether. A well-constructed approach to these figurines that incorporates
feminist and/or gender ideologies and sound archaeological arguments has
yet to be designed.
Some well-known works, notably those of Gimbutas, argue that the abund-
ance of female figurines in prehistoric contexts of Greece and south-eastern
Europe reflects an early, pan-Mediterranean belief in a Great Mother God-
dess, a matriarchal social structure, and a time when women ruled either
supreme or at least in partnership with men.3 These writings have found
widespread popular support in the feminist literature l e g , The First Sex;
The Chalice and the Blade; Motherself; The Myth of the Goddess) and have
been utilized to legitimate some feminists’ goals.4 The notion of a pri-
mordial matriarchy/Mother Goddess in Greece and south-eastern Europe
is, however, based on several unwarranted assumptions. Although some
Aegean prehistorians have persuasively rejected this popular hypothesis,
they have failed to communicate effectively with those outside their own
specialized field.5 By default, both the public and scholars in disciplines
other than archaeology believe that most Aegean archaeologists subscribe
to the Goddess thesis.6
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166 Gender and History

In order to begin redressing some of these problems and to understand

better the interrelationships among gender studies, prehistoric figurines, and
the Great Goddess theory, this article examines the interpretive history of
Greek Neolithic figurines.’ While other works have addressed such matters
as the use, function, meaning, and/or style of these early images, few have
seriously explored why, despite manifest lack of archaeological support,
contemporary scholarship and popular writing have continued to insist that
Stone Age societies worshipped an all-powerful Goddess.8 As this article
argues, the Great Goddess proposal is deeply rooted in a nineteenth-century
mentality which still shapes modern scholarship. An unsalutory alternative
to androcentric interpretations, the Goddess thesis ultimately acts as a boom-
erang to the women’s movement and the future of gender studies.
The archaeological focus of this paper is the Greek Neolithic, a stretch of
prehistory spanning approximately three millennia from c.6,OOO to 3,000
BCE. Our understandingof this long, complex, and changing period remains
fragmentary. Traditionally, archaeologists have discussed discrete aspects of
Neolithic Greece as defined by classes of finds (e.g., lithics, pottery, bones,
figurines, etc.) or by individual sites. Recently, a more synthetic approach has
restructured scholarly debate, spawning articles on social structure, trade
networks, religion, and economy.9 Despite these advances, publications
focus on macrescale systems and are largely ‘faceless’, though not entirely
’genderless’.
in general, the Greek Neolithic i s associated with the introduction of small,
sedentary villages where subsistence was based on cereal agriculture (mostly
wheats and barleys), some collecting (shellfish, nuts, wild fruit) and animal
husbandry (primarily sheep, goat, cattle, and pig). Individual households are
likely to have formed the basic economic unit within each community,
though an extensive network of exchange or trade facilitated the circulation
of commodities and finished products, both utilitarian and prestige. Signifi-
cant distances were covered by foot and/or boat, which no doubt encour-
aged the transmission of information and ideas as well as the flow of goods.
The socieeconomic bases and precise mechanisms of these networks
remain a matter of debate.’* Settlement patterns vary chronologically and
geographically, encompassing both densely distributed villages occupied for
many generations and dispersed communities, some inhabited only briefly.
The overall picture, however, is one of a strongly socialized environment.11
Smaller villages were likely to have been exogamous, with individuals
seeking marriage partners from outside the confines of their settlements; such
strategies would have ensured, among other things, the biological viability
of small settlements. Larger communities may have practiced endogamy but
also maintained contact with neighbouring and distant villages for a variety
of social and economic reasons. The social organization of Neolithic Greece
i s usually labelled ‘egalitarian’, traditionally defined as societies where po-
litical leadership is weak, ranking is absent or muted, and access to important
resources by all members is undifferentiated.12Status in such communities
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A Feminist Boomerang 167

was probably based on age, gender, sex, and no doubt on the (archae-
ologically unretrievable)force of one’s personality. Very little archaeological
evidence from Greece supports the existence of stratification or ranking,
though inequalities of some kind are arguable at select sites.
It is during this time period, with its rich mosaic of small villages and
complex network of trade, that people (men, women, and/or children?) be-
gan fashioning female, sexually ambiguous or possibly sexless figurines, and
a few male images. To date, excavations and surface reconnaissance have
yielded thousands of (mostly clay) images, the bulk of which derive from
northern Greece. Richer and more varied collections have been unearthed
in parts of south-eastern Europe, especially Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. Adopt-
ing a gendered approach to these collections raises basic questions that have
implications for Aegean prehistory in general. Given the fragmentary nature
of the data, is a genderdriven analysis of Neolithic figurines and Aegean
prehistory viable? If possible, how can these images and other data enlighten
us on social and gender differentiations in the Neolithic or on women as an
analytic unit of Aegean prehistory?Finally, i s a gender-conscious perspective
doomed to be marginalized by the archaeological ‘establishment’ as hope-
lessly conditioned by the ideological stance of feminist scholars? As a first
step toward answering these questions, we need to explore the histori-
ography of these early images from Greece.

The earliest discovery of Greek Neolithic figurines occurred nearly a century

ago. On 26 March 1900, Sir Arthur Evans’s excavations at the now famous
site of Knossos exposed the first human image from Crete that could be
securely assigned to the Ne01ithic.l~Eventually, Knossos would yield more
than one hundred such figurines of Neolithic date.14 Concurrently, archae-
ological investigation on the mainland was unearthing additional examples,
many of which were female; a large percentage, however, were sexually
indeterminate and only a very few were clearly male (though several clay
phalluses turned up in later excavation^).^^
Although surprisingly little ink was spilled over the meanings of these
pieces, a general interpretive consensus was forged: the early human repres-
entations from the Greek Neolithic represented either unidentified deities
or a Mother Goddess derived from Near Eastern prototypes. The well-
documented evidence in the Near East for later goddesses such as Inanna,
Ishtar, and Astarte had already conditioned Near Eastern archaeologists to
label (almost indiscriminately) all prehistoric nude female images as emana-
tions of the Great Goddess. Greek scholars echoed their Near Eastern
counterparts, assuming that form followed function and that the Greek
examples were part of a vast, pan-Mediterraneancult which combined ideals
of motherhood and virginity.
Scholars such as Evans must have drawn upon equally if not more com-
pelling data from Crete to support their interpretations. Evans was fully aware
of the frequent depictions of Minoan women on seals and paintings. Often
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168 Gender and History

