THE DEVELOPMENT OF GENDER, FEMINIST AND QUEER

ARCHAEOLOGIES (USA PERSPECTIVE)

Benjamin Alberti (Framingham State University, Framingham, Massachusetts, USA.
balberti@framingham.edu)
Ing-Marie Back Danielsson (Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden. im.back@ark.su.se)

Introduction
This entry presents a brief history of the emergence of feminism, gender and queer in North American
archaeology, which, along with the United Kingdom and Scandinavia to a lesser degree, represents the
geographic origin and center of such work. The key concepts as used by archaeologists are defined; the
relationship among them is explored and shown to be both problematic and productive. The place of
feminism, gender and queer within North American archaeology today is characterized and, finally, likely
avenues of future research are suggested. The greatest impact of feminist, gender, and queer
archaeologies has been on the authority of positivist approaches, the objectivity of interpretation, equity
issues within the profession, collaborative knowledge making and the understanding of key
archaeological interpretive concepts.

Definition
None of the terms feminism, gender or queer have fixed meanings. Different academic disciplines have
their own interpretations, histories and methods embedded in each. In the following, the terms are defined
in relation to how they have been used and employed within archaeology. Contrasts are drawn between
North American and other usages, where relevant. Feminist archaeologies emerged in North America in
the early 1980s; queer archaeologies were inaugurated in the early 2000s in both North American and
Europe. Gender as an explicit object of study emerged with feminism. Stereotypically, feminist and queer
archaeologies have been assigned their proper objects of study, mimicking that same division of labor in
academia more broadly: feminism studies gender while queer approaches are centrally concerned with
sexuality. In actuality, neither feminism nor queer in archaeology need be limited to these objects of
study.
Feminism
Feminism is recognized as an approach rooted in contemporary political goals. Feminist social science
commitments are those that are relevant to women and others oppressed by gender structures (Wylie
2007: 211). Feminism in archaeology is concerned with the conditions of archaeological knowledge
production in the present and the reconstruction of the past and past peoples lives. Since this concerns
power relations, focus is often--but certainly not exclusively--on women (Tomkov 2011). Feminism in
archaeology is further about recognizing gender bias, re-writing histories of the discipline and the past
that exclude or downplay the role of women, questioning the alleged neutrality of science, addressing
equity issues in the discipline, and the theoretical development of key concepts, especially gender, but
also power, bodies, and the State, among others (Conkey & Spector 1984; Wylie 2007). Ultimately,
feminist archaeology involves a fundamental rethinking of the questions archaeologists address and the
frameworks they use (Conkey 2005; Wylie 2007).
The feminist critique of science has come to dominate North American feminist archaeology and can be
seen to constitute the orthodox approach. Work typically draws on feminist philosophers of science such
as Helen Longino and Sandra Harding (Wylie 1992, 2007). This orthodoxy co-exists with a lesser post-
structuralist feminist production inspired largely by the work of feminist philosopher Judith Butler (e.g.,
Joyce 2008), which is concerned with questions of discourse and the performance of gender. Butler is a
useful figure who crosses the divide between continental post-structuralist feminists and social science
feminists by using a vocabulary of gender and performance. Work that draws on Butler in gender
archaeology shares the concern of the feminist critique of science with empirical adequacy and evidential
constraints (Joyce 2008). The more radical elements of Butlers and other continental feminist
philosophers work tends to be re-categorized as queer. Regardless of the type of feminism, all share a set
of concerns around reflexivity, accountability and reframing key debates.
Reflexivity has its roots in feminisms grounding in the experience of oppression of women, where people
are understood as constituted by their experiences rather than simply having them (Conkey 2005: 27).
Reflexivity also refers to a commitment to locating the researcher on the same critical plane as the
researched (Marshall et al. 2009: 226). The importance of reflecting on daily lives is double: research is
founded on the experience of the everyday life of women and marginalized people in the present and aims
to validate the lived experiences of past peoples, to people the past (Spector 1993; Joyce 2008). A
reflexive, situated archaeology is a response to the insight that all research reflects the position of the
researcher within a given social structure and incorporates the pragmatic interests of that position.
