A Perspective from East Asia on

labrys, études féministes/ estudos feministas
juillet/décembre 2012 - julho /dezembro 2012

The divisions of time that archaeologists make may present particular difficulties when divisions created to understand one region are stretched to include regions other than those for which they were devised. This may be most problematic for prehistoric archaeology (and anthropological archaeology in general), because the divisions (whether temporal or stage-related) are used for the precise purpose of comparing regions, and attempting to understand the development of cultures in a systematic way. While this is a worthwhile goal, the periodization schemes themselves may prevent each region from being described in the most appropriate way. I will begin to make this point by posing three problems for East Asia caused by the application of “world-wide” archaeological periodizations, and then explain the basis for these temporalities. After that short digression, I return to the East Asian problems, as examples of the ways that current periodizations provide difficult challenges for East Asian archaeology.

Examples of problems created by standard archaeological periodizations in East Asian archaeology

Problem I. Some of the human groups who lived in East Asia toward the end of the Ice Ages, before or at the beginning of a global rise in sea level, created and used pottery containers – the earliest clay pots known (so far) in the world. These baked clay containers appear to have been created and used in the absence of plant or animal domestication. Colleagues from the rest of the world scold East Asianists for using the label “Neolithic” for such sites.[1] But if not Neolithic, what term should be used? Alternatively, what characteristics should the term Neolithic highlight? What does it now obscure?

Problem II. A large number of “Neolithic” and “Bronze Age” sites in East Asia are described as burials of shamans. Shamans are an active force in many East Asian societies today, and Siberia, the region believed to be the home of “original” shamanism is not too far away to consider influence on China, Korea and Japan. Thus it is not unreasonable to posit shaman leaders in ancient East Asia. The terminology of leadership, however, - chiefs, kings, emperors - leaves no room to discuss shamanism as part of the equation of leadership, or indeed any of the ways that ideology/religion may have played a part in expanding leadership to larger and larger polities. However, the evidence in East Asia points to religious beliefs as driving the political realm as well as social structure. Does the emphasis on chiefs and kings mask other important processes? Could state formation be better understood using other terminology?

Problem III. Enormous tomb mounds commonly mark elite burials in ancient East Asia. Some of those containing royal paraphernalia are burials of women. Yet leadership continues to be described in masculine terms. Does the terminology of “chiefdoms” and “kingdoms” prevent the recognition of women leaders? Is it important to know if women were leaders always, sometimes, or never? What are the consequences for society in each case?

For readers who are not archaeologists, a brief summary of the various ways that anthropological archaeologists slice up human prehistory and early historic periods will be useful, before delving further into the details of the specific difficulties with inherited classifications.

Geologic time is used to frame the earliest human history. Archaeologists who study the earliest humans use geological terms such as Pleistocene (Ice Ages) to discuss human adaptations to changing climates. As those who follow the Neanderthal debates recognize, these adaptations include physical as well as cultural attributes. The Pleistocene began about two million years ago, and continued until the world-wide warming period known as the Holocene, when sea levels rose around the world, creating new and/or more abundant food niches for coastal humans while wiping out many species that had been used by humans for food, as well some species for which humans were food. The Pleistocene extinctions of a number of large mammals therefore had both advantages and disadvantages for human survival.

Geologic time runs parallel to archaeological divisions, which are based on changes in tools and weapons made of durable materials, especially stone and metal. The basic divisions used in archaeology include Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. The Stone Age is further subdivided. Stone tools have been studied in terms of manufacturing techniques – peoples of the “old” stone age (Paleolithic) produced tools by chipping and flaking, while “new” stone (Neolithic) is formed by the process of grinding. The Paleolithic has further subdivisions according to the refinements of stone tool technology - from Lower Paleolithic (“lower” because the earlier strata are below later times in a site) with its tools made from a single piece of rock called a core, through Middle Paleolithic with stone tools made from refining flakes, to blade tools made by anatomically modern humans (Upper Paleolithic). Between Paleolithic and Neolithic, the designation of Mesolithic became necessary, hall-marked by composite tools, and sometimes very small flakes of stone making “teeth” inset into slots in bone handles, called Microlithic. This progression stresses that humans were using stone with more “efficiency” through time, and making tools that were increasingly complex in their manufacture. The term Neolithic was coined to designate groundstone, not only as tools for milling, but also stone tools to which grinding has been applied, leaving them smooth rather than with the sharper edges of tools that were chipped. [2]