bare-breasted, richly clad, brandishing snakes or other attributes, and per-

forming ’rituals’, these women were usually considered goddesses or
priestesses. Since the Neolithic levels at Knossos lay directly under the
Bronze Age strata, it was a logical jump to argue for cultural continuity: If
the later Bronze Age figures were associated with emanations of a Great
Goddess, why not trace their origins back to the millennia immediately
preceding?
At least one article by a female anthropologist adopted a universal a p
proach to these early female figurines. M. A. Murray, who examined several
collections of European and Mediterranean images, suggested that cross-
cultural regularities could be identified among so-called fertility figures. She
divided these images into three separate types reflecting motherhood, female
perfection, and female sexuality. The first type was worshipped by men,
women, and children throughout time and across cultures; the second was
associated solely with male veneration; and the third was the exclusive
domain of women, used to stimulate their own sexual desires.l6
Beginning in the 1930s, more critical and varied approaches to the inter-
pretation of Greek (and southeast European) Neolithic figurines emerged in
the literature. Rival proposals suggested that figurines may have functioned
as: symbols of wealth and rank; amulets to ensure a successful birth; toys or
dolls; and fetishes to satisfy the sexual desires of the male. Most discussions
from the thirties through the sixties, however, were noninterpretive, focused
on isolating styles and types of Neolithic figurines and identifying the
temporal and geographic implications of those types.” Woven into the text
of those publications, though, were passing comments testifying to the
growing number of archaeologists who believed that Neolithic figurines
were used exclusively as fertility items. Even if not explicitly stated, the
implication was that a Goddess cult of some kind existed in early Greece.
Typical comments by well respected prehistorians working in Greece during
the fifties, sixties and even the seventies included the following: ’[The
figurine] was presumably made as a symbol of fertile femininity, perhaps a
fetish since it was evidently handled repeatedly over a considerable period
of time’;18 ’Among Neolithic peoples, especially, the margin of subsistence
was frighteningly narrow and an ever-present threat to survival; hence the
constant preoccupation with fertility and regeneration, and a quite natural
choice of the exuberant female body as a prime symbol’;1g‘The terracotta
figurines . . . testify to a belief in supernatural forces which can somehow
affect the life of man, particularly in the matter of fertility’.*O One archae-
ologist concluded (on only the slimmest of evidence) that Neolithic figurines
‘belong to rites of fecundity and fertility practiced by groups of farmers and
herdsmen who lived in a matrilineal society’.21 In general, the religious
significance of these images was taken as a given, as were the economic
insecurity of the times and, on occasion, the matrilineal structure of Neolithic
society. In fact, none of those assumptions holds up to close scrutiny.
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A Feminist Boomerang 169

In 1968 Peter 1. Ucko published the first full-length monograph on Aegean

figurines, Anthropomorphic Figurines in Predynastic Egypt and Neolithic
Crete with Comparative Material from the Prehistoric Near East and Main-
land Greece. Ucko’s book was a milestone in the field of figurine research.
Although he did not address issues of gender, Ucko took a dramatically new
approach to the interpretation of prehistoric figurines. Unconvinced by the
Mother Goddess explanation, he proposed that the ancient images were
not only multifunctional but may have served purposes comparable to those
of similar objects observed in modern ‘ethnographic societies’ studied by
anthropologists during the last few centuries. Ethnographic analogues sug-
gested to Ucko that the Neolithic figures possibly were used in curing rites,
initiation ceremonies, marriage rituals, oral narratives, and the like. Although
Ucko only devoted four pages to a critical review of the Mother Goddess
interpretation, his book is remembered a quarter-century later for demon-
strating the unsupportable nature of that paradigm vis-a-vis the current
archaeological evidence. Among other factors, Ucko pointed out that the
Mother Goddess interpretation did not account for the variety of figurines
in the Neolithic (e.g. seated, standing, steatopygous, slim-limbed, naked,
clothed, tattooed, unadorned, seemingly deformed, etc.), the existence of
many sexless and a few male images, and the variability of the figures’
archaeological contexts, which often appeared to include rubbish heaps.
Disappointingly, Ucko’s call for alternative explanations and for more
rigour in the field triggered only a trickle of responses. Flemming’s 1969
article, ‘The myth of the mother goddess’, based on an examination of
megalithic structures and related, contemporaneous art in Western Europe,
underscores the exiguous nature of the data supporting any association of
these structures with a Mother Goddess. Though Flemming believes that
some version of the Goddess may have played a role in parts of Neolithic
Europe, he deplores the power of her hold on prehistorians: ‘The mother-
goddess has detained us for too long; let us disentangle ourselves from her
embrace.’22 Subsequent scholarly writings, which examine both Neolithic
and Bronze Age evidence, also owe a great debt to Ucko’s pioneering work,
since they either offer new interpretations of the role or roles played by these
figurines or exhort scholars to search for alternative explanations.23
While the more ’scientifically’ oriented archaeologists became circum-
spect and cautious in their discussions of prehistoric figurines and fertility
goddesses, the Mother Goddess notion, far from receding into the back-
ground, was infused with new life by the work of several writers, particularly
Marija Gimbutas, and by the crescendo of voices within the women’s
movement. The papers from an international conference on this topic were
published in Archaeology and Fertility Cult in the Ancient Mediterranean.
Gimbutas’s arguments, which are embraced by a large segment of the
public as well as by scholars outside the field of archaeology, state that the
‘civilization of Old Europe’ (i.e., Greece and south-eastern Europe) was
initially dominated by an harmonious, pre-patriarchal society characterized
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by a Goddesscentered religion. The wealth of anthropomorphic figurines

testify to a complex pantheon centered on the Great Goddess of Life, Death,
and Regeneration and the deity’s various epiphanies, which include, among
others, a Snake, Bird, Pregnant Woman, and Frog Goddess as well as a Male
enthroned God. In Gimbutas’s own words, ‘the Goddess-centered art . . .
reflects a social order in which women as heads of clans or queen-priestesses
played a central role. . . . [Rlepeated incursions by Kurgan people put an end
to the Old European culture . . ., changing it from gylanic to androcratic and
from matrilineal to patrilineal.’z4 Her work implies that the world was trans-
formed from an age of harmony and accord (gylanic) to one of warfare and
endless strife (androcratic).25
A quiet voice amidst this clamour was that of Hourmouziadis, a Greek
archaeologist, who published I Anthropomorphi Idoloplastiki tis Neolithikis
Thessalias, the first major volume devoted exclusively to northern Greek
figurines, in 1973. At that time there were well over 600 Neolithic figurines
recorded at Thessalian sites and countless more in private collections.
Hourmouziadis offered an approach that sided neither with Ucko nor with
Gimbutas, but threaded a path between them. Like Ucko, Hourmouziadis
believes in a variety of uses for Neolithic figurines; indeed, he suggests that
not all figurines may have had predetermined usages or that the user and
the creator may not have had identical functions in mind. Again, like Ucko,
Hourmouziadis is not convinced that human figures from Thessaly func-
tioned as images of deities, let alone as Mother Goddesses. Like Gimbutas,
however, he adopts a symbolic or semiotic stance and proposes that these
images were one element in an early symbolic system, part of a larger
lexicon modelled in clay that served as a kind of proto-writing or system of
signs for the Neolithic inhabitants of Greece. Hourmouziadis proposes that,
along with a broad range of clay vessels, tokens, models, and tools, figurines
offered a non-verbal language to the community, helping to create and
reinforce themes of everyday life, reproduction, and local economy.26
A source of ongoing and impassioned discussion, the Goddess/matriarchy
proposal was also attacked in a brief essay by Sally Binford entitled ’Are
Goddesses and Matriarchies Merely Figments of Feminist imagination?’
The author objects to various aspects of the argument, including the assign-
ment of unitary significance to images which appear‘ in widely different
archaeological contexts and the unidimensional portrayal of women and
matriarchies as sensitive, nurturing, and loving in contrast to men and patri-
archies as aggressive, brutal, and violent. Moreover, Binford argues that the
Goddess/matriarchy proposal suggests an inherent weakness in matriarchies
that allowed them to be replaced by patriarchie~.~’This essay elicited
several short but outraged responses from two feminists who accuse the
author (among other things) of erecting a house of straw (i.e., feminists who
embrace the Goddess proposal do recognize the limits of the evidence)
and of patriarchal bias.28 The tone of those responses is reflected by the
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A Feminist Boomerang 171