Counter intuitively, this is seen as the central virtue of reflexivity. A situated, feminist archaeology raises
the bar epistemologically because it is a critical, theoretically informed, standpoint on knowledge
production (Wylie 2007: 213).
Accountability to research subjects is of central concern. The situatedness of knowledge production
means that issues of power are recognized as inherent to all aspects of the research process. Archaeology
is recognized to be inescapably political, as is the knowledge it engenders. A concern with ethical and
pragmatic norms means that egalitarian and collaborative forms of knowledge production are sought,
leading to community archaeology projects and alternative writing genres (Spector 1993; Joyce &
Tringham 2007; Marshall et al. 2009). Accountability also refers to the recognition that feminist research
is simultaneously about the past and how versions of the past are sustained or not (Conkey 2005: 33).
A widespread acknowledgment among feminist archaeologists is that while feminist research starts with
the experience of women it should ultimately lead to a general reframing of questions, practices, theories
and goals within the field as a whole (Conkey 2005: 26; Wylie 2007). In this regard, feminists question
the central concepts of archaeology--such as technology, inequality, household, hunting/gathering, gender
and bodies--as well as archaeological practice and theory (Wylie 2007).
Gender
The original formulation of gender in archaeology was adopted from a social science understanding in
which sex referred to biology (male and female) and gender referred to the meanings ascribed to that
biological foundation by particular cultures. As such, gender is commonly understood as a social or
cultural construction. Conkey and Spectors (1984: 16) groundbreaking article 'Archaeology and the
study of gender' defined gender as a system of social rather than biological classification that varies
cross-culturally and changes over time and stipulated a range of ways gender could be conceptualized
and studied, including as roles, identity and ideology. Gender attribution was a central concern. Genders
could be identified archaeologically through burials, representations, tool use and skeletal remains by
associating cultural items with biological sex or its representation. Ethnoarchaeology was also seen as key
to illuminating the range of activities in which males and females were engaged.
Gender is now recognized as an historical process and a major structuring principle of societies past and
present (Gero & Conkey 1991). Gender is also increasingly thought of as more a process than a static
ascription of identity or one among a list of social variables. It can also be thought of as an on-going
embodied and performative process of identity formation which structures relations. Thus, gender is also
relational (Joyce 2008).
Gender implies a definition of sex. The conceptual foundation of gender is the ascription of cultural
meanings onto male and female bodies; even when gender is understood to be an important element of
how societies in general are organized this foundation remains. This means that when gender is explored
as a social variable, even a structuring one, it is used to provide interpretations of historically and
culturally specific ways of organizing people on the basis of difference grounded in binary sex. The
concept itself is rarely open to theoretical reconsideration within the social construction formulation.
The concept of gender initially served the important purpose of liberating interpretation from the
essentialism of sex role identity, where ones sex was assumed to determine ones capacities and roles in
society (Conkey & Spector 1984). Quite quickly sex was questioned as a static foundation for culture to
ascribe gendered meanings--sex was also recognized as historical (see Joyce 2008). The implications of
the critique of sex have resulted in work on embodiment and performativity (Joyce 2008). Arguably, not
even these approaches manage to dispense with the distinction between sex and gender which rests on
that between nature and culture, although the nature of the relationship has been rethought.
Finally, some archaeologists, especially those influenced by queer theory, question the unconditional
relevance of gender in all contexts (Joyce 2008), while others continue to argue that its central importance
to feminist archaeology should be a given (Wylie 2007).
Queer
Queer refers to a deliberate strategy by activists and academics to reclaim and redefine a word in terms of
identities and bodies that avoids the essentialism of more conventional forms of identity labeling. In
North American archaeology queer theory has predominantly inspired work on sexualities (Schmidt &
Voss 2000; Cassella & Voss 2011). Nonetheless, queer also implies a critique of the ubiquity of
heteronormativity, the notion that an assumption of heterosexuality underlies many political and social
structures (Dowson 2006; Voss 2009).
