Women and Men in the Prehispanic Southwest: Labor, Power, and Prestige - Paperback

by Patricia L. Crown (Author)

Women and Men in the Prehispanic Southwest takes a groundbreaking look at gendered activities in prehistory and the differential access that women and men had to sources and symbols of power and prestige. The authors-including some of the most prominent archaeologists working in the Southwest today-present invaluable methodological and theoretical case studies that take a great step forward in researchers' ability to read gender in the evidence left behind by ancient societies. Archaeological interpretation is enhanced and critiqued in a summary discussion by a prominent Southwestern ethnologist and feminist anthropologist.

The authors' probe the time period during which Southwestern populations shifted from migratory gatherer-hunters to sedentary agriculturalists and from living in small bands to settling in large aggregated communities. The chapters address the organization of space; ritual activities; mortuary goods and burial facilities; food gathering and agricultural production; hunting and domesticated animals; food processing and preparation; health, nutrition, disease, and violence; craft production; and exchange and interaction.

Author Biography

Patricia L. Crown is the Leslie Spier Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. She is also the editor of The Pueblo Bonito Mounds of Chaco Canyon: Material Culture and Fauna (UNM Press).