statement that entering into discussions about the existence of ancient

Goddesses is akin to discussing ‘whether or not World War II actually

Central to these debates are unspoken and opposing views about the
nature of symbols in preliterate societies. On the one hand, those who
endorse the Mother Goddess notion gloss over the complexities of nonverbal
symbols in nonliterate cultures such as Neolithic Greece. On the other hand,
those who reject the thesis seem to assume that these early human images,
like other visual symbols, were polysemic and multivalent expressions. The
images embodied several layers of meaning and probably held different
meanings for different segments of the prehistoric population (e.g., men,
women, children). Surely, it takes a great leap of faith to equate all female
figurines with a belief in a poorly defined Mother Goddess and then to pre-
sume that the central position of women in the religious sphere of any culture
is a direct reflection of the social organization of that culture. Such a leap
denies the intricate nature of both social and symbolic systems in antiquity.
The convoluted relationship between religious symbolism and everyday
reality was recently highlighted in a collection of essays which explored
Mother Goddesses and ’mother worship’ among modern groups cross-
culturally. The general consensus of the authors was that religious symbolism
is not epiphenomenal. It is impossible to predict the types of deities in a
religious system from an analysis of a culture’s social structure. Indeed,
several of the essays demonstrated that the subordinate status of women in
some groups was associated with an elevated status of females as defined in
that culture’s religious sphere.30 This perspective is a cautionary tale for all
archaeologists who would attempt to erect simple bridges between the
possible social organization of a culture and its symbolic systems, let alone
between its material culture and its ideology.
Despite valid objections to the Goddesshatriarchy thesis, at least as
applied to Neolithic Greece, the notion has endured. Its popularity cannot
be accounted for by compelling arguments or a gradual accumulation of
supporting archaeological data over the decades. Rather, its persistence is
embedded in larger social and intellectual trends, some of which can be
traced back to the mid-nineteenth century and continue to have a profound
effect on modern thinking.31Working almost unwittingly in concert with
those forces is the more contemporary choir of some women’s voices. Their
refrain appears to miss the negative implications of the Mother Goddess
proposal.

The Goddess thesis was initially argued not by archaeologists but by such
luminaries as Johann Bachofen, Sir James G. Frazer, and Sigmund Freud.
Bachofen’s work, Das Mutterrecht (1861), was one of the first major studies
to articulate the principles of a gynococracy. Like other thinkers of his day,
Bachofen was searching for a general theory of social development, a single
view to explain the evolution of human cultures. A jurist and a classicist,
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172 Gender and History

Bachofen argued that human society had originally been communal,

characterized by promiscuity and with no principles of kinship or property.
Eventually, women in these early societies revolted, took power and estab
lished the Motherright stage, which hailed ties between mother and child
as an overriding legal principle. Ultimately, this radical matriarchy was
supplanted by a patriarchy.32
These beliefs found further support in Frazer’s influential work, The
Gofden Bough (1890, 1907-19151, which also argued for a matriarchal
stage in the Classical world antecedent to the Greek and Roman patriarchal
systems. Hints of support or outright agreement appeared in such works as
Engels’s The Origin of the Family, Private Property/ and the State (1 884) and
Freud’s Totem and Taboo (1920). While none of these works discussed at
length the prehistoric images of nude females from Greece and the Mediter-
ranean, all of the books had palpable effects on scholarship in prehistoric
archaeology. Modern archaeologists have not yet escaped the hold of these
early paradigms.
On the surface, the survival of this nineteenth-century vision of a pre-
historic matriarchy would appear as a boon to the women’s movement,
insofar as women can employ (pre)history to contest their less than satis-
factory contemporary status. It is indeed seductive for certain schools of
feminist theory to argue that a ’Golden Age‘ existed where gender roles were
more balanced and women were empowered, although such speculations
never specify exactly what kinds of power women had or the precise nature
of their social and political relationships with men or each other. On a
deeper level, however, the Mother Goddess notion and the vision of a
Golden Age are antagonistic both to the future of women‘s movements and
to the development of new perspectives on Mediterranean prehistory. This
view polarizes not only men against women, but women against women
within the ranks of archaeology. Moreover, the thesis remains almost
insultingly simplistic in portraying the complex and no doubt shifting gender
roles that existed in antiquity. Finally, the stance smacks of a feminist
essentialism which limits the way we might view the power of women in
the future.
As an eminent female prehistorian has observed, the whole topic of gender
relations has not been ’taken seriously by Establishment (yes, undoubtedly
male-dominated) archae01ogy’.~3This is particularly true of works that focus
on the Mother Goddess. Popular writings on the topic as well as more
scholarly texts are often criticised by Establishment archaeology as ‘un-
scientific’ and marred by soft or sloppy scholarship. Among the mostly
female scholars who seek to engender prehistory, a vocal group takes ex-
ception to the often unrigorous nature of discussions on ancient matriarchies
and the role of prehistoric figurines in early societies.3’ In many ways, these
polarities reflect larger antagonisms between ‘humanistically’ and ’scientifi-
cally’ oriented archaeologists. While those two camps will no doubt con-
tinue to debate, there i s no reason that questions about gender and female
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A Feminist Boomerang 173

iconography in prehistoric contexts need be the source of such polarities.

