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Queering Serbian Archaeology: Androcentrism, Heteronormativity, Gender and the Writing of (Pre)history. Ex Novo. Journal of Archaeology 8: 53-75.

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Abstract

In scholarly backroom discussions, archaeologies of the Balkans are often labelled as conservative and ignorant of gender studies, their impact on archaeology, and how it deals with gender in the past. Indeed, androcentrism and heteronormativity are commonly found in archaeological interpretations throughout the Balkans, but not there alone. In this paper I will analyse how gender and sexuality in the past have been approached by some archaeologists in Serbia, a west-central Balkan country, and argue that, although some positive changes can be detected more critical gender and queer archaeologies are direly needed for two reasons. First and foremost, theoretically informed approaches to gender, in contrast to approaches based on gender stereotypes and heteronormativity, can lead to better thought-through and more informed reconstructions of the past. I illustrate this with several examples from mortuary and settlement archaeology. Secondly, and no less importantly, self-reflexive and theoretically informed approaches to gender and sexuality should have an activist component, helping to build a more just and democratic society. Therefore, we are never really done with gender archaeology. The latter is particularly needed in the Balkans, including Serbia, where there is an ongoing struggle against patriarchal ideologies and homophobia. In this respect, a dialogue is needed between archaeologists and the marginalized and oppressed communities and organisations fighting for basic human rights in the region.
EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 8, December 2023: 53-75
CONTACT: Uroš Matić - uros.matic@oeaw.ac.at; uros_arheo@yahoo.com
53
Queering Serbian Archaeology: Androcentrism,
Heteronormativity, Gender and the Writing of
(Pre)history
Uroš Matić
Institute for Classics, University of Graz
DOI: 10.32028/exnovo-vol-8-pp.53-75
Abstract
In scholarly backroom discussions, archaeologies of the Balkans are often labelled
as conservative and ignorant of gender studies, their impact on archaeology, and
how it deals with gender in the past. Indeed, androcentrism and heteronormativity
are commonly found in archaeological interpretations throughout the Balkans, but
not there alone. In this paper I will analyse how gender and sexuality in the past have
been approached by some archaeologists in Serbia, a west-central Balkan country,
and argue that, although some positive changes can be detected more critical gender
and queer archaeologies are direly needed for two reasons. First and foremost,
theoretically informed approaches to gender, in contrast to approaches based on
gender stereotypes and heteronormativity, can lead to better thought-through and
more informed reconstructions of the past. I illustrate this with several examples
from mortuary and settlement archaeology. Secondly, and no less importantly, self-
reflexive and theoretically informed approaches to gender and sexuality should have
an activist component, helping to build a more just and democratic society.
Therefore, we are never really done with gender archaeology. The latter is
particularly needed in the Balkans, including Serbia, where there is an ongoing
struggle against patriarchal ideologies and homophobia. In this respect, a dialogue is
needed between archaeologists and the marginalized and oppressed communities
and organisations fighting for basic human rights in the region.
Keywords
Serbia, Balkans, (pre)history, archaeology, gender, heteronormativity, queer
Introduction
In autumn 2022, the Serbian Ministry of Culture accepted the decision of a working
group formed by the Ministry to inspect the use of the terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ in
biology handbooks for the eighth year of elementary school from seven different
publishers (Danas 13 Oct 2022). The decision made was that the lessons dealing
with sex and gender should be changed urgently, the result of a demand by the
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Serbian Orthodox Church, which claimed that the content of these lessons
propagates gender ideology (on gender ideology ideology see Zaharijević 2019).
Supposedly, the statement in these lessons that there is a difference between sex and
gender caused serious commotion, and even more problematic was the additional
statement that sex and gender sometimes do not match. The Serbian extremist right
wing party Dveri (Doors in Serbian) even claimed that these lessons are
scandalous homosexual and transgender propaganda aimed at children. Thankfully,
the reaction from professional bodies in Serbia was immediate. Professor of the
Faculty of Biology of the University of Belgrade, Biljana Stojković, claimed that the
actions of the Ministry were a direct attack on education in Serbia and that the
supposedly secular state was being dictated to by the Church (Danas 13 Oct 2022).