Queer archaeology in general includes redemptive counter-histories that bring to light previously hidden
histories of sexualities (Voss 2009), queer statements that challenge heteronormativity beyond a focus on
sexuality (Dowson 2000), and work on embodiment predominantly influenced by Judith Butlers theory
of gender performativity (Joyce 2008). Thus, the naturalization of heterosexual institutions such as the
family and the division of labor is challenged (Dowson 2006; Voss 2009). Past identities are understood
to be constructed in fluid ways (Joyce 2008). In common with feminism, queer critiques have appeared in
response to equity issues within the discipline, such as the relationship between non-straight subjectivity
and professional success and the epistemological privilege of straight archaeologists and their accounts
of the past, although this trend is more visible outside North America (Dowson 2006; Voss 2009).

Historical Background
Gero and Conkey (1991) inaugurated a reflexive, self-conscious history of feminist archaeology in which
the three-fold development of feminism in the social sciences is cited: the critique of androcentrism and
destabilizing assumptions about womens capacities, the remedial search for women in the past, and
finally the theoretical development of gender as a concept. As such, feminism and gender co-emerged in
archaeology.
Prior to the early 1980s feminist work had little visibility and much was outside the English-speaking
world. Conkey and Spectors (1984) article is a milestone in feminist and gender archaeology; in it, the
authors presented the case for the general applicability of gender and feminism. They presented a critique
of androcentrism in the discipline, argued that in the absence of an explicit framework for theorizing
gender archaeologists drew on common sense understandings, and provided a set of conceptual tools with
which to address gender in a systematic way.
In the late 1980s two quite different but equally agenda-setting events occurred: the small conference at
the Wedge Plantation in 1988 and the far larger, student-organized 22
nd
Chacmool Calgary conference in
1989. Frustration with the slow development of gender archaeology led to the Wedge conference where
the goals of the 1984 article were deliberately pursued in a series of detailed case studies (Gero & Conkey
1991). The Chacmool conference was notable for the number of papers presented as well as debate
around the question of the relationship between gender and feminism.
Recently, the stance that gender archaeology in North America is feminist within the terms of the feminist
critique of science was reaffirmed in a 2007 special issue of the Journal of Archaeological Method and
Theory (although based on an earlier conference) (Wylie 2007). Particular emphasis was placed on
feminist praxis. In her introductory paper, Wylie (2007) reorients the question away from feminist
archaeology and towards what it means to do work as a feminist archaeologist. Epistemological issues
remain at the forefront, including questions about the gender of theory and the intersections that are
possible among marginalized perspectives within archaeology (see also Conkey 2005). Since Janet
Spectors (1993) ground-breaking book What this awl means: feminist archaeology at a Wahpeton
Dakota village feminist concerns have been increasingly seen as paralleling those of class, race, and
indigeneity, resulting in collaborative projects and de-centered authorship. In addition, issues of
representation have led to alternative writing genres, explorations of language, and research in hyper-
media as a means of representation (Spector 1993; Joyce and Tringham 2007). North American
leadership in the field of gender archaeology was demonstrated by the publication of the Handbook of
Gender in Archaeology (Nelson 2006), which provided an exhaustive survey of the field from thematic,
temporal, and geographic perspectives.
Feminist archaeology has rarely influenced feminist debate beyond archaeology except in the form of
review pieces in general interdisciplinary surveys of feminism, of which there have been few. An
exception is Marshalls (2008) contribution in the journal Feminist Theory, which prompts feminists to
explore change, transition and transformation using the archaeology of the Pacific Northwest as a case
study.
Queer archaeology in North America has its roots both in feminism and the study of sexualities, first
gaining visibility through two edited volumes published in 2000 (Dowson 2000; Schmidt & Voss 2000).
Queer work in North American archaeology is generally influenced by Judith Butler and work on
sexualities, resulting in specific case studies on bodies and performance or explorations of sexual
identities, most often in historical contexts. It is recognized that many of queer archaeologies concerns
parallel those of feminism, where its roots lie (Voss 2009).