The issue of gender as a fundamental structuring element in society is
relevant to archaeologists of varying theoretical concerns.
Equally troubling is the simplicity of the Great Goddess explanation as
presented in the literature. Religious beliefs, social structures, and gender
roles in prehistory were certainly not static. Nor were they monolithic or
monothetic entities that now lend themselves to shallow summaries. Al-
though it may be extremely difficult to document variation and change from
the preliterate archaeological record, the assumption that women persisted
in a fixed role for millennia denies the complex nature of real societies and
discounts the evolutionary changes in these communities over the span of
several thousand years. Ethnographic and anthropological research during
the last few decades has underscored the great variability of women‘s roles
in society. One of the key conclusions of that research is that the roles of
women in any society cannot be decontextualized. Women’s roles are
socially constructed and intimately linked to the constraints of their particular
culture.
Finally, and perhaps most significantly, the essentialism engendered by the
Mother Goddess idea serves to isolate women as outside of history. Although
proponents of this interpretation never specify whether the power of women
in these early matriarchies was given, granted, or taken, they assume that the
elevated status of women was ultimately due to their reproductive capabili-
ties. In a fundamental sense, adherence to such an idea ultimately relegates
females to ‘the purposive roles [of] birth and childrearing [which define]
their sexuality only as an expression of the means to guarantee the survival
of the group’.35 If women’s reproductive capabilities are the source of their
power, then women remain, to some extent, locked within an unchanging
domestic sphere. As Wylie (and others) have observed, if ’biology is destiny’
where gender is concerned and women’s roles are forever fixed, then
women run the risk of being defined as irrelevant to the process of cultural
change. Being static, women’s roles can never account for developments in
cultural
With such perspectives popular in the literature, women’s hypothetical
dominion in the past will continue to be viewed as given and not earned.
Embedded in such views is the notion that unearned dominion was especi-
ally susceptible to control by others, particularly those in authority. Women
may have been valued and to some extent empowered by their reproductive
capabilities, but they were not necessarily in control of that power. Thus
defined, women run the risk of being seen more as cultural object than
cultural agent in both the past and the pre~ent.~’Feminist archaeology
seeks to shift that perspective by identifying how and in what contexts
women were active participants in society.38

Debates surrounding the Goddess thesis and its appropriateness for Neolithic
(and Bronze Age) Greece inevitably bring us back to the basic question
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1 74 Gender and History

posed at the beginning of this article: If Aegean prehistorians who specialize

in the Neolithic are to embark on a gender-conscious research path, which
lines of inquiry would be most profitable?
Aegeanists have, by and large, avoided the issue of gender, despite the
lively discourse on gender and archaeology in fields outside of Aegean
archaeology. In general, archaeology was slow to respond to the feminist
call-to-arms. Except for a small group of women scholars from Norway,
serious debate did not begin until the mid-eightie~.~~ In the past decade,
female archaeologists in particular have contributed significant papers and
articles covering both theoretical and practical matters. Nor surprisingly,
attempts to engender archaeology have followed trajectories similar to those
pursued by feminists in other disciplines: discussion moved from exploration
of women’s roles to overarching debates on gender and power. Initially,
articles argued that prehistorians either ignored women in past societies
altogether or cast them in stereotypical and subordinate roles. It was noted,
moreover, that archaeologists failed to confront, let alone acknowledge, a
major failing: interpretations of the past defined men as the human norm, the
‘universal’, while women became the ‘other’. As feminist debate about
archaeology and gender evolved, it became evident that androcentric bias
could not be dissolved by the ‘add-women-and-stir’ meth0d.~0The analytic
invisibility of women was fundamentally a theoretical, not an empirical,
matter. Consequently, discussions of sexuality, allocation of authority, and
power became, and continue to remain, the main foci of debate.
Although these discussions in archaeology are barely a decade old, they
have forced several critical theoretical issues onto centre stage. First, it is
argued that gender relations are systemic to all cultures; they play a vital role
in organizing social relations, sexual divisons of labour, reproduction, settle-
ment structure, spatial organization of houses, cultural change, ritual, and
ideology. As one archaeologist has written, gender and gender roles are ‘at
once constructed by society and one of the blocks whereby society con-
An engendered archaeology does not presume an a prior;
structs it~elf’.~’
set of rules regarding gender relationships and behaviours. Rather, it assumes
that those relationships and ideologies were constituted, negotiated, re-
produced, and altered over time. Second, though it is unfair to accuse
all prehistoric research of androcentrism, many studies are structured by
Western and ethnocentric assumptions about gender. Often those assump
tions derive from analogies based on the ethnographic record-itself the
product of nineteenth-century male perspectives-or from modern notions
about social and gender relationships (e.g., the production of stone tools
as a strictly male occupation, childrearing as a strictly female domain). If
ethnographic parallels and current configurations of gender are to be ad-
mitted into the ranks of prehistoric research, they must be used judiciously.
Third, given the partial and often skewed nature of the archaeological record,
it i s misleading to assume that the material residues unearthed by archae-
ologists reflect dominant behaviours. Ancient societies, like modern ones,
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A Feminist Boomerang 175

are characterized by varied and contradictory practices and by an array of

sectional or imbricated interests. Feminist archaeologists seem particularly
attuned to extracting the muted and conflicting voices of antiquity. Finally,
gender-conscious archaeology has stressed that the paradigm of two genders
(i.e., that which is culturally determined, as opposed to sex, which is
biologically determined) was not necessarily the norm for all past cultures
(although whether such subtleties can be extracted from prehistoric contexts
remains pr~blematic).~~ In the broadest sense, then, a feminist and/or gen-
dered archaeology has injected a salubrious dose of self-consciousness and
self-reflexiveness into the field.
One of the hallmarks of feminist literature in disciplines related to archae-
ology (e.g., anthropology and history) is an awareness of how profoundly
feminist stances shape-and can warp-the interpretive apparatus brought
to bear on data. Archaeological discussions on gender have adopted similar
auto-critiques, stressing the hidden agendas guiding research. As one archae-
ologist observes, ’the past is not the province of archaeologists alone, and
many others travel there in search of authority-whether the authority of
historical precedent or the authority of “archaeological” vindication. . . . The
past has become contested ground, and the contestants struggle for what
Milan Kundera calls “access to the laboratories where photographs are re-
touched and biographies and histories r e ~ r i t t e n . ” ’ More
~ ~ than any other
recent movement in archaeology (except perhaps post-processualism), an
engendered archaeology has underscored how much our study of antiquity
is not just about the past but about the relationship of the past to the present.
While interest in a feminist and/or gendered archaeology has inspired
significant debate in the epistemological arena, attempts to engender pre-
history have met with less success on the practical level. The current
literature is characterized more by theory and musings than by methodo-
logical and programmatic guidelines. Indeed, the gap between theory and
practical application is recognized as a pressing challenge. These reserva-
tions notwithstanding, several excellent case studies have appeared, most
exploring the allocation of power and authority along gender lines. Publica-
tions often reexamine underutilized data and encompass a broad geo-
graphical range. Topics have included (to name just a few): the role of
women in prehistoric California and the major effect their procurement and
processing of acorns had on subsistence, settlement, mobility, and property
ownership; Aztec women’s contribution to cooking and weaving and their
effect on labour demands and the military success of the Aztec Empire; class
relations and gender inequalities in ancient Sumerian society; the rise of
social and gender inequality in prehistoric Italy; women’s roles in transfor-
mations from kin-based to class societies in the Andes; woman-the-toolmaker
both in general and in highland Peru; and the relationships of women,
animal rearing, and economic surplus to the emergence of stratified societies
in Formative period Maya.44The most persuasive of those studies, which
often challenge academically mainstream or dominant ideologies, aim for
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176 Gender and History

