Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives: Sex, Gender, and Archaeology

By Rosemary A. Joyce
Thames & Hudson

Rosemary Joyce’s fascinating work, Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives, takes a look at sex and gender through a new lens: archaeology. By studying “the traces of life experiences left in the human skeleton, art, and discarded objects” archaeologists are discovering how sex and gender have been regarded by humans over time, whether it be the humans of 30,000 years ago or the people of the 19th and 20th centuries. While today sex and gender in Western societies are firmly divided into two categories, male and female, gender is not always viewed as so concrete. For example, some Native American cultures considered sex and gender identity “as something that changed and developed during a lifetime, and recognized three or four categories of sexual identity.”

Joyce makes it clear that women in many past societies were powerful, successful individuals who did not rely solely on men to survive. Women in “mobile Iron Age Central Asian societies” are potential examples of real-life Amazon warrior women who hunted, rode horses, and fearlessly battled their enemies - all things usually considered to be the doing of men. The Classic South American Maya societies are “widely acknowledged” as having women of noble rank participate substantially in politics and ritual. What gender archaeologists are continually discovering is that men and women of the past “lived their lives in positions as constrained or determined by their economic wealth, skill, age, and other kinds of identity as by their sex.”

Joyce’s extensive research clearly demonstrates that “there has never been a single way that social life has been organized by sex.” You will never look at sex and gender identity in absolute terms again after reading this enthralling work.

Review by Kent Page McGroarty