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Translated by Florence Bois-Villeneuve. 

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This is the third in a series of three articles entitled Queering the Present, Queering the Past? Sex and Gender of Skeletons in (Queer) (Bio)Archaeology. 

The first article made the distinction between archaeology and bioarchaeology, and discussed the essentialist and constructivist paradigms surrounding the concepts of sex and gender within these fields of expertise. The second article focused on the contributions of feminist and queer theories to the archaeological study of the gender and sex of human remains. This third and final article will clarify the place of sex and gender in bioarchaeology. It will focus on the contributions of queer approaches to scientific accuracy and social justice.

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“I furthermore propose that while the assumption is that there have always been two sexes and two genders, we do not know that this is the case, nor do we understand adequately how gender is encoded in the material culture of different societies. We may well have had but one gender yet two sexes at some point in our history or multiple genders” (Claassen, 1992, p. 3).

Queer approaches to archaeology propose questioning existing assumptions and thoughtfully interpreting the identities of the past in terms of our own positions situated in the present (Blackmore, 2011). These approaches propose a critical practice of the dominant methods and theories in archaeology, notably by questioning binary relationships (e.g., man/woman, adult/child, rich/poor, non-Indigenous/Indigenous, heterosexual/homosexual, monogamous/non-monogamous, etc.) In this way, interpretations are free to explore the workings of societies, lives and bodies with fewer preconceptions. This is precisely what makes it possible to more faithfully reflect past realities, and to strive for a more accurate, more nuanced representation of unearthed history. 

The examination of human skeletons in bioarchaeology allows us, among other things, to identify whether the body, while alive, performed repetitive tasks and engaged in habits that differentiate it from other bodies or groups of bodies (Perry and Joyce, 2001). However, it is not enough to associate a specific repetitive task or habit with a gender for the purpose of gendering the body, since gendered activities vary with both time and space. Furthermore, assigning activities based on gender can seem quite natural—in the sense of “determined by nature”—in a given geosociohistorical context. However, the fact remains that if this idea of naturalness is itself a social construct, a shallow analysis of social categories is unlikely to offer a nuanced interpretation of a gender system in the past. 

Drawing on Butler’s work, archaeologists have examined how gender systems are naturalized, i.e., treated as if they were governed by the same performativity norms as our own, assuming these are natural and innate (Perry and Joyce, 2001). For example, Geller (2009) highlights the limitations of textbooks on osteology, the science of bones, which are used in university archaeology programs and which influence the perception of the sex and gender of skeletons. These textbooks provide a dimorphic representation of sex, despite evidence of sexual body variations in human beings. This reality should make identifying sex more complicated rather than simpler. Not only is sex considered a dichotomous variable, it is also presented as a marker of gender. This perspective eliminates any possibility of identifying gender independently of sex, hence the essentialist equation sex => gender (Claassen, 1992). This representation also focuses attention on gender differences, even though the archaeologist might be confronted with differences in class, activities, expertise or craft specialization between the people whose bodies are being studied. 

For example, Custer (1991) unearthed “female” individuals in Delaware buried with complete flintknapping toolkits. Assuming that men were buried with masculine objects and women with feminine ones, and since none of the “male” individuals were buried with the same type of toolkit, the archaeologist concluded that women did the flintknapping in this community, and not men as is stereotypically assumed (Custer, 1991). Claassen (1991, p. 3) asks, “What would a different gender look like from an artifactual perspective?” She points out that a third gender could explain why “typically” male objects were found next to skeletons assigned female. In citing the example of berdache individuals¹, whose material culture does not allow them to be classified as either male or female, she argues that archaeologists should not limit themselves to the two-sex, two-gender model, or even three- or four-gender models.

According to Claassen, it is important to recognize archaeologists’ extremely limited ability to recognize gender independently of sex and social roles (Claassen, 1992).

Queer approaches use these inconsistencies between gender realities and theories to question preconceptions and explore what they tell us about archaeological practices surrounding the identification of the sex of bodies. Thus, the idea is not to propose a way of recognizing or interpreting the sex of skeletons or the gender of the unearthed individuals, but to question the very notion of sex or gender and the relevance of dwelling on it in a bioarchaeological context. For example, whom and what does it serve to identify the sex of a body as belonging to one of two categories, if, in fact, sex is a broad spectrum?

Surely there are differences in labor performed by different classes that far exceed any labor differences between males and females, now or in the past. [...] Is it the history of sex roles that we want to explore? [...] Is it the occurrence of egalitarian societies? How much longer will we tolerate the archaeological definition of egalitarian as “all things being equal except along gender lines”? Just who is equal to whom, then? (Claassen, 1992, p. 3-4)

What is the point of identifying the sex of bodies in archaeology? According to De Leiuen (2015), gender is a fundamental, ahistorical principle that serves to organize social life, material culture and personal identity. This premise leads her to argue that, in order to interpret the behaviour of individuals in the past, it is necessary to consider how gender permeated their identities and actions. However, she warns her readers about the dangers of stereotypes, discrimination and prejudice that arise from the essentialization of gender roles. She also explains that archaeology only really began to take an interest in the concept of gender around the 1980s, and that almost all archaeology done until the late 1980s and early 1990s assumed male was the default sex when interpreting empirical data (De Leiuen, 2015). As such, the identification of sex and gender would contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the past, but the history of archaeology also shows the risk of prejudice linked to androcentrism.