a well-defined research design and employ multiple lines of reasoning and

convergent sources of data.
Sprinkled amongst this literature are several articles exploring the links
between prehistoric figurines and gender ideologies or, more broadly, the
encoding of gender on human representation^.^^ Rosemary Joyce’s work on
central American examples, especially Maya figurines, offers particularly
stimulating insights into possible gendered meanings of such portrayal^.^^
Unlike the decontextualized literature on figurines and Mother Goddesses,
Joyce’sconclusions are based not just on the images themselves but also on
the socio-economic and political structures of the cultures which produced
these figures.
In her work on the Maya, Joyceexamines small-scale moulded images and
human portrayals on painted ceramic vessels (both of which are found in
domestic contexts, burials and refuse deposits) as well as the more public
medium of monumental sculpture. Analysing differences and similarities in
style, iconography, media, use, context, and disposal, she argues that Classic
Maya human representations structured and reproduced a complex gender
ideology. Diverse images used in both large public spaces and small
household contexts created and reinforced the notion that men and women
had distinct, dichotomized roles in society. Those roles were not opposi-
tional but complementary. Males and females engaging in different but
related activities are often representationally paired, suggesting that gender
was viewed as a product of interdependent labour. The figures suggest that
women participated in both household-based and elite segments of society
through their control of food processing and textile production (often de-
picted metonymically on figurines). On the other hand, male figures, which
are often elaborately costumed and hold implements of power-shields,
spears, and staffs-suggest that men controlled politically elite realms of
ritual, warfare, and sacrifice. Each gender maintained a certain degree of
power within its own sphere. The most intriguing images are those which
are gender-ambiguous: female gender i s expressed in costume, while the
sexual identity appears to be male. Joycesuggests that these figures represent
an attempt by the male elite to subsume the totality of social differentiation
(though they may also represent an alternate gender altogether).Joyce buoys
her arguments with evidence from Maya texts, a critical reading of sixteenth-
century ethnographic accounts, and general knowledge of Maya social
organization. While there are some problems with her work, she offers pro-
vocative ideas and sound methodologies for attempting to understand
the linkages between material depictions of men and women and their
respective gender roles and relationships.
Similar efforts to extract information on gender relations from the archae-
ological record need to be made in the study of the Mediterranean Neolithic.
Although gender relations are usually left unexpressed in Neolithic research,
it would not be surprising to find that most Aegean prehistorians, when
questioned, conjure up images of men as tool-maker, itinerant craftsman,
E Baail Blackwell Ltd 1994
A Feminist Boomerang 177

herder, procurer of raw materials, and women as gatherer, primary caretaker,

and food producer. Very few publications, notably those of Vitelli and
Cullen, have explicitly broached the issue of gender in the Stone Age of
the Aegean.47Vitelli has, for example, questioned the use of terms such as
’household’ and ’domestic unit’, challenging the traditional notion that
early societies had rigid divisions between private (read female) and public
(read male) spheres. Both Vitelli and Cullen have suggested that, at least
during part of the fifth millennium, women are likely to have controlled the
production of a technologically complex and sophisticated fine ware ubiqui-
tious in southern Greece. According to Vitelli, mastery of the techniques
necessary to produce this ware required face-to-face instruction, and the
widespread intervillage similarity in pottery (subsequently documented in
detail by Cullen) may have been due to the movement of potters among
communities. One of the more parsimonious explanations would be that
women, who were probably the potters in these villages, moved among
communities in this exogamous society (though other scenarios are also
possible). While there is no direct archaeological evidence which equates
women with potters, ethnographic studies have demonstrated that women
are often the potters in traditional societies. Building on the work of Vitelli,
Cullen also favours the possibility of (patrilocal) exogamy to explain the
observed patterns of similarity. While there are problems with this explan-
ation, Vitelli’s and Cullen’s works represent pioneering attempts in the
literature on Neolithic Greece to explore issues of social distance, craft
production and the dissemination of ideas along gender lines. Notably, they
proceed by trying to understand the organization of production in Neolithic
society and by reference to the ethnographic record, not by harkening to the
more elusive evidence for religion and the sacred.
Constructing an overarching framework for investigating gender in the
Neolithic of the Aegean will require a good deal of sweat and imagination.
Since only the most limited work on the topic has been conducted, building
will likely proceed slowly. Guided by the recent efforts of archaeologists in
other fields, Aegeanists need first to acknowledge some of the biases (andro-
centric and other) which frame their inquiries. The next steps will demand
that old and understudied data be re-examined and new evidence collected.
Both figurines and mortuary data would be logical areas for initial study.
Mortuary evidence, though limited in Greece, may prove promising.
Archaeologists could profitably collect all of the evidence in the region with
an eye to isolating, both diachronically and geographically: accurate identi-
fications of sex and age of death; birthing evidence; nutritional differences
between men and women (possible through carbon isotope values and
chemical analysis); indications and implications of differences in skeletal
stress; sexual differences in disease frequencies; locations of burials for men,
women, and children; and differences in funerary assemblages recovered
from the burials of men and women. Although mortuary data is notoriously
difficult to interpret and postulating links between society as a whole and
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1 78 Gender and History