In fact, Serbia is not alone in this, as anti-gender politics has recently been
propagated by the governments of some neighbouring European Union countries,
such as Hungary (Fodor 2022).
Although Serbian archaeologists did not directly address this issue, the Faculty of
Philosophy of the University of Belgrade, where the Department for Archaeology is
situated, did participate in this discussion, sending a strong message against the
actions of the Ministry (Medija Centar Beograd 24 Nov 2022) and even organized a
public debate (Nije filozofski ćutati 16 Jan 2023). The ethical policy of the
Department for Archaeology has a strong stance against various forms of violence
and discrimination, including those based on sex, gender, and sexuality (Univerzitet
u Beogradu, Filozofski fakultet, Odeljenje za arheologiju 31 March 2022). Therefore,
one would think that Serbian archaeologists should not be concerned about lessons
on sex and gender in biology handbooks for elementary schools, but the question
of difference between sex and gender does concern them too (cf. Palavestra 2011:
252). Furthermore, nothing guaranties that the Church would not one day interfere
in the history handbooks in Serbian schools, the study program, syllabi etc. and that
the Ministry of Culture would not support it. Thus, the positive changes in Serbian
archaeology concerning questions of past gender in the last few decades could prove
to be crucial for the defence of education, free speech, and democratic values in
Serbia.
Gender archaeology papers and handbooks in international settings nowadays
usually start by acknowledging the five-decades-long history of what some consider
to be a subfield of archaeology. Indeed, the first criticism of androcentrism in
archaeology, the invisibility of women in archaeological interpretations of the past
and within the archaeological profession, were made in Scandinavia (Daz-Andreu
2005: 13; Sørensen 2000: 1623) and the USA (Conkey & Spector 1984), the UK
following up quickly (Gilchrist 1999: 130; Sørensen 2000: 1623), but also Spain
(Montón-Subías & Moral 2020) and Germany (Gutsmiedl-Schümann, Helmbrecht
& Kranzbühler 2021). Slowly but surely, gender archaeology found its place in other
archaeological communities (Dommasnes, Hjørungdal, Montón-Subías, Sánchez
Romero & Wicker 2010) and nowadays we even have several international
organisations uniting researchers, mostly from the global West. These are, among
others, the Archaeology and Gender in Europe (AGE) community of the European
Association of Archaeologists (EAA), the FemArc-Network of women working in
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archaeology in Germany, the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) and Gender,
Methodology and the Ancient Near East (GeMANE) group. One could maybe dare
to say that slowly but surely there was a paradigm shift from androcentrism to
feminism, but this is and never was the case (Engelstad 2007). Even after numerous
conferences, talks and published volumes, gender topics in archaeology are rarely
found in international high impact journals (Back-Danielsson 2012). They are also
rarely the focus of large-scale projects with considerable funding, such as those
supported by the European Research Council (ERC), although gender balance
seems to have been achieved (EAA 2020 Statement on Archaeology and Gender
27-29 April 2021). Among these, stereotypes about gender and gender archaeology
are still omnipresent (Coltofean-Arizancu, Gaydarska & Matić 2021).
Where Serbian and broader Balkan archaeologies are concerned, the situation is
entirely different in numerous aspects (Babić 2018). However, it is first necessary to
clarify how ‘Balkans’ will be used as a reference term in this paper. It is clear that
what is geographically and culturally considered to be Balkans depends on the
observer (Todorova 1997; Žižek 1999). The region was named after the Balkan
Mountains, which stretch across the whole of modern Bulgaria. Whether or not the
northern border is drawn so that it includes modern Slovenia or Croatia, or the
southern border is drawn so that it includes modern Greece, is defined by different
ideologies. Ultimately, these will define what we consider to be Balkan archaeologies,
but these are in no sense unified scholarly traditions and communities. They have
their own local developments, which are close to each other in some aspects, but
also quite different to each other in others, questions of gender in the past being
among these. In this paper I will use the term Balkan archaeologies to include the
archaeologies on the territory of modern Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Romania,
Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, North Macedonia,
Albania, and Greece. The scope of the paper does not allow the topic to be covered
in detail for all these countries and their different archaeological traditions. For this
reason, most of my examples will come from Serbian archaeology, a community in
which I started my studies. Other authors have dealt with the issues with gender in
archaeologies of Slovenia (Merc 2010), Romania (Palincaș 2008; Palincaș 2010),
Bulgaria (Chapman & Palincaș 2013) and Greece (Hitchcock and Nikolaidou 2013).