Emphasis on changes in tool and weapon technology as providing important points to mark different periods continues into later prehistory with designations as Bronze Age and Iron Age. Although many other types of artifacts such as ornaments and musical instruments, were made from these materials, the emphasis is on tools and weapons. While some archaeologists have begun to perceive the importance of decorative items as markers of change, especially artifacts made of imported material, mainstream archaeology tends to focus on stone objects. Stylistic changes and evidence of rituals may also be important in human social and political development, especially in state formation, but none of these characteristics underlie the standard temporal schemes.

Thus it can be seen that common archaeological periodization does not merely privilege technology, but weapon technology was selected as providing the important divisions of humanity. Other technologies might have been important, but they are not as conspicuous in Stone Age archaeology. The evidence of technologies using perishable materials is harder to find, but it is present. It is possible that early hominins enjoyed an Age of Basketry, which allowed early humans to gather enough nuts, fruits, or grains to be able to occupy a home base. While the home base has been seen as a turning point in human (pre)history, the technology that made it possible has rarely been discussed (but see Tanner and Zihlman 1976, Zihlman 1978). When humans moved out of Africa and encountered frigid winters in the northern hemisphere, an Age of Tanning and Sewing allowed people to live in the Arctic climates of the end of the Pleistocene by creating clothing of animal skin and fur. Textile impressions have been found on clay in Upper Paleolithic contexts (Adovasio. Soffer and Page 2007). Should we consider an Age of Weaving when mats and cloth were added to the cultural repertoire?

In addition to noting advances in stone and metal weapons, archaeologists have borrowed stages of cultural evolution from socio-cultural anthropologists, who discussed changes in human societies in a variety of ways. One such sequence begins with hunting and gathering, followed by plant and animal domestication, and ultimately “the state” consisting of a bureaucracy with full-time specialists, in which not everyone performed the same tasks. Classes formed from specialists, such as farmers, artisans, soldiers, priests and bureaucrats. V. Gordon Childe (1942) saw each of these steps as fundamental changes in human life, and he called them revolutions – the Neolithic and the Origins of Civilization. Measures of civilization include intensive agriculture, long-distance trade, monumental architecture, art, calendars, writing, mathematics, and other characteristics that can be perceived in the archaeological record. As an alternative to the concept of civilization, archaeologists often shift the emphasis to the origin of cities or the creation of the state as a political entity, although there is widespread recognition that civilization, urbanism, and the state do not necessarily begin at the same time.

Some cultural anthropologists placed human groups in a developmental sequence according to the size and complexity of human groups – bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states. While this was the classic formulation (Service 1975), the concept of “tribe” has disappeared from the anthropological lexicon. From bands to states was described as a developmental track, but not time dependent – some peoples in the recent past still lived in bands or chiefdoms while others had reached the state level. Definitions of each stage include not merely size, but also the complexity of the polity and the type of leadership – ephemeral, achieved, ascribed, inherited, respectively. This paradigm has gripped anthropological archaeology ever since William Sanders and Barbara Price (1968) applied the scheme to Mesoamerican archaeology. Chiefdoms became of particular interest, as a stepping stone to states. In the meantime, cultural anthropology has moved on to other concerns.

From this brief summary of long and complex anthropological discussions, it must be obvious that periodizations are implicit theories. The theories hiding in these various periodization schemes differ, but they have some elements in common: the conviction that human cultures can be arranged in a developmental sequence, the belief that technological or economic changes tend to be prime movers, and the assumption that technology is exclusively male and therefore male activities move cultural evolution,. These assumptions force archaeological explanations into strait-jackets that prevent other types of explanation. As Alison Wylie (2002) has shown, theories have everything to do with what archaeologists look for, and constrain how the past is interpreted. With other divisions of time, and other ways of thinking about development and other kinds of change, other ways of constructing the human past become possible.