its mortuary practices demands caution, the results of such investigations

should go some distance in establishing patterns of gender differences in
status, division of labour, mortuary treatment, and social roles in Neolithic
Gr e e ~ e . ~ ~
In terms of interpreting anthropomorphic images, archaeologists will need
to determine diachronic and geographic changes in: the sexual identity
portrayed in the figurines; the activities represented by these images (which
are admittedly restricted); the contexts in which they are (and are not) found;
the range and meanings of adornment on these images; and the choice
of raw materials for male, female, and sexually ambiguous images. Like
mortuary data, the conclusions inferred from these data regarding gender
must be drawn carefully and, ideally, should be supported by other types of
evidence.
It may also prove instructive to reconsider whether the notion of ’house-
hold’ is a viable analytic concept in studying the division of labour in
Neolithic Greece. Are there universal household activities, specialized ones,
even regional productions that may be male, female, or sexually non-
specific? How often are archaeological interpretations based on the a prior;
notion that there are definite domestic and nondomestic spheres of activity,
or male and female sections within structures?
Finally, a more unusual source of information eventually may lie in the
‘sexing’ of fingerprints on pottery and other ceramic items. Although archae-
ologists have not yet succeeded in determining whether ancient fingerprints
derive from males or females, researchers have met with a modicum of
success in identifying the prints of children and slender as opposed to coarse
limbed persons.49Perhaps, at some time in the future, new techniques will
lead to the accurate sexing of prints. The application of such techniques to
Neolithic Greece would prove instructive, particularly given Vitelli and
Cullen’s suggestion that potters were female.
Clearly, teasing convincing evidence of gender relations out of the archae-
ological record from Neolithic Greece will not be easy. If we are, however,
to push the field closer to its frontiers, then a gendered approach will, at
the very least, expose stereotypes, and may well provide us with fresh in-
sights into how men and women worked in concert during this period of
prehistory.

If prehistoric figurines and other classes of data can indeed engender the past
in Greece, then prehistorians need to devise sound models and approaches
that will guide scholars in uncovering possible relationships between the
archaeological evidence and ancient gender ideologies. It is of paramount
importance that those who pursue such goals seek multiple lines of evi-
dence and well-constructed bridging arguments that link current theoretical
approaches with actual archaeological data. Without such rigour, a gender-
conscious archaeology in the Mediterranean will be marginalized and
trivialized.
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A Feminist Boomerang 179

Certainly, the popular discussions about prehistoric Mother Goddesses

and female images significantly undermine the status of an engendered
archaeology. Until demonstrated otherwise, the notion of a Golden Matri-
archal Age in the Neolithic is no more than an ostensibly seductive myth.
Those who choose to endorse this myth unwittingly cast women in a
problematic role. To suggest that the status of women in antiquity was
principally based on their reproductive capabilities overlooks the complex
nature of gender structures in the past and limits the definition of female
power. If, in fact, such a rigid view of women in the Neolithic were true, a
primordial matriarchal society would be anything but a Golden Age. Aegean
prehistorians can surely profit from asking a whole new set of questions and
exploring the overarching issue of how gender may be encoded in the
material culture of small-scale and preliterate societies like those of Neolithic
Greece.

Notes

I am very grateful to colleagues and friends who offered insightful comments and
constructive criticisms on various drafts of this article, especially Tracey Cullen, Steve
Bank, Kathryn Talalay, Sue Alcock, John Alden, John Cherry, Thelma Thomas, and the
anonymous reviewers for Gender & History.

1. For some of the earlier discussions see Johann J. Bachofen, Das Mufterrecht
(Stuttgart, 1861); Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the family, Private /‘rope*, and the State
(1884; repr. Pathfinder Press, New York, 1972); Lewis Henry Morgan, Ancient Society
(New York, 1877).
2. Pioneeringbooks on the topic include: Joan M. Gero and Margaret W. Conkey (eds)
Engendering Archaeology (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, England, and Cambridge, Mass.,
1991); M. di Leonard0 (ed.) Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge (University of
California Press, Berkeley, 1991); Dale Walde and Noreen D. Willows (eds) The Arch-
aeology of Gender (Archaeological Association, The University of Calgary, Calgary,
1991); Cheryl Claassen (ed.)Exploring Gender through Archaeology (Prehistory Press,
Madison, 1992); Elisabeth A. Bacus, et al., A Gendered Past (University of Michigan
Museum of Anthropology, Ann Arbor, 1993). These archaeological works owe a great
debt to the earlier efforts of anthropologists, e.g., Michelle Z. Rosaldo and Louise
Lamphere (eds) Woman, Culture, and Society (Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1974);
Sherry B. Ortner and Harriet Whitehead (eds) Sexual Meanings (Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 1981); Henrietta L. Moore, feminism and Anthropology (University of
Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1988).
3. Marija A. Gimbutas, The Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe (Thames and Hudson,
London, 1974), and Gimbutas, The language of the Goddess (Harper and Row, San
Francisco, 1989). In 1982 Gimbutas produced a revised edition of The Gods and
Goddesses of Old Europe in which she changed the title of the book to The Goddesses
and Gods of Old Europe, a revealing indication of her perspective. See also earlier works:
Robert Briffault, The Mothers: The matriarchal theory of social origins (Macmillan, New
York, 1931); Erich Neumann, The Great Mother (Pantheon Books, New York, 1955);
Edwin 0. James, The Cult of the Mother-Goddess (Praeger, New York, 1959).
0 Basil Blackwell Lrd. 1994.
180 Gender and History

