Gender Transformations in Prehistoric and Archaic Societies

In which chronological, spatial, and social contexts is gender a relevant social category that is noticeable in the archaeological material? How can transformations in social gender relations and identity be recognized archaeologically? Is the identity of prehistoric people defined by gender? If so, what is the accompanying cultural context? What about gender equality among the scientists working in archaeology? In what degree are research teams, as well as their scientific approaches, biased today? These and other burning questions are intensively discussed in this volume, which comprises 25 contributions presented at the international workshop ‘Gender Transformations in Prehistoric and Archaic Societies’, organised by the Collaborative Research Centre 1266 of Kiel University funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The workshop offered a platform to discuss a broad range of approaches on the inter-dependencies between gender relations and socio-environmental transformation processes. Beyond a focus on the archaeology of women, gender archaeology offers a variety of possibilities to reconstruct the contribution of social groups differentiated e.g. by age, gender, and activities related to cultural transformation, based on the archaeological material. Thus, this volume includes papers dealing with different socio-economic units, from south-western Europe to Central Asia, between 15,000 and 1 BCE, paying particular attention to the scale of social reach. Since gender archaeology, and in particular feminist archaeology, also addresses the issue of scientific objectivity or bias, parts of this volume are dedicated to equal opportunity matters in archaeological academia across the globe. This is realised by bringing together feminist and female experiences from a range of countries, each with its own specific individual, cultural, and social perspectives and traditions. The papers are organised along three central topics: ‘Gendering fieldwork’, ‘Tracing gender transformations’, and ‘Gendering and shaping the environment’. By gendering the archaeological discussion on transformation processes, the contributions aim to more firmly embed gender-sensitive research in the archaeological agenda, not just in Europe, but world-wide.

Dr Julia Katharina Koch is a member of CRC 1266 ‘Scales of Transformation’ at Kiel University. Before that she worked as a freelance archaeologist; as editor of the journal Germania at the Romano-Germanic Commission, Frankfurt, Germany; and as project investigator on the project ‘Life Course Reconstruction of Mobile Individuals in Sedentary Societies’, at Leipzig University (funded 2004–2011 by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research). In 2000/01 she was the recipient of a travel grant from the German Archaeological Institute that enabled her to visit countries around the Mediterranean. She has studied at Mainz University, Germany, and Kiel University. Her PhD dissertation (1999) was on the wagon and horse harness from the Late Hallstatt princely grave of Hochdorf. Her research focus is on mobility, cultural transfer, and gender relations in Bronze and Iron Age Central Europe. She is a co-founder and member of the German society FemArc e.V. and of the European Association of Archaeologists community ‘Archaeology of Gender in Europe’, and she is co-publisher of the monograph series ‘Frauen – Forschung – Archäologie’ (Women – Research – Archaeology). From 2005 to 2009, she was chair of the working group ‘Iron Age’ of the German societies for antiquarian studies (Verbände für Altertumsforschung).

Wiebke Kirleis is professor of environmental archaeology/archaeobotany at Kiel University, Germany. She is deputy director of the Collaborative Research Centre ‘Scales of Transformation: Human–Environmental Interaction in Prehistoric and Archaic Societies’ (CRC 1266, financed by the German Research Foundation/DFG) and a member of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Roots’ at Kiel University. As an archaeobotanist, she is interested in all kinds of plant-related human activities, be they subsistence strategies or food processing, with their socio-cultural implications, as well as the reconstruction of human–environment interactions in the past. Geographically, her research areas span from northern Europe all way to Indonesia. Key publications Wiebke Kirleis and Ulrich Willerding. 2008. Die Pflanzenreste der linienbandkeramischen Siedlung von Rosdorf-Mühlengrund, Ldkr. Göttingen, im südöstlichen Niedersachsen. Prähistorische Zeitschrift 83, 133-178. Wiebke Kirleis, Valério D. Pillar and Hermann Behling. 2011. Human–environment interactions in mountain rainforests: palaeo-botanical evidence from central Sulawesi, Indonesia. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 20, 165-179. DOI: 10.1007/s00334-010-0272-0. Wiebke Kirleis, Stefanie Klooß, Helmut Kroll and Johannes Müller. 2012. Crop growing and gathering in the northern German Neolithic: a review supplemented by first new results. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 21, 221-242. DOI: 10.1007/s00334-011-0328-9 Wiebke Kirleis and Stefanie Klooß. 2014. More than simply fallback food? Social context of plant use in the northern German Neolithic, in: Alexandre Chevalier, Elena Marinova, and Leonor Peña-Chocarro (eds.), Plants and people: choices and diversity through time. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 326-335. Wiebke Kirleis and Elske Fischer. 2014. Neolithic cultivation of tetraploid free threshing wheat in Denmark and northern Germany: implications for crop diversity and societal dynamics of the Funnel Beaker Culture, in: Felix Bittmann et al. (eds.), Farming in the forest: ecology and economy of fire in prehistoric agriculture. Special issue. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 23, Supplement 1, 81-96. DOI: 10.1007/s00334-014-0440-8 Nicki Whitehouse, Wiebke Kirleis, and Chris Hunt (eds.). 2014. The world reshaped: practices and impacts of early agrarian societies. Special Issue. Journal of Archaeological Science 51, 1-236. Wiebke Kirleis and Marta Dal Corso. 2016. Trypillian subsistence economy: animal and plant exploitation, in: Johannes Müller, Kurt Rassman, and Mykhailo Videiko (eds.), Trypillia-megasites and European prehistory 4100–3400 BCE. Themes in Contemporary Archaeology 2. London: Routledge, 195-205.