All of these ways of dividing up the human past arise from an androcentric and Eurocentric perspective (Tilley 1993:22). The questions the profession asks about how societies developed are unconsciously infused with gender and ethnic biases, based as they are on the interests of males in western societies – technology (especially weapons), predation, and leadership, all of which are assumed to define the male. Much archaeology has been written as if men invented everything, all leadership is male, and civilization was built by males (see the critique by Conkey and Spector, 1984). Therefore, presumed male activities are weighted more heavily in assessing culture change than presumed female activities (an extended discussion of this point can be found in Nelson 1998:49-54). Cultural anthropology has changed, with more attention paid to women’s activities, rituals, and beliefs as well as women’s contributions to society. But archaeologists cannot query informants about what was important to them. So how can we deal with the assumption that all culture was created by males is built into the discourse about human development? [3]A common division of labor by gender in prehistory and early history is shown in Table 1.

                                                                    TABLE I
       ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
                                           Men’s Activities                                                    Women’s Activities
                                                     Warfare                                                                 Having babies
                                                 Long distance trade                                                     Staying home
                                              Hunting                                                                    Gathering *
                                   Tool making (especially pointed ones)                     Asking hubby to make them tools**

     *Zihlman 1978
     **Gero 1965:344
      ***Other boring stuff includes: Gardening, gathering (shellfish, nuts, and other staples) diving for food, technology such as                                          basketry, pottery, weaving, hide working, cooking, and making tools to create the above (Nelson 1997:85-111) [4

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

In 1983 I tried to establish a “Womankind Museum” based on the collections in the University of Denver Museum of Anthropology. The first (and it turned out, only) exhibit was called “Working Within Walls.” This exhibit highlighted women’s work by including both ethnographic and archaeological collections. Somewhat to our surprise, almost everything in the collection, with the possible exception of projectile points, was appropriate for inclusion. Preparing that exhibit opened my eyes to the fact that women’s technologies have been largely unacknowledged in the scope of cultural evolution.

As we have seen, for prehistoric and early historic periods, the selected technological innovations are based on hunting tools and weaponry. Ignoring other technologies that are usually attributable to women in ethnographic settings (e.g. potting, cordage, the preparation of skin and fur, and weaving) affects the way both professional archaeologists and the general public conceive of life in the distant past. For example, for a very long time, bone tools suggesting tailoring in Upper Paleolithic sites were overlooked and even unreported (Kehoe 1990). Other technological changes may have profoundly affected the lives of prehistoric peoples, but they have been ignored. The result is that archaeological divisions exclude technological innovations which are likely to be attributable to women. Understanding pivotal changes in the ancient past would be improved by including creative activities that have traditionally been women’s work, whatever gender actually made the pots, baskets, fabric, etc.

For example, grinding is considered more elegant than chipping, but with the mindset that men make tools, women are not given credit for creating grinding technologies, in spite of the fact grinding is considered to be drudge work (see Gifford-Gonzalez [1993] for her analysis of depictions of women as the “drudge-on-the-hide”). Women were the chief grain-grinders in societies that use grain, as well as rubbing hides to rid them of fat and hairs, and to soften them for use as clothing and containers. Awls, tools to make baskets (more “women’s work” Spector 1994), are made of bone, by grinding.

I am not arguing that stone tool technology was not important, and the increasing elegance of tools may demonstrate increasing small muscle control as well as sharpened cognitive skills. But it is unlikely that even very early bipedal humans would have survived without slings and baskets for carrying (Zihlman 1997). Bone tools such as needles for clothing, awls for basketry, and hooks for fishing were certainly important for human survival, but bone artifacts are rarely central in the story of cultural evolution. Making bone tools is a complex process (Dobres 1995), and the objects are often adorned with incised designs or realistic depictions of plants or animals. Intentional marks on some bone objects have been studied as possible evidence of purposeful timekeeping (Marshack 1972). Yet the emergence of bone tools does not call for a new stage in archaeological divisions. Fiber technologies are dependent on bone and wooden implements. The resulting objects are complex, and often important to human survival, including traps and snares and fishnets, carrying devices such as slings and baskets. It includes mats to sit on and sleep on, and often clothing to wear.

