Women in Ancient Societies

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Women in Ancient Societies

• Kimberley Connors
• www.archeducation.org

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What jobs did women do in ancient societies?

• Mother
• Gatherer
• Cook
• Spinner
• Priestess
• Weaver

• Scribe
• Pharaoh
• Hunter
• Warrior
• Potter
• Athlete

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Division of Labor by Gender

• All humans were considered to be "Man".
• all graves were reported as "man
• "Man the Hunter" model
• very male-centric
• Feminine technologies were considered
  theoretically uninteresting
• of no significance.
• "Woman the Gatherer" model
• originated in response to "Man the Hunter"
• perpetuated the stereotype
• These models allowed little room for
  interpretation
• These models were generated by males
• male informants
• reported from a male perspective.

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The "Man the Hunter" myth

• Greatest misconceptions
• Men procure the most food for their foraging
  groups
• Without these contributions the groups would
  cease to exist
• Hunting is an activity performed by men alone

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Woman the Gatherer Myth

• anyone can collect vegetation
• biologically, women are not inclined to hunt
• choose to gather for ease
• women did not procure as much food as men

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Driving Evolution?

• Often asserted that hunting has driven human
  evolution
• more than any other factor
• Males have procured meat necessary for
  encephalization

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Truth

• gathering requires great skill
• knowledge of hundreds of species

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H G Truths !Kung of /Du/da

• Women
• 60-80 of the daily food intake
• control the distribution of the food they gather
• Interchangeable Gender Roles
• women traveling great distances to forage
• men building huts and carrying water
• Survival in an extreme environment with harsh
  conditions is a group effort
• More egalitarian social system

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The !Kung of Mahopa

• Permanent water source
• accustomed to sedentism
• Drastically different sexual division of labor
• women
• homebound
• domestic chores
• Men are away most of the time
• achieve higher status through storage and wealth

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Patricia Draper 1975 !Kung Women Contrasts in
Sexual Egalitarianism in Foraging and Sedentary
Contexts

• The !Kung women are also very skilled in reading
  tracks and aids the men as to what direction they
  should expect to find game. Due to the lack of
  warfare and threats, women travel great distances
  to gather and on their return home are often met
  by enthused children who cherish their presence
  as much as they do men. The subsistence !Kung are
  also very willing to do the work of that of the
  opposite sex without complaint or embarrassment
• http//www.peacefulsocieties.org/Archtext/Draper75
  .pdf

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Draper Article on Portaportal

• role of women changed
• introduction of animal husbandry and crop
  planting
• Women experienced a reduction in autonomy
• men became more powerful.
• http//guest.portaportal.com/arched

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How have archaeologists searched for gender in
the past?

• Complete skeletons
• mortuary contexts
• Partial skeletons/bones
• determine diet, labor division, or life
  expectancy
• Grave goods
• jewelry, food preparation, textile production

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Burials

• 5th century BCE
• Grave goods
• great wealth prestige
• Interpreted as a transvestite priest
• Later reanalyzed to be a woman of great power

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Chariot Burial Videohttp//www.bbc.co.uk/history/
interactive/animations/wetwang_chariot/index.shtml

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Sex of the bones?

• Forensics does not always tell the gender
  identity
• often, but not always
• Upper Mantaro (Peru) burial
• a spindle whorl
• Infant
• excavator assumed female
• Later analysis showed male

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Ethnographic analogies

• Shed light on which gender used specific items
  tools, craft items, and/or jewelry

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Figurative representations

• Female figurines
• Mother Goddess
• Neolithic and Copper ages of southeast Europe
• initially regarded as illustrating the important
  status of women
• Later, it was that they demonstrated the
  subordination of women
• suggested women were the object of men's desires.

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Craft items

• Studies of craft items and historical documents
  from early state level societies
• the state worked to preserve a sexual division of
  labor
• Crafts produced were either exclusively male or
  female
• Inka weavers
• women who produced crafts were sequestered
  virgins
• any male in contact with them was castrated

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Texts can verify Archaeological Evidence

• Deir el-Medina
• Egyptian Valley of the Kings workman's village
• built around 1500 B.C.
• Women carried out all aspects of rituals

• wall painting of a group of wailing women in the
  tomb of Ramose, vizier under Amenophis III and
  IV. The tomb dates from during the New Kingdom,
  18th dynasty, circa 1370 BC, in Deir el-Medina,
  Thebes West.