Queer is not overly visible in North American archaeology today. In an attempt to galvanize a focus on
queer and gender archaeology, the 2004 Chacmool conference was organized around the theme
Que(e)rying archaeology; even though it produced statements from leaders in the field surprisingly few
queer papers were presented. Recent work on sexualities and colonialism may indicate a new avenue for
queer research in archaeology (Casella & Voss 2011).

Key Issues/Current Debates
Some long-standing and some recent debates cross-cut feminist, gender and queer interests, while others
feature more strongly in one area. The key issues outlined here are (1) the relationship between feminism
and gender; (2) epistemological concerns; (3) accountability; and (4) identities and embodiment. In the
latter, the question of whether gender is necessarily relevant to all identities is raised.
The relationship of feminism to gender
The question of whether gender archaeology need necessarily be feminist emerged in the late 1980s and
has not entirely gone away. Gender is now present in many conventional archaeological interpretations
alongside other social variables but feminism is rarely mentioned. This is seen as a problem for some
feminists who argue that gender without feminism loses the possibility of producing fundamental change
(Conkey 2005; Wylie 2007). Moreover, feminist theoretical resources enable gender to remain a dynamic
concept in archaeology and allow us to account for the epistemic and political commitments that inform
practice (Wylie 2007: 215).
The counter-claim is that feminism introduces an unnecessary political bias and risks further isolating
gender from the mainstream. Although, it has been claimed that feminist epistemological concerns are
central to gender work in archaeology at all levels irrespective of whether the label is used (Tomkov
2011).
Most feminist archaeologists retain the concept of gender in their work; gender as a category of analysis
is still needed, even if expanded in scope (Conkey 2005: 19). Wylie (2007: 213) argues for the
methodological axiom that gender should not be disappeared. Queer and some feminist archaeologists,
however, see gender as a potential barrier to conceptualizing identities and bodies in non-binary ways
(Joyce 2008). Many continental feminists, for example, do not work with the notion of gender at all, but
rather work through sexual difference. Judith Butler is a bridging figure who draws on sexual difference
feminists but uses the social science conceptual language of gender, which may account both for her
popularity and the misunderstanding or disavowal of some of the more radical implications of her work.
Epistemology
The charge leveled against feminists that objectivity cannot be maintained when an explicitly politically
oriented approach is taken is rebuked by feminist archaeologists who claim that feminism can provide
better, more objective accounts of the past while simultaneously valuing ambiguity (Conkey 2005). Thus,
in common with post-processualism, feminist archaeologists tend to be concerned with the nature of
political influence. Although, feminism is more concerned with equity issues, leading to some adversarial
exchanges on the grounds that post-processualism simply reproduces androcentric and heterosexist
structures in the discipline (Tomkov 2011: 113-115).
Conkey and Spector (1984: 21) argued that the greatest limitations on our knowledge of the past are
epistemological rather than lack of data (see also Wylie 1992). Epistemological concerns have to do with
what we say about the past, how we go about saying it in a reasonable and justifiable way, and who has
the authority to speak--all part of the feminist method debate (Wylie 2007: 211). Questions that have
concerned North American feminist archaeologists in relation to archaeological practice include ending
inequality in the work place, methodological issues, especially around objectivity, and who has the
authority to speak. Workplace inequities are real and systematic, and the politics of gender affects data
collection and interpretation in profound ways (see contributors to Gero & Conkey 1991).
The method debate is commonly phrased in terms of how to have gender while keeping archaeology
objective, neutral, value-free and scientific. Feminist archaeology has established itself as a legitimate
field partly by addressing conventional archaeological concerns about empirical adequacy, hence its long-
term protagonism with processual archaeology. One response has been the argument that gender
archaeology can lead to processual plus, a better but fundamentally unchanged processual archaeology
(see Tomkov 2011: 115). The suggested has been criticized as an add-on to an unreflexive positivist
approach (Tomkov 2011). In contrast, by locating feminist archaeology firmly within the tradition of
post-positivist feminist critiques of the sciences, a philosophical space is opened for an engaged feminism
without conceding the legitimating authority of science. Feminist archaeologists argue that it is the
reflexive recognition of our standpoint as positioned subjects that provides the grounds for strong
objectivity (Wylie 2007: 213). Wylie (1992: 30) has argued that politically engaged science is often
much more rigorous, self-critical, and responsive to the facts than allegedly neutral science, for which
nothing much is at stake. Accordingly, social location rather than a polluting effect of our subjectivity is
constitutive of the research process and simultaneously decenters a singular, authorative science and
hence opens the way to legitimizing other perspectives.