The invention of pottery likewise does not rate a stage of its own, in spite of the complexity of the technology involved – to make a pot requites far more steps than the flaking of stone tools. Making pottery required cooperative work, from finding suitable clay, processing the clay and shaping the pots, to firing the pots and perhaps decorating them, before or aftr firing.. In making pottery, decoration became much more varied with many different techniques, including incising, painting, and the addition of handles and spouts. Pottery necessarily changed food habits, because items not digestible by humans became not only tastier but fundamentally edible by cooking. Perhaps the clay vessels provided a solution to food scarcity as the climate warmed, when animals such as reindeer moved north with the boreal forest. In different places, pottery containers seem to have performed different functions. Pottery is seen as a part of the “Neolithic Revolution” but not as stage divider, although in East Asia it is used as the marker for the Neolithic, as is discussed below.

Turning to stages of cultural evolution – bands, chiefdoms and states - it is evident from the terminology that leadership is presumed to be the defining characteristic of various sizes and types of polity. Whether this is the case has never been questioned in anthropological archaeology. Religious leadership, in the form of priests, or ideology that upholds the leader are sometimes acknowledged, but they are seen as secondary. The politics of small and large polities has reigned supreme.

Furthermore, the maleness of these leaders is never questioned, even when the de facto leader is female. A recent burgeoning literature demonstrating women leaders is still ignored in most theoretical archaeology. Ruling queens existed widely through time and space, if they are looked for (Nelson 2003). New scholarship shows that women chiefs or queens are known form many areas of the world, especially Egypt (Troy 2003), Mesoamerica (Bell 2003), North America (Trocoli 2002), and even China (Linduff 2003).. These queens may not have been absolute monarchs, but neither were most of the men designated as “chiefs” or “kings.” Turning these terms into categories and chiefdoms and kingdoms into stages may obscure the very characteristics we are trying to discover in the formation of the state.

Most of my archaeological fieldwork in recent decades has been in East Asia, where the basic assumptions about both periodization and the purposes of archaeology diverge from those of the western world. Especially in China and Korea, archaeology is considered to be a technique for verifying history. The textual Chinese dynasties are used as temporal divisions beyond the boundaries of the dynasty itself. In other words, ancient texts drive archaeology, including the choice of sites to excavate, the context provided for excavations, and interpretations of the discoveries. Chinese texts tell a story of unilineal history, especially the development of “civilization,” and Korean and Japanese early texts follow Chinese examples, although they raise additional complications. Western terminology has been borrowed, but it is squeezed to fit the story told by ancient documents of East Asia. To explore this perspective and how it meshes with or opposes Western temporalities, the examples set out in the beginning will be explored further.

In East Asia, the invention of pottery containers, rather than either ground stone tools or plant and animal domestication, marks the most definitive change in human behavior at the end of the Pleistocene. The first known pottery occurs late in the Pleistocene, before sea level began its precipitous Holocene rise. In Japan, the first pottery was produced even before the dramatic rise in sea level (Ikawa-Smith 2000). The most recent C14 dates for these sites – and there are several of them - are calibrated to about 16,000 years ago. Other early pottery found in Asia is found in association with Mesolithic tools, although the assemblages include more microliths than ground stone tools (Kononenko and Cassidy 2007). Such sites include Gasya on the Amur River, quite far north in the Russian Far East (Zhuschchikovskaya 2006), and several sites in both northern and southern China (McNeish and Libby 1995, Yan 1992) Possible sites in Korea, perhaps as early as 10,000 BP, are not as firmly established (Im and Kwon 1984, Jeju 1998), but it is clear that pottery began in East Asia, and probably spread by water transport along East Asian coasts (Nelson in press).

Possible functions of early pottery vessels in East Asia are boiling, brewing, storage, and food processing. Even if the technology of potting spread, in each region the function of the pots may have been quite different. Each invention of pottery may have been a separate event. Some of the possibilities, largely untested, follow.