Perhaps this is because without an “other” sex, the question of gender loses its ontological, epistemological and political importance. In any case, by force of habit and in the absence of reflection or questioning, the scientific tradition has developed based on a model that is biased due to its androcentrism (Lazzari, 2003). The problem with De Leiuen’s (2015) assumption, as pointed out by Claassen (1992) and Lazzari (2003), is that it relies on the illusion of gender as an invariable driving force of social hierarchies and injustices through time. It should also be added that this assumption is based on sex as a determinant of gender. It is a line of reasoning that eliminates diversity, difference, contradictions and subversion. 

Meanwhile, Brumfiel and Robin (2008) explained that feminist and gender archaeologists have already conducted studies that challenge models that attribute human evolution primarily to “male” activities, such as hunting and tool-making. They give the example of archaeological digs, which have demonstrated that women also took on roles considered to be masculine from a Western perspective: hunters, warriors, specialized craftspeople, merchants, long-distance traders, and political or religious leaders (Brumfiel and Robin, 2008).

Beyond gender roles, studies in gender archaeology have also shed light on how genders were constructed and perpetuated—or modified—over time (Brumfiel and Robin, 2008). Still other studies have concluded on the absence of a gender hierarchy as a principle of social organization (Brumfiel and Robin, 2008).

These studies are important points of reference for recognizing a past that may be far removed from contemporary, hegemonic expectations of gender, but which nonetheless resembles the realities of marginalized groups (e.g., those of agender or gender non-conforming people).

Moreover, it is also because a gender perspective understood by their contemporaries—which gives them an advantage—serves as a theoretical foundation that gender (bio)archaeologists manage to convince financial backers to fund their research (Lazzari, 2003).

From a social justice perspective, the question is not a trivial one: Whom and what does it serve to interpret the sex and gender of human remains in archaeology?

Gender archaeology—or at least the dominant one, characterized by a Western lens and a binary model—can be understood as a practice of colonizing knowledge, epistemology and know-how (Meskell, 2002; Mohanty et al., 1991). The explanation can be summed up in a few words: Sex and gender have not been the main structuring principles of social inequality everywhere and at all times (Meskell, 1999). In other words, there may have been societies in which other elements of social categorization (e.g., class) were more prevalent.

But why is it important to refrain from applying the binary lens of sex and gender to the archaeological interpretation of a skeleton, a body, and life in ancient civilizations? Apart from the risk of constructing false realities and falling into the trap of anachronism, it seems important to consider the impacts of such practices on contemporary social justice. 

Ancient civilizations and the people who lived in them no longer exist. This observation seems simplistic and obvious, but it is nevertheless necessary: Archaeology exists for and is important to the living, not the dead. Currently, almost no attention is given to individuals whose bodies, skeletons or human remains fall outside the Western binary analysis of the interdependence of sex and gender.

With queer archaeology, the aim is to promote social justice, while avoiding colonizing knowledge about past civilizations by imposing contemporary oppressive ideas (e.g., heterosexism) on archaeological research (Rodrigez, 2016).

Queer archaeology also makes it possible to tackle the legacy of discrimination and the influence of past injustices on those of today (Cook, 2019). It focuses on marginalized history; that which, as Terrance Loewl (2018, para. 3) puts it, has been swept under the rug. 

It helps today’s marginalized groups to better understand themselves and their history, to reappropriate knowledge, and to use it to fight the injustices done to them (Smith, 2017). 

It enriches their cultural heritage. It highlights issues of equity and human rights, as well as the structural violence committed and suffered throughout history. It is the difference between archaeological research carried out on certain social groups (e.g., women) and that carried out for these groups.

In short, it contributes to repairing injustices in the distribution of resources, opportunities and privileges that exist today, by revealing how they relate to the past (Smith, 2017).

It would appear that the essentialist paradigm, historically predominant in archaeology, could benefit from a constructivist approach such as queer theory, if only to anchor itself in situated analyses adapted to the sociohistorical context under study, to represent the gender and sex of bodies in a fairer and more nuanced way, and to position itself in the promotion of contemporary social justice. 

Feminist and queer approaches to archaeology have already shown that past civilizations may have been organized according to a system with three or more genders, or a system with no gender hierarchy at all. These civilizations may have been made up of people whose gender roles differed drastically from those expected from a contemporary Western perspective.

Perhaps the debates between sexual essentialism and sexual constructivism are important precisely because they question the very nature of human beings and their relationship with others.

Whatever the case, queer bioarchaeology has revealed the rich possibilities of returning to the epistemological and ontological sources of sex and gender as components of the human experience. If given the chance, what else might queer bioarchaeology reveal about human beings and their relationship with sex and gender?

¹ The term “berdache” was introduced by the colonists in North America to refer to transgenderism among Indigenous peoples, although it is now contested; the term “two-spirit” is usually preferred. “Berdache” is used in this article because it is the term used by Claassen (1992).