Ambiguity of data and in interpretation is embraced by some feminist and queer archaeologists; data are
irreducibly ambiguous, so interpretations must be uncertain and open (Conkey 2005: 25). To think
otherwise is to falsely reduce complexity, to seek closure and causal simplicity (Wylie 2007: 213).
Feminist archaeology adopts strategic ambivalence (Wylie 2007: 81) that refuses both unreflective
objectivism and reductive constructivism. Empirical constraints exist but feminist archaeology has
created an alternative epistemic position that also recognizes ambiguity and sociopolitical factors
(Conkey 2005).
In queer theory the impact of subjectivity on what pasts get written meets feminist critique in the
recognition that masculine norms define the process of professional socialization, with institutions
reproducing gendered and sexually normative conventions (Wylie 2007; Voss 2009).
Accountability
Feminist archaeology is concerned with ethical and political responsibility for knowledge production.
Recognizing the stakeholders in knowledge claims implies a different type of research practice involving
the formulation of questions, the control and management of projects, and the forms of knowledge
dissemination. Spectors (1993) work has achieved iconic status. Her project included Wahpeton Dakota
people from the outset; she then wrote an account that melded conventional scientific analysis and
presentation of the data with reflexive discussion of the research process and narrative reconstructions of
the life of a young Dakota girl.
The question of accountability can also refer to the early and on-going effort to recover women
researchers whose contributions to the history of archaeology had been lost. Similarly, queer
archaeologists, while signaling the danger of writing a history of deviants, stress the importance of
uncovering a queer heritage to counter sometimes brutal contemporary politics (Voss 2009).
Joyce and Tringham (2007) stress the multiplicity of voices that need to be recovered from the past. Other
authors have experimented with non-conventional narrative reconstructions of archaeological data
(Spector 1993) in an attempt to get away from exclusionary scientific discourse. The BACH (Berkeley
Archaeologists at atalhyk) projects Remixing atalhyk website
(http://okapi.dreamhosters.com/remixing/mainpage.html), in which knowledge of the Neolithic site is
created and mediated through an experiment in multi-vocal open construction, clearly draws on Ruth
Tringhams earlier, explicitly feminist work (Joyce & Tringham 2007). The inclusion of a broad range of
publics in archaeological debate and interpretation of the past has resulted in the development of other
web-based projects, such as the Sister Stories hypertext work, which presents fictional accounts based
on Nahuatl-language texts about the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan (Joyce & Tringham 2007).
Identities and embodiment
Initially, the notion of gender identity was used in a straightforward way as the compliment to a socially
constructed idea of gender (Conkey & Spector 1984). While it is still used commonly in this form, the
introduction of post-structuralist feminist and queer theory that challenges the notion of a stable core to
identity has led to work that conceptualizes identity in non-essentialist ways. Work on the archaeology of
the Chumash of coastal southern California shows that identities may only be relationally relevant, based
more on practice and profession than an enduring attachment to biologically based categories (see
summary of Sandra Hollimons work in Joyce 2008). The case demonstrates that we need not assume that
identities are stable or co-terminus with bodies or that age and gender categories remain universally
recognized and fixed.
The limited work on masculinities in archaeology provides an interesting case of the limits of identity
archaeology (Alberti 2006). In archaeology, successful accounts of historically and culturally specific
masculinities have demonstrated that identities associated with male bodies are highly variable and
hierarchically organized (captured by the model of hegemonic masculinities). Most work in this genre
has been carried out on documented cases. A notable recent example is the archaeology of the University
of Californias chapter of the Zeta Psi fraternity (Wilkie 2010). Wilkie (2010) uses a rich array of
archaeological, architectural and documentary evidence to reconstruct the changing and heterogeneous
nature of modern masculinity from the late eighteenth to mid nineteenth centuries. However, the use of
the term masculinity outside of historical contexts may have the paradoxical effect of reinstating an
ahistorical essentialism to masculinity (Alberti 2006).