Where Croatia is concerned, there has been an increase in publications dealing with
women in (pre)history (see the recent contributions in Dizdar 2022; Tomorad 2018)
but none of these works deal with (pre)historic gender systems. The same can be
said for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Kosovo, and North Macedonia.
Gender Bias in Serbian Archaeology
Currently slightly under 50% of the teaching staff at the Department for
Archaeology of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade are women
(Univerzitet u Beogradu, Filozofski fakultet, Odeljenje za arheologiju, Zaposleni
Accessed 25 May 2023). One could say that a gender balance has been achieved.
This has changed considerably since the beginning of archaeology as a research
subject in Serbia in the late nineteenth century. From the time of Mihailo Valtrović
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(1839-1915), the first professor of archaeology in Serbia (from 1881) and Miloje
Vasić (1869-1956, lecturer from 1901, full professor from 1922) to the time of
Milutin Garašanin (1920-2002, lecturer from 1957), Dragoslav Srejović (1931-1996,
lecturer from 1958) and Sava Tutundžić (1928-2020, lecturer from 1971), lecturers
in archaeology at the University of Belgrade were predominantly men (Milinković
1998). The first women who lectured at the Department for Archaeology were
classical archaeologist Aleksandrina Cermanović Kuzmanović (1928-2001, lecturer
from the mid-1950s) and Near Eastern archaeologist Vidosava Nedomački (1924-
2011, lecturer from 1971). They were soon followed by the short employment of
Bojana Mojsov (195?-) from 1982 to 1984 and Vera Vasiljević (1954-, lecturer since
1984). Slowly but surely the number of women lecturing at the department increased
to the current numbers. In regional comparison, Tatjana Bregant (1932-2002) was
the first woman to be employed at the Department for Archaeology of the
University of Ljubljana in the mid-1950s (Novaković 2021: 431). Therefore, we can
observe that the path for women in archaeology departments in ex-Yugoslavia was
not as smooth as for men, but one should be careful not to confuse the reasons for
this with socialism, as similar situations can be seen at other, non-socialist
archaeology departments of the time (Díaz-Andreu & Sørensen 1998).
Predrag Novaković (2021) was the first scholar to consider the role of women in
western Balkan archaeologies. He stressed that Paola Korošec was the first female
archaeologist to be employed as a museum curator (at the Provincial Museum of
Sarajevo) in the whole of the former Yugoslavia in 1939 or 1940! (Novaković 2021:
431). This demonstrates that archaeology in the western Balkans was dominated by
men for a more than half a century, something we find in other archaeological
communities of the time too (Díaz-Andreu & Sørensen 1998). Changes to this
dominance seem to have started after the Second World War in socialist Yugoslavia.
In 1944, Irma Čremošnik (1916-1990) started working for the Municipal Institute
for the Protection of Antiquities in Belgrade and as curator of classical antiquities at
the Prince Paul Museum in Belgrade. In 1947 she was appointed as curator for
Medieval archaeology at the Provincial Museum in Sarajevo. Ksenija Vinski-
Gasparini (1919-1995) was appointed at the Archaeological Museum in Sarajevo,
also in 1947 (Novaković 2021: 431). Dušanka Vučković Todorović (1912-1998)
became a director of the Ancient Department at the National Museum in Belgrade
and in 1949 director of the Archaeological Museum in Skopje. In the late 1940s,
Draga Garašanin (1921-1997) was employed as director of the Municipal Museum
in Belgrade. Blaga Alekseva became a curator at the Municipal Museum in Skopje in
1948. Nada Miletić (1925-2002) in 1950, and Ružica Drechsler Bižić (1921-2008) in
1952, became curators in the Provincial Museum in Sarajevo. Milica Kosorić (1928-
1994) became a curator in the Museum of Požarevac in Serbia in 1955 and in 1962
she started working in the Museum of Eastern Bosnia in Tuzla, where she later
worked as a director from 1967-1978. Kosorić worked for the National Museum of
Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1979 to 1992. Novaković estimated that in