Boiling. Boiling requires a fire-safe material for exposure to an open hearth. Very little plant food can be eaten raw – mostly fruit and nuts, but not all of them. Cooking renders edible many parts of plants, such as roots, stems, and leaves. But these plant parts can’t be roasted on a stick or placed directly in the fire, they have to be boiled in water. Gourds cut in half are adequate for serving vessels, but they would burn if placed directly in the fire. Stone bowls take a long time make, as well as to heat, and may crack in a fire. Of all the materials available in nature, clay vessels work best. This is a possible explanation for the appearance of pottery in inland sites, especially those in the northern edges of East Asia, where large game might have moved north.

Brewing. Liquids require pottery containers. Traces of brewing alcoholic beverages have been found in a Chinese clay pot dated around 7000 BCE. (Henry 2005)). There is no reason to suppose that this pot represents the earliest fermentation in East Asia. Until more residues are tested, it will not be known when and where brewing first occurred. But it is interesting to think of brewing as preceding the “Neolithic Revolution.”

Storage. Pottery could have been created to store a wild grain crop for the winter, safe from small rodents who would have been happy to deplete the stores. The same purpose might be served by pits such as those lined with clay as in southwest Asia, or by granaries built on raised platforms, which are known to have been used later in Japan and Korea. However, wet storage of vegetable crops would surely require pottery containers. This is likely where vegetables were preserved for the winter, a process that would have been necessary in northern communities (Nelson 1975).

Food Processing. It has been suggested that in the case of pottery in coastal Japan, bivalve shellfish could be opened up more easily by dropping them in boiling water (Kidder 1965). Especially in sites where rising sea levels created a new and indented coastline with shallow waters newly inhabited by shellfish, this seems to be a likely explanation for the invention of pottery containers. Another theory is that pottery was needed for leaching nuts such as acorns, which need to have tannin removed.

The above discussion shows that most of the uses for pottery are related to processing food. Pottery represents both a certain amount of sedentism and intensified use of plant food. The food may have been gathered from the wild rather than cultivated or domesticated. So far there is no evidence of intensive agriculture, although wild plants have been found in abundance wherever they have been found by flotation (Crawford et al 2005, Crawford and Lee 2000). In East Asia the presence of pottery is a marker for a division we call “Neolithic,” whether or not there is agriculture, even though ground stone tools (the original definition of Neolithic!) are often present as a further indication of food processing .

However, our colleagues who work in different parts of the world that the sites with pottery cannot be designated as Neolithic if there is no evidence of agriculture. In part of Southwest Asia, for example, there is Pre-Pottery Neolithic. How can Asia have pre-Neolithic pottery? This terminological dispute demonstrates the power of periodizations. The creation of pottery is an important dividing line in East Asia, which seems to occur earlier than plant and animal domestication. Would calling this time period a Pottery Age place the emphasis in the right place? We don’t need the term Neolithic, but we do need a concert that highlights the differences among areas of the world in peri-Holocene archaeology. It is unlikely to occur, but such a change in terminology would allow a broader understanding of this time period.

The eminent archaeologist K. C. Chang (1983, 1986, 1994 a,b) devoted an entire book and several papers in order to demonstrate that the Shang dynasty (1600-1100 BCE) was ruled by shaman-kings. Several archaeologists in China have described many Neolithic sites in China with elements that could be interpreted as shamanistic (Chang and Xu 2005). A number of indications, ranging from depictions on bronzes to inscriptions on oracle bones, cause these archaeologists to suggest that the kings of the first well-attested dynasty (by contemporaneous texts as well as archaeology) were shamans (Chang 2005). This group of archaeologists therefore argues that shamans were important in the origin of the state in East Asia.