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Truth of Division of Labor by Gender

• Cultural not evolutionary
• Allowed discrepancy in equal social status
  between the sexes
• Is deeply rooted and pervasive

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Feminist Archeology aka gender studies
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ore
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Were These truths Self evident in the Ancient
World?

• Social order was more important than individual
  rights
• Womens sexuality should be sacrificed to ensure
  legitimacy
• A familys wealth should be administered by the
  husband/father
• Women, especially widows and divorcees, needed
  societys help

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Venus of Willendorf 20k years old
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Neolithic

• Anthropomorphic figurines
• fertility and/or worship figures
• exact purpose unknown
• Most found in burial loci
• Çatalhöyük goddess found in grain bin

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Çatal Hüyük

• Anatolia (Turkey), 7400 - 6400 BC
• 40 decorated rooms (over 1/4 of all rooms
  excavated)
• interpreted as "shrines"
• arrays of bumps interpreted as modeled human
  breasts
• inside is the miniature of a raptorial bird or a
  wild feline
• stone and clay female figurines
• young woman
• woman giving birth to child
• older woman
• possibly variants of a single deity
• found in grain storage areas
• a recently found one is a supple fertile female
  on the front and a skeleton on the back!

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Other Evidence

• wall paintings showing hunts by people with
  pointed black beards
• burials of both sexes contained textile
• wooden vessels and boxes
• female burials
• jewelry, bone spatulae and spoons, obsidian
  mirrors, baskets with red ochre
• also adzes, which are heavy woodworking tools,
  for tasks like squaring up beams
• male burials
• maceheads, flint daggers, obsidian points, bone
  hooks and eyes, belt fasteners

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great mother-goddess

• James Mellaart's excavations in the 1950s and
  1960s,
• Symbolism show females as the dominant figures
  in religious/secular cults
• Whether icons of veneration or naturalistic
  sculptural representations
• women held the prominent place.
• Joseph Cambell, after reading Mellaart, noted
  that Çatal Hüyük figurines display "practically
  all the basic motifs of the great mother-goddess
  mythologies of later ages."
• A more recent extension of this point far beyond
  Anatolia, has been advanced by Marija Gimbutas,
  that "women reigned supreme in religion, law and
  custom.
• Modern Goddess Community http//www.catalhoyuk.com
  /library/goddess.html

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Kings, Queens and Pharaohs
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• Menkaure Khamerernebty
• Dynasty VI c. 2900 to c. 2770 BCE

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WOMEN  WHO REIGNED AS PHARAOHS

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• MERNEITH (1st Dynasty)
• ANKHESENPEPI II (aka ANKHNESMERYRE II)  (6th
  Dynasty)
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• NITOCRIS (6th Dynasty)
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• SOBEKNEFRU (12th Dynasty)
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• HATSHEPSUT (18th Dynasty)  
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• TWOSRET (19th Dynasty)
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• CLEOPATRA VII (Ptolemaic Dynasty)
• 3 OTHER POSSIBILITIES

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Cleopatra VII

• Descendants of General Ptolemy
• Crown debt passed to Cleopatra VII and her ten
  year old brother Ptolemy XIII
• Brother and sister would share the throne,
• Ptolemy XIII, was only ten years old
• She was driven from the throne in 49 BCE
• 50 BCE Julius Caesar arrived in Alexandria
• Ptolemy and Cleopatra joint rulers
• Ptolemy XIII died in the battle
• The victorious Caesar installed Cleopatra and
  another brother, Ptolemy XIV
• Popular with Egyptians hated by all classes in
  Alexandria
• Caesar built a gilded statue to honor Cleopatra
  in Rome
• Ptolemy XIV disappears from the record at
• co-ruler with 3-year old Caesarian

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• MaatKaRe Hatshepsut
• 18th dynasty

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Egyptian joy and happiness

• Joy and happiness were legitimate goals of life
• Regarded home and family as the major source of
  delight
• Love and emotional support were considered to be
  important parts of marriage
• Egyptian women totally equal to men in the law
• own property
• borrow money
• sign contracts
• initiate divorce
• appear in court as a witness, etc
• subject to whatever responsibilities accompanied
  those rights

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Textile Production

• Ancient Egypt was made of linen
• Cotton was not introduced until the Coptic
  (Christian) period
• Linen is spun from the stem of the flax plant
• Spinning, weaving, and the sewing of clothes was
  an important activity at all levels of society
• Royal women did so as a commercial enterprise
• Peasant and workers' wives
• household clothing
• bartered the surplus

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Senet Ruleshttp//www.mos.org/quest/pdf/senet.pd
f
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She reaches for wool and flax, and keeps her
hands busy.Proverbs 3113
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Biblical Archaeology vs Hebrew Bible

• Refused to give up fertility Goddess
• Ceramic artifacts in the niche on the upper
  floor a rattle, four bottles, a small saucer
  lamp, a female pillar figurine and a model bed
  eighth-seventh centuries B.C.E.

