This volume uses osteobiography and individual-level analyses of burials retrieved from the La Plata River Valley (New Mexico) to illustrate the variety of roles that Ancestral Pueblo women played in the past (circa AD 1100–1300). The experiences of women as a result of their gender, age, and status over the life course are reconstructed, with consideration given to the gendered forms of violence they were subject to and the consequences of social violence on health. The authors demonstrate the utility of a modern bioarchaeological approach that combines social theories about gender and violence with burial data in conjunction with information from many other sources―including archaeological reconstruction of homes and communities, ethnohistoric resources available on Pueblo society, and Pueblo women’s contemporary voices. This analysis presents a more accurate, nuanced, and complex picture of life in the past for mothers, sisters, wives, and, captives.
Author(s): Debra L. Martin, Claira Ralston
Series: Bodies and Lives
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 172
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Figures
Table
Acknowledgments
1. Mindful Bodies
Introduction
Presenting and Studying Bodies
Why a Book on Gender Violence in the Past?
Violence among Women
Complexities of Sex and Gender
Life Course Theory
Intersectionality
Nonbinary Genders
Agency
Challenges to Decolonizing the Past
Mindful Bodies: Theoretical Framework
Summary
References
2. Portrait of a Desert Farming Community
Introduction
Studying Other People's Bodies—Concerns and Caveats
Why a Small-Scale Society?
Bodies in Context: Environments, Cultural Processes, and Biology
Situating a Small-Scale Society in Time and Space: The Social and Political Climate in the AD 1100s
Environment of the Northern San Juan Region
Cultural Systems and Cultural Stress
Individual Physiology
Skeletal Indicators of Stress
Impact of Stress on the Population
La Plata: Cultural Diseases, Social Bodies
Gender Roles and Implications for Inequities
Summary
References
3. Everyday Life Matters: Social Violence at La Plata
Revisiting Violence the Past—Cautionary Notes
Why La Plata?
The Body Politic: Wounds to the Body and Power
Identifying and Interpreting the Skeletal Correlates of Violence
Captives as Disposable Commodities: The Evidence for Violence, Illness, Heavy Labor, and Early Death
Skeletal Trauma at La Plata
Skeletal Trauma at La Plata: Victims of Violence?
Evidence of Heavy Labor at La Plata
Mortuary Treatment at La Plata
Survivors of Violence: The Long-Term Effects of Cranial Trauma
Summary: Culturally Specific Gender Violence at La Plata
Conclusions
References
4. Wives, Mothers, Sisters, Slaves: Complexities in Roles and Relations
Ethnographic/Ethnohistoric Analogies for the Past
Pueblo Social Organization: Status, Power, and Prestige
Pueblo Gender Roles and Divisions of Labor
Wives, Co-Wives, Sisters, and Daughters
Mothers, Grandmothers, and Aunts
Ceremonial Leaders and Keepers of Knowledge
Captives and Slaves
Complexities of Women as Captives and Slaves
Captives as Agents of Social Change
Summary and Conclusions
References
5. Capturing Women, Capturing Power
The Big Picture
Anthropological Approaches—Biocultural and Intersectional
Working through the Past
References
Index