If one takes shamanism to be a historical process rather than a universal trait emanating from the human mind, it is reasonable that Siberian shamanism could appear in China, especially taking the borders of the current Chinese state (which includes many peoples called National Minorities) as “China.” This territory includes Inner Mongolia, the western provinces of Xinjiang and Gansu, the northeast region where Manchu ancestors lived, once called Manchuria, and a strip of land along the East Coast from Shanghai to Liaoning Province where the earliest jade-using cultures were found. For example, bones with holes drilled for divination have been found in Inner Mongolia, some 2,000 years before the inscribed oracle bones of the Shang dynasty (Guo 1995), and they have been found in several places in northern China around this time (Li 2008). We do not know for sure what languages were spoken in these regions in Neolithic times, but there are reasons to suppose they may have been neither Chinese nor languages related to Chinese. Inscribed oracle bones, however, appear only in the Late Shang, and are definitely inscribed in early Chinese characters. How the concept of drilling holes and putting the bones in a fire to question the spirits became a Chinese rather than a non-Chinese trait is unknown.

Much that is known about the way oracle bones were used is due to the fact that inscriptions from the Late Shang period are numerous. The written words make clear the divinatory nature of scapula prepared with holes to be cracked in the fire, and the additional use of turtle plastrons in the same way. A newly discovered inscribed oracle bone from Shandong from the Middle Shang period can be partly read, and shows that even outside of the center of the Shang polity, oracle bones and writing were important (Li 2008). These bones were carefully prepared by people called wu (often translated as “shaman”), inscribed by specialists, and interpreted as the will of the spirits. Sacrifices took place as a result of the interpretations of the will of the spirits. Later in Chinese history written references to shamans appear, including an ancient book, Shanhai Jing, thought to be a manual for shamans. Thus is seems that Chang and his cohorts in mainland China are on solid ground (Nelson 2008a).

However, a problem arises with the fierce declaration by these same archaeologists that the Shang dynasty shamans were men only (Chang 2005). This is problematic in several ways. First, shamans still thrive in most of present East Asia, and they are predominantly women (Nelson 2008b), as they are in Central Asia (Tedlock 2005). Second, the Shang textual evidence describes the kings’ wives as shamans, including Lady Hao, the favored wife of King Wu Ding of the Shang dynasty (ca 1200 BCE), whose tomb is the only intact tomb found in the Shang (Linduff 2002, 2003). Lady Hao was buried with a number of objects that are often associated with shamanism in East Asia, notably mirrors, musical instruments, and jade figurines (Linduff 2002, Nelson 2008). Inscriptions on some of Lady Hao’s burial bronzes give her a posthumous temple name, indicating that she became an ancestor to be worshipped, although she was not a member of the Shang royal lineage or even a local lineage (Keightley 1999). Third, the word wu is used both for shamans in general and for women shamans. If men must be specified, the word used is xi. Women are in this case the unmarked gender, suggesting that the expected gender of shamans was female.

Attention to shamanism has changed the discussion about the origin of the state in China, but it has obscured the gender of the shamans [5]. Maybe it would help to designate an “Age of Religious Leaders,” and to admit the possibility of women shamans – and even women leaders. Although not a ruler, writing on oracle bones and the contents of her tomb show that Lady Hao was an influential person in the Late Shang polity (Keightley 1999).

Although Korean texts discussing the Korean Three Kingdoms were written much later than the events they describe, they were created on the basis of annals of the kingdoms that are now lost. The Samguk Sagi asserts that the state of Old Silla (traditional dates 58 BCE-668 AD), arose in the southeastern part of the Korean peninsula, during the (Chinese) Han dynasty. It is known that Old Silla was a society that was divided into endogamous bone ranks (Grayson 1975, Kim 1977). The highest rank, from which kings and queens were selected, was known as Holy Bone, and lower nobles came from the True Bone rank. It has been inferred that to be Holy Bone, and therefore eligible to rule, Holy Bone individuals had to be born from two Holy Bone parents. The founding kings and queens are mythologized in the earliest legends. Kings were born from magic eggs, found in a golden box, or related to white horses. Queens are described as daughters of goddesses, especially mountain goddesses (Nelson 2002b). The list of kings includes the parentage of both kings and queens. It is quite clear that both the kings and queens were important in Silla.