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• Talismans promoting fertility and prosperity
• found in houses and burials of the eighth and
  seventh centuries B.C.E.
• Model beds are associated with sex and conception
• the realm of the Queen of Heaven
• Asherah was another of the deities that families
  might turn to for aid
• Pillar figurines with prominent breasts,
  representing a mother goddess,
• connected with birth, lactation and child
  survival.
• The rattle and small lamp were used in domestic
  rituals
• probably took place on the roof of the house.
• The figurine, bed, lamp and rattle have never
  been found in situ in a wall niche

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The men who knew that their wives had been
burning incense to other gods said to Jeremiah,
"We will not listen to you! We used to have
plenty of food and prospered and saw no evil. But
since we stopped burning incense to the Queen of
Heaven and making libations to her, we have
lacked everything."Jeremiah 4415-18 (Abridged)

• Queen of Heaven

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Grenada Spain

• Lady of Galera
• Alabaster Phoenician figure
• 7th century BCE
• Part of a funerary equipment found in a 5th
  century BC
• Iberian tomb at the necropolis of Tútugi

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Ancient Greece
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Women in Ancient Athens

• Athenian women were only a small step above
  slaves by the 5th century BC
• From birth a girl was not expected to learn how
  to read or write
• On reading and writing, Menander wrote
• "Teaching a woman to read and write? What a
  terrible thing to do! Like feeding a vile snake

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Their hair hangs down, a tunic reaches to a
little above the knee, and they bare the right
shoulder as far as the breast Pausanias
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Women in Ancient Sparta

• taught reading and writing
• expected to be able to protect themselves
• girl's education was equally as brutal as the
  men's
• athletic events such as javelin, discus, foot
  races, and staged battles
• Spartan women were expected and driven to produce
  strong and healthy children
• Spartan girls were better fed their Athenian
  counterparts
• they could own and control their own property
• take another husband if their first had been away
  at war for too long
• Spartan women are pictured as warriors

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WOMEN IN ANCIENT ROME

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• Under Roman law women
• authority of their fathers then husbands
• even a wealthy, old widow needed a male to
  supervise her finances
• First Century BCE women achieve greater freedom
  in practice
• Roman men placed a very high value on marriage,
  home family
• made quite a difference to society's treatment of
  women. 
• At no time in Rome's history were women allowed
  to hold office
• Republic women were not even allowed to make
  suggestions

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• Respectable women were not supposed to be
  wandering around alone outside
• Women could not work
• "work" was seen as something for slaves and low
  class people
• Women were demanding and getting greater
  freedom. 
• Emperor Augustus introduced a series of laws to
  promote traditional values but even he was unable
  to stem the tide of progress

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AUGUSTAN FAMILY VALUES

• Restrictions were placed on the attendance of
  women at public spectacles
• A father could kill his daughter and her lover if
  he caught them in the act of adultery.
• A husband could kill his wife and her lover if he
  caught them in the act of adultery but only in
  his own home
• A husband must divorce his wife within 60 days if
  it is proven she has committed adultery
• A woman who has committed adultery is subject to
  the following additional penalties
• banishment
• loss of half her dowry
• loss of one third of any additional wealth she
  possessed.
• Men under 60 and women under 50 must marry.
  Failure to do so would mean they could not
  inherit.
• Women with three or more children could wear a
  special garment and were freed from the authority
  of their husbands.

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Lupanaria

• Wolf Dens, from lupa, a wolf
• according to Lactantius
• "for she (Lupa, i. e., Acca Laurentia) was the
  wife of Faustulus, and because of the easy rate
  at which her person was held at the disposal of
  all, was called, among the shepherds, 'Lupa,'
  that is, harlot, whence also 'lupanar,' a
  brothel, is so called."
• 35 latin terms for selling sex

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