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 archaeological literature only within the last decade.’ While the ultimate contribution 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 abundance of female figurines in prehistoric contexts of Greece and south-eastern Europe reflects an early, pan-Mediterranean belief in a Great Mother Goddess, 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 primordial 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 0 Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 lJF, UK and 238 Main Street, Cambridge M A 02142, USA 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 boomerang 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. Significant distances were covered by foot and/or boat, which no doubt encouraged 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 political leadership is weak, ranking is absent or muted, and access to important resources by all members is undifferentiated.12Status in such communities 0 Basil Blackwell Ltd 1994 A Feminist Boomerang 167 was probably based on age, gender, sex, and no doubt on the (archaeologically 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?) began 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. Adopting 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 hopelessly conditioned by the ideological stance of feminist scholars? As a first step toward answering these questions, we need to explore the historiography 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, archaeological 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 representations from the Greek Neolithic represented either unidentified deities or a Mother Goddess derived from Near Eastern prototypes. The welldocumented 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 emanations 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 compelling data from Crete to support their interpretations. Evans was fully aware of the frequent depictions of Minoan women on seals and paintings. Often 0 Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994. Gender and History 168 bare-breasted, richly clad, brandishing snakes or other attributes, and performing ’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 crosscultural 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 interpretation 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 archaeologist 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. Z.Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994 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 Mainland 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 suggested 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 demonstrating 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 mothergoddess 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 circumspect and cautious in their discussions of prehistoric figurines and fertility goddesses, the Mother Goddess notion, far from receding into the background, 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 0 Basil Blackwell Ltd 1994 1 70 Gender and History 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 transformed 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 functioned 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 assignment 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 patriarchies 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 %i Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994. 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 presume 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 crossculturally. 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, 0 Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994 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 Mediterranean, 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 prehistoric matriarchy would appear as a boon to the women’s movement, insofar as women can employ (pre)history to contest their less than satisfactory 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 ‘unscientific’ and marred by soft or sloppy scholarship. Among the mostly female scholars who seek to engender prehistory, a vocal group takes exception 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 ’scientifically’ oriented archaeologists. While those two camps will no doubt continue to debate, there i s no reason that questions about gender and female E Bd\il Blackwell Ltd 1994 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. Although 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 capabilities. 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 especially 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 0 Basil Blackwell Ltd 1994. 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, settlement 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 constructs it~elf’.~’ An engendered archaeology does not presume an a prior; set of rules regarding gender relationships and behaviours. Rather, it assumes that those relationships and ideologies were constituted, negotiated, reproduced, 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 admitted 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 archaeologists reflect dominant behaviours. Ancient societies, like modern ones, Q Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994. 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 gendered 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 archaeology (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 archaeologist 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 retouched 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 i s 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 prehistory have met with less success on the practical level. The current literature is characterized more by theory and musings than by methodological and programmatic guidelines. Indeed, the gap between theory and practical application is recognized as a pressing challenge. These reservations notwithstanding, several excellent case studies have appeared, most exploring the allocation of power and authority along gender lines. Publications often reexamine underutilized data and encompass a broad geographical 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 transformations 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 0Basrl Blackwell Ltd. 1994 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 oppositional 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 depicted 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 sixteenthcentury ethnographic accounts, and general knowledge of Maya social organization. While there are some problems with her work, she offers provocative 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 archaeological 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 ubiquitious 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 explanation, 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 (androcentric 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 identifications 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 0 Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994. 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 ’household’ 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 nonspecific? 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 archaeologists 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 archaeological 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 insights 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 evidence and well-constructed bridging arguments that link current theoretical approaches with actual archaeological data. Without such rigour, a genderconscious archaeology in the Mediterranean will be marginalized and trivialized. 6 Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994 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 Matriarchal 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 Archaeology 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 B Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994 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, Bloomington, 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. 16169; 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 intellectual 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, Engendering 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 Gender& 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 homosexual 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, ’Witchcraft 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 Economic 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 contextual 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). 0 Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994.