Some ten large tomb mounds have been excavated from the 3^rd-5^th centuries, with very rich grave goods interpreted as trappings of royalty, including pure gold crowns and belts, covered with curved jewels and gold dangling ornaments. The largest and highest mound of all is called Hwangnam Taechong, or Tomb 98. This monument is a double tomb overlapping in the middle, each side having been constructed at a different time. The northern, earlier mound, was that of the king – identified by a single tooth as a male. It contained a great quantity of weapons, but neither a gold crown nor a gold belt. The southern mound did have the expected tall gold crown covered with curved jewels and sheet-gold belt inscribed “Belt for milady.” It would seem that the lady outranked the warrior, and also outlived him. By all the usual criteria, the grave of the ruler is that of the queen (Nelson 1991, 1993).

Yet Korean archaeologists are unwilling to interpret this female tomb as ruling queen, even though she was exclusively buried with the trappings of royalty. Three later women do appear in the king list as queens, or literally “female kings.” Two were the final members of the Holy Bone, and following them, True Bone persons could be selected as rulers – and one of those selected was a woman. This is less a periodization problem than blindness to the possibility that gender was not the salient factor in choosing a Silla ruler. The blindness is partly linguistic. We should refer to rulers of states rather than designating the leaders as kings.

Periodizations are tools to think about changes in human societies. But they can also put thinking in strait jackets, which prevent us from seeing in new and more productive ways, ways that respond to the evidence rather than preconceived ideas about human nature and the importance of various technologies. These examples from East Asia contrast with the usual ways of dividing time and explaining cultural evolution in archaeology, and therefore are useful to highlight a general problem with labels, whether of periods or stages.

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__________(2002a) Performing Power in Early China: Examples from the Shang Dynasty and the Hongshan Culture. In The Dynamics of Power. M. O’Donovan, ed. Carbondale: Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University, pp. 151-67.

__________(2002b) Ideology, Power and Emergent Complex Society in Northeast China. In In Pursuit of Gender: Worldwide Archaeological Perspectives. S. M. Nelson and M. Rosen-Ayalon, eds. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Pp. 73-80.

___________2003b The Queens of Silla: Power and Connections to the Spirit World. In Ancient Queens, Archaeological Explorations. S. M. Nelson, ed.. Walnut Creek: AltaMira. Pp. 77-92.

____________(2008a) Shamanism and the Origin of the State: Spirit, Power and Gender in East Asia. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.

____________(2008b) Horses and Gender in Korea: The Legacy of the Steppe on the Edge of East Asia. In Are All Warriors Male? K. Linduff and K. Rubinson, eds. Walnut Creek: AltaMira, pp. 111-127.

_____________(in press) Cultural and Environmental Change in Coastal Korea. North Pacific Prehistory 3.

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[1] . Vigorous discussions about the use of the term Neolithic took place at the World Archaeological Congress 6 in Dublin, Ireland, June 6-10, 2008, and at the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association in Hanoi, Vietnam. Dec. 1-6, 2009.

[2] Changes in technology, with each step building on the one before, is inherently developmental, and often treated as evolutionary.

[3] . Documentation that work attributed to women was seen as unworthy of evolutionary theory can be found in Nelson 1998, pp. 22, 32 ff, 49 ff.

[4] Washburn and Lancaster (1969:293) unabashedly state that humanity and maleness are the same thing. “Theories of the human subject always tend to be simultaneously theories of the masculine” (Tilley 1993:22). For a critique of “Man the Hunter” see Nelson 1997:69 ff.).

[5] A longer discussion of leadership in archaeology can be found in (Nelson 1997:121-149.) The question of the Big Man is deconstructed, and the inherent masculinity of the terminology is further discussed.

Sarah Milledge Nelson is a John Evans Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of Denver. She has published widely on East Asian Archaeology (especially Korea and China) and gender in archaeology. Her books include The Archaeology of Korea; Shamanism and the Origin of States: Spirit, Power and Gender in East Asia; The Archaeology of Gender: Analyzing Power and Prestige; and several edited books such as Ancient Queens, In Pursuit of Gender: Worldwide Archaeological Perspectives, and The Handbook of Gender in Archaeology. She is editor of a series on Gender in Archaeology for AltaMira Press.

labrys, études féministes/ estudos feministas
juillet/décembre 2012 - julho /dezembro 2012