4. Elizabeth G . Could, The first Sex (G. P. Putnam‘s Sons, New York, 19711, esp.
pp. 73-85; Merlin Stone, When God Was a Woman (Harcourt Brace jovanovich,
New York, 1978), esp. pp. 19-29, 49-53; Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade
(Harper and Row, San Francisco, 1987), esp. pp. 7-28; Kathryn A. Rabuzzi, Motherself
(Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1988), esp. pp. 22-26; Anne Baring and Jules
Cashford, The Myfh of the Goddess (Viking, London, 1991), esp. pp. 46-105.
5. Brian Hayden, ‘Old Europe: Sacred Matriarchy or Complementary Opposition?’ in
Archaeology and Fertility Cult in the Ancient Mediterranean, ed. Anthony Bonnano (6. R.
Crijner Pub. Co., Amsterdam, 1986), pp. 17-30; see also the entries for Gimbutas in
Bacus, A Gendered Past, pp. 62-64.
6. Joseph Campbell, The Mask of Gods (Viking, New York, 1959), pp. 7 36-5 1, 401 -
34; JamesJ. Preston (ed.) Mother Worship (The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel
Hill, 1982), pp. 325-41.
7. There i s good archaeological evidence in Greece of human occupation well before
the Neolithic. Small hunting and foraging bands traversed the countryside by at least
100,000 BCE, if not earlier. To date, however, no human images have been reported from
these earlier periods.
8. See Richard W. Hutchinson, ’Cretan Neolithic Figurines’, lahrbuch fur Prghistorische
und Ethnographische Kunst, 12 (1938), pp. 50-57; Alan J. 6. Wace, ’Prehistoric Stone
Figurines from the Mainland’, Hesperia (1949, suppl. 8); Saul Weinberg, ’Neolithic
figurines and Aegean interrelations’, American lournal of Archaeology, 55 (19511,
pp. 121-33; Peter J. Ucko, Anthropomorphic Figurines (A. Szmidla, London, 1968);
Giorgos Ch. Hourmouziadis, I Anthropomorphi ldoloplastiki tis Neolithikis Thessalias
(Volos, 1973); Bradley Bartel, ‘Cultural associations and mechanisms of change in
anthropomorphic figurines during the Neolithic in the eastern Mediterranean basin‘,
WorldArchaeology, 13 (1981), pp. 73-85; William W. Phelps, ’Prehistoric figurines from
Corinth’, Hesperia, 56 (1987), pp. 233-53; Lauren E. Talalay, ‘Body imagery of the
ancient Aegean’, Archaeology, 4 (19911, pp. 46-49; L. E. Talalay, Deities, Dolls, and
Devices: Neolithic Figurines from Franchthi Cave, Greece (Indiana University Press,
Bloomington, 1993).
9. There i s extensive literature on the Greek Neolithic, though few attempts to
synthesize the period as a whole; see, however, Jean-PaulDemoule and Catherine Perles,
‘The Greek Neolithic: A new review’Journa1 of World Prehistory, 7 (19931, pp. 355-416;
and the earlier, lavishly illustrated book, Demitrios Theochares, Neolithic Greece (The
National Bank of Greece, Athens, 1973). Among the more recent works are: Tracey
Cullen, ‘Social Implications of Ceramic Style in the Neolithic Peloponnese’, in Ancient
Technology to Modern Science, ed. William D. Kingery (The American Ceramic Society,
Columbus, Ohio, 1985), pp. 77-100; Paul Halstead, ’Counting Sheep in Neolithic and
Bronze Age Greece‘, in Pattern of the Past: Studies in honour of David Clarke, ed. Ian
Hodder, Glynn lssac and Norman Hammond (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1981), pp. 307-39; Julie M. Hansen, The Palaeoethnobotany of Franchthi Cave (Indiana
University Press, Bloomington, 1991); Thomas W. Jacobsen and Tracey Cullen, ‘A
Consideration of Mortuary Practices in Neolithic Greece: Burials from Franchthi Cave‘, in
Mortality and Immortality: The anthropology and archaeology of death, ed. Sally C.
Humphreys and Helen King (Academic Press, London, 1981), pp. 79-101; Catherine
Perles, ‘Systems of exchange and organization of production in Neolithic Greece’, Journal
of Mediterranean Archaeology, 5 (1992), pp. 115-64; Curtis N. Runnels and Tjeerd H.
van Andel, ’Trade and the origins of agriculture in the eastern Mediterranean’, lournal of
Mediterranean Archaeology, 1 (1 988), pp. 83- 109; Robin Torrence, Production and
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A Feminist Boomerang 181

Exchange of Stone Tools (cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986), esp. pp. 121-37;
Karen D. Vitelli, Franchthi Neolithic Pottery, vol. 1 (Indiana University Press, Bloom-
ington, 1993).
10. See Catherine Perles, From Stone Procurement to Neolithic Society in Greece
(Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1989).
1 1. Perles, ‘Systems of exchange’.
12. Although many prehistorians find common neo-evolutionary labels devised by
anthropologists, such as egalitarian, tribe, chiefdom, etc., inadequate, they remain a useful
short-hand; for a recent review, see Christopher Boehm, ’Egalitarian behavior and reverse
dominance hierarchy’, Current Anthropology, 34 (19931, pp. 227-59.
13. Ucko, Anthropomorphic Figurines, p. 274.
14. Ucko, Anthropomorphic Figurines, p. 302.
15. Alan J. B. Wace and Maurice S. Thompson, Prehistoric Thessaly (University Press,
Cambridge, 1912); Christos Tsountas, Ai Proistorikai Akropoleis Diminiou kai Sesklou
(Sakellarios, Athens, 1908).
16. M. A. Murray, ‘Female fertility figurines’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological
lnsitute, 64 (1934), pp. 93-1 00.
17. Saul Weinberg, ‘Neolithic figurines and Aegean interrelations’, American Journal
of Archaeology, 55 (1951), pp. 121-33.
18. John L. Caskey and Mary Eliot, ‘A Neolithic figurine from Lerna’, Hesperia, 25
(1 956), pp. 174-77.
19. John L. Caskey and Elizabeth G . Caskey, ‘The earliest settlement at Eutresis’,
Hesperia, 29 (1960), p. 160.
20. john E. Coleman, Kephala: A late Neolithic settlement and cemetery (American
School of Classical Studies, Princeton, 1977), p. iii.
21. Dumitru Berciu, ’Neolithic figurines from Rumania’, Antiquity, 34 (1960), p. 284.
22. A. Flemming, ’The myth of the mother goddess‘, World Archaeology, 1 (1969),
pp. 247-61; p. 259.
23. Lauren E. Talalay, ’Rethinking the function of clay figurine legs from Neolithic
Greece: an argument by analogy’, Americanjournal ofArchaeology, 91 (1987), pp. 161-
69; Lucy Goodison, Death, Women and the Sun (Institute of Classical Studies, London,
1989); Colin Renfrew, The Cycladic Spirit (Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1991).
24. Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess, pp. xv-xxi; p. xx.
25. Joseph Campbell, ’Foreword’, in Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess, p. xiv.
26. G. Hourmouziadis, I Anthropomorphi, pp. 197-205.
27. Sally R. Binford, ’Are Goddesses and Matriarchies Merely Figments of Feminist
Imagination?‘, in The Politics of Women‘s Spirituality: Essays on the rise of spiritual power
within the feminist movement, ed. Charlene Spretnak (Anchor Books, New York, 1982),
pp. 541-49.
28. Merlin Stone, ‘Response by Merlin Stone’, in Politics of Women’s Spirituality,
pp. 550-51 ; Charlene Spretnak, ‘Response by Charlene Spretnak’ and ’Post-Counter
Response by Charlene Spretnak‘, in Politics of Women’s Spirituality, pp. 552-57 and
560-61.
29. Merlin Stone, ‘Response’, in Politics, p. 550.
30. J. J. Preston, Mother Worship, esp. pp. 327-28.
31. Post-modern critiques have challenged claims to standard canons of scientific
rationality, stressing that interpreters are ineluctably biased by the larger social and in-
tellectual forces of their times. For archaeological discussions of the matter; see: Michael
Shanks and Christopher Tilley, Social TheoryandArchaeology (University of New Mexico
0 Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994.
182 Gender and History

Press, Albuquerque, 1987), and Shanks and Tilley, ReconstructingArchaeology (cambridge