The concept embodiment was developed to explore ways in which identity and bodies can be thought
of in non-binary ways (see Joyce 2008). This perspective accompanies a critique of the sex/gender
dualism as a timeless structure. Sex is understood to be equally historically contingent; a critique that has
actually been present since early in the history of gender archaeology. One result has been the
development of archaeologies of embodiment and the theory of gender performativity (Joyce 2008).
Embodiment indicates that all people experience their worlds from specifically embodied perspectives
and, moreover, that a gap can exist between an individuals or groups embodied experience and the
norms or expectations of the dominant society. Not all people or groups experience their bodies and
societys norms the same way; such norms have a differential and sometimes exclusionary impact.
Judith Butlers theory of gender performativity has been a major influence on the archaeology of
embodiment. The theory has been taken in archaeology to mean that gender is a kind of incessant action
involving dress, gestures, and material culture, in fluid relationship to the materiality of the physical body
(Joyce 2008). Such acts enforce or naturalize sex into historically contingent organizations,
stereotypically binary in the modern West.

International Perspectives
Norway, along with Sweden, saw the establishment of a feminist archaeology in the late 1970s and
1980s; the United Kingdom was also an early influence. Today, however, North American archaeological
publications devoted to issues concerning feminisms, gender and queer dominate (fig. 1). As such, they
serve as a source of inspiration for feminist archaeology in, for instance, Scandinavia; although the
interest does not appear to be reciprocated.
There are apparent differences in the scholarship on queer archaeology between North America and the
United Kingdom. North American work tends more towards studies of sexuality, bodies and performance
(Joyce 2008; Schmidt & Voss 2000) whereas queer theorists in the United Kingdom and Scandinavia
often take the dictum that queer is about opposition to the norm as their starting point (see contributors to
Dowson 2000). Moreover, the genealogical relationship to feminism is stressed less in the United
Kingdom. Exclusions in feminist scholarship have been noted, such as the assumption of normative
family structures or the implication that sexuality is a secondary effect of gender (Dowson 2006); and
epistemological concerns in relation to queer are more visible. Marginalization of studies of sexuality in
archaeology and the recognition that the past is always already heterosexual has been linked to the
question of epistemological privilege--whose account of the past is given greater credibility (Dowson
2006).

Figure 1.

Future Directions
Work that takes gender as a social variable seems entrenched in North American archaeology. The most
exciting theoretical developments, however, are in feminism and queer archaeology, including work on
intersectionality, community or public archaeology, and new feminist and queer materialisms.
It has been argued that intersectionality and the postcolonial critique represent a turning point for
archaeology in general (Conkey 2005: 10). Intersectionality is a means of describing and theorizing the
many intersections among gender and other elements of identity, such as race, class, age and sexuality,
within complex sociopolitical contexts. It is clear that an analysis of gender alone is inadequate--gender is
constituted by its intersections. Earlier convergences between the interests of feminists and Indigenous
peoples in North American archaeology (e.g., Spector 1993) have been reframed and explicitly theorized
as intersectionality (Conkey 2005). Within this framework it is understood that multiple relations of
domination result in privilege, differing positions and hierarchies among communities and individuals. In
this light, Conkey (2005: 12) redefines gender as a contingent set of ideas and practices within multiple
systems of oppression. The type of analysis entailed directs us towards the small scale, to daily lives and
the specific details of singular sets of relations. One point of intersection is the need to understand how
inequality in general works in our present-day lives and in the lives of past peoples. However, just as
intersections are needed precisely because of the partiality of perspectives, as feminist epistemology has
outlined so clearly, Conkey (2005: 25) warns against scaling down or making hierarchical the relations
that are intersecting, reducing or subordinating one relation to another. Seeking clarity about gender,
ironically, could produce just such a privileging.
