Comparative Ethnoarchaeology of Gender and Subsistence
In the late 1990s and early 2000s we (Robert Jarvenpa and Hetty Jo Brumbach) expanded our research on the gendered nature of subsistence work among hunter-foragers. Based upon NSF-sponsored ethnoarchaeological field studies in four circumpolar societies, we assembled new empirical case materials on women’s and men’s involvement in food procurement, processing and storage, and the relationships of such activity to the landscape and built environment of settlements, dwellings, implements and facilities. Promoting an ethnographically-enriched approach to ethnoarchaeology, we encouraged indigenous voice and perspective as part of the interpretive mix for understanding how women and men differentially interact with and impact the landscape.
Our project is the first ethnoarchaeological study to employ a controlled, four-way, cross-cultural comparison of gender dynamics and subsistence systems. Under our direction, members of an international team of anthropologists renowned in northern scholarship applied the same task differentiation protocols and analyses in four societies embracing a spectrum of environmental, economic, and cultural conditions in the circumpolar world of North America and Eurasia. In addition to our own baseline pilot research with Chipewyan hunter-fishers of the Canadian boreal forest, we collaborated with the following communities and scholars in building a comparative data base:
Khanty hunter-fisher-herders of the Western Siberian taiga (Dr. Elena Glavatskaya: Urals State University, Russia)
Sámi intensive reindeer herders of the northwestern Finnish fjeld (Dr. Jukka Pennanen: University of Oulu, Finland)
Iñupiaq maritime hunters of the Bering Strait of Alaska ( Dr. Carol Zane Jolles: University of Washington)
The rich case materials provide the knowledge for modeling “gendered landscapes,” that is, for deciphering women’s and men’s roles in the formation of the archaeological record. In turn, we are using such information to reassess one of the bedrock concepts in anthropology and the social sciences: the sexual division of labor.
Analysis and interpretation of the data are ongoing, but check this website for publications as they appear.
Read more about it:
Jarvenpa, Robert, and Hetty Jo Brumbach
2000 Gender Roles Shed Light on Ancient Subsistence Cultures. Witness the Arctic 8(1):10.
Jarvenpa, Robert, and Hetty Jo Brumbach, editors
In Press Circumpolar Lives and Livelihood: A Comparative Ethnoarchaeology of Gender and Subsistence. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press