University Press, Cambridge, 1987). Many archaeologists object to the relativism of this
post-modern stance; see Norman Yoffee and Andrew Sherratt (eds) Archaeological
Theory: Who sets the agenda! (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993).
32. JosineBlok and Peter Mason, Sexual Asymmetry 0. C. Gieben, Amsterdam, 1987),
p. 29.
33. Ruth E. Tringham, ’Households with Faces: The Challenge of Gender in Prehistoric
Architectural Remains’, in Gero and Conkey, Engendering Archaeology, p, 97.
34. See the essays by Conkey and Gero, Tringham, Handsman, and Pollack in Gero
and Conkey, Engendering Archaeology.
35. Russell G. Handsman, ‘Whose Art was found at Lepenski Vir? Gender Relations
and Power in Prehistory’, in Gero and Conkey, Engendering Archaeology, p. 334.
36. Alison Wylie, ’Why is There no Archaeology of Gender’, in Gero and Conkey,
Engendering Archaeology, p. 34.
37. Margaret W. Conkey and Joan M. Gero, ’Tensions, Pluralities, and Engendering
Archaeology: An Introduction to Women and Prehistory’, in Gero and Conkey, Engender-
ing Archaeology, pp. 3-30.
38. Kathleen M. Bolen, ‘Prehistoric Construction of Mothering’, in Claassen, Exploring
Gender, pp. 49-62.
39. Recent overviews of the past two decades of archaeology and gender, especially
in prehistory, can be found in: Liv H. Dommasnes, ‘Two decades of women in prehistory
and archaeology in Norway. A review’, The Norwegian Archaeological Review, 25
(19921, pp. 1-14; Alison Wylie, ‘Feminist theories of social power: Some implications for
a processual archaeology‘, The Norwegian Archaeological Review, 25 (1 992), pp. 51 -68;
Cheryl Claassen, ’Questioning Gender: An Introduction’, in Claassen, Exploring Gender
pp. 1-9; Alison Wylie, ‘Gender ArchaeoIogylFeminist Archaeology’, in Bacus, A Gen-
der& Past, pp. vii-xiii; Roberta Gilchrist, ’Women‘s archaeology? Political feminism,
gender theory and historical revision’, Antiquity, 65 (1991), pp. 495-501.
40. H. L. Moore, Feminism and Anthropology, p. 3 .
41. Alex W. Barker, ‘Reflections on a Gendered Past’, in Bacus, A Gendered Past,
p. xvi.
42. For example, transvestites, hermaphrodites, and eunuchs-all of which.have their
roots in antiquity40 not fit comfortably into a two-gender paradigm. The anthropological
literature provides compelling examples of societies where expectations regarding homo-
sexual and heterosexual behaviours are markedly different from those of modern Western
cultures. The most extreme example comes from the Etoro, a small group in the Trans-Fly
region of Papua-New Guinea. Among the Etoro, heterosexual behaviour i s discouraged,
while homosexual acts are deemed essential for the maturation of men within the group
as well as for the growth and vitality of society as a whole; see Raymond C. Kelly, Etoro
Social Structure (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1974), p. 16; and Kelly, ’Witch-
craft and Sexual Relations: An Exploration in the Social and Semantic Implications of the
Structure of Belief‘, in Man and Woman in the New Guinea Highlands, ed. Paula Brown
and Georgeda Buchbinder (American Anthropological Association, special publication 8,
Washington, D.C., 1976), pp. 36-53.
43. Barker, ‘Reflections’, in Bacus, A Gendered Past, p. xvi.
44. Thomas L. Jackson, ’Pounding Acorn: Women‘s Production as Social and Eco-
nomic Focus‘, in Gero and Conkey, Engendering Archaeology, pp. 301-25; Elizabeth M.
Brumfiel, ’Weaving and Cooking: Women’s Production in Aztec Mexico’, in Gero and
Conkey, Engendering Archaeology, pp. 224-51; Susan Pollack, ‘Women in a Men‘s
C Basil Blackwell Ltd 1994
A Feminist Boomerang 183

World: Images of Sumerian Women’, in Gero and Conkey, Engendering Archaeology,

pp. 366-87; John Robb, ‘Gender, Ideology, and Social Inequality in Prehistoric Italy’,
paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology,
Pittsburgh, 1992; Joan M. Gero, ‘Feasts and females: Gender ideology and political meals
in the Andes’, The Norwegian Archaeological Review, 25 (1992), pp. 15-30; Joan M.
Gero, ’Genderlithics: Women’s Roles in Stone Tool Production’, in Gero and Conkey,
Engendering Archaeology, pp. 163-93; Mary D. Pohl, ‘Women, Animal Rearing, and
Social Status: The Case of the Formative Period Maya of Central America’, in Walde and
Willows, The Archaeology of Gender, pp. 392-99.
45. Anna C. Roosevelt, ‘Interpreting Certain Female Images in Prehistoric Art’, in The
Role of Gender in Precolumbian Art and Architecture, ed. Virginia E. Miller (University
Press of America, Lanham, Maryland, 1988), pp. 1-29; Patricia C. Rice, ‘Prehistoric
Venuses: Symbols of motherhood or womanhood?’,Journal ofAnthropologica1Research,
37 (1981), pp. 402-14; Sarah M. Nelson, ’Diversity of Upper Palaeolithic “Venus“
Figurines and Archaeological Mythology’, in Powers of Observation:Alternative Views in
Archaeology, ed. Sarah M. Nelson and Alice B. Kehoe (American Anthropological
Association, Washington, D.C., 1990), pp. 11-22; Ann C. Guillen, ‘Thematic and con-
textual analyses of Chalcatzingo figurines’, Mexicon, 10 (19881, pp. 98-1 02.
46. Rosemary Joyce, ’Images of Gender and Labor Organization in Classic Maya
Society’, in Claassen, Exploring Gender, pp. 63-70; joyce, ’Women‘s work Images of
production and reproduction in prehispanic southern central America’, Current Anthre
POIOgy, 34 (1993), pp. 255-74.
47. Tracey Cullen, ’Social Implications of Ceramic’, in Kingery, Ancient Technology
to Modern Science, pp. 95-96; Karen D. Vitelli, ’Power to the potters‘, Journal of
Mediterranean Archaeology, 6 (1993)’ pp. 247-57; Vitelli, Franchthi Neolithic Pottery.
48. For a general article on skeletal data and their potential for elucidating gender
issues, see Mark N. Cohen and Sharon Bennett, ’Skeletal Evidence for Sex Roles and
Gender Hierarchies in Prehistory’, in Sex and Gender Hierarchies, ed. Barbara D. Miller
(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993), pp. 273-96. (I would like to thank John
Robb for this reference.)
49. Paul Astrom and Sven A. Eriksson, Fingerprints and Archaeology (Studies in
Mediterranean Archaeology, vol. XXVIII, Goteborg, 1980); Karl-Erik Sjoquist and Paul
Astrom, Knossos: Keepers and kneaders (Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology and
Literature, pocket-book 82, Goteborg, 1991).

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