Work in this genre includes contributions to Casella and Voss (2011), which demonstrate the constitutive
intersections of sexualities, embodiments and colonialism. Battle-Baptiste (2011) presents a non-
formulaic Black feminist reflexive methodology to study the intersections of 'race', gender and class in the
historical archaeology and history of Diasporic African Americans. There are also strong connections
among intersectional approaches and recent Marxist archaeologies of praxis.
Although located in the United Kingdom, one model for the important convergence of feminist and queer
approaches is the archaeology of the womens protest camps at Greenham Common (Marshall et al.
2009). The camps were occupied by women and children in the 1980s to protest the deployment of Cruise
missiles. Spectors (1993) work, which emerged from a concern that archaeological practices and
interpretation be meaningful on human terms, is a clear antecedent. In the Greenham Common case, the
reflexive autoethnographic narratives of the three women researchers provides a possible model for
feminist and queer archaeology, where issues of authority, vocality and intersectionality are put into
practice. Refusing to stay outside of Greenhams politics (Marshall et al. 2009: 233), their research
method mirrors the queer nature of the site, with women and children living outdoors in communities and
adopting practices that were threatening to heteronormative society.
On more speculative theoretical grounds, one direction that diverges from current work in North
American archaeology but has its roots in queer and feminist approaches is a renewed interest in
materiality. In the social sciences in general there is much recent interest in post-human approaches to
materiality and identity. This is partly a response to what are thought to have been the excesses of the
linguistic turn, represented in archaeology by symbolic and interpretive approaches under the umbrella of
post-processualism. The theory of gender performativity, for example, would appear to give culture or
discourse too much power over bodies and materiality. Archaeologists are consequently returning to the
materiality of their subject matter as a source of agency in social life. In relation to sex and gender, this
can take the form of a reassessment of the agency of the body conceived of as plastic and developmental
rather than static. Or the bodys natural variability and peoples experiences of their embodied selves can
be thought of as never fully erased by discourse and therefore as free to challenge the binary gender/sex
model (Joyce 2008). New queer and feminist approaches to osteoarchaeology in North America stress
that knowledge of the sexed body is historically bound and thus open to future reformulations (Joyce
2008).
Tomkov (2011: 113) has recently asked whether gender archaeology is thriving. While gender in
archaeology clearly has an enduring legacy and the impact of feminism on the discipline is undeniable
they arguably have not produced the sought after revolution in archaeological questions, frameworks and
practice. Has gender archaeology lost its cutting edge, its aura of creativity? One legacy of feminist
archaeology is the space opened up for queer archaeology (Dowson 2006; Voss 2009). In some ways,
queer has come to occupy the position of the radical side to gender archaeology and has taken on
elements of a feminist project not addressed by more orthodox feminist approaches in the discipline.

Cross-References
African Diaspora Archaeology
Agency
Alison Wylie
Analysis of Fieldwork
Archaeological Fieldwork
Archaeology and Activism
Archaeology and Local Communities
Archaeology of Colonial Encounters
Catalhoyuk
Christine Hastorf
Community Archaeology
Engendered Archaeologies
Estimation of Sex
Gender Archaeology and the Middle Ages
Indigenous Archaeologies
Joan Gero
Lynn Meskell
Margaret Conkey
Marxist Archaeology
Materiality
Post-Processualism
Processualism
Rosemary Joyce
Russell Handsman
The Development of Gender, Feminist and Queer Archaeologies (European Perspective)
The Development of Gender, Feminist and Queer Archaeologies (Australian Perspective)
The Development of Gender, Feminist and Queer Archaeologies (Spanish Perspective)

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Further Reading

Figure Captions
Figure 1. Number of gender research articles published in archaeology by country between 2001 and
2010 according to Thomson & Reuters Web of Science (Arts & Humanities Citation Index, ISI). Gender
research includes keywords gender, feminism, masculinity, queer, embodiment and intersectionality.
There were 97 gender articles published out of a total of 3525 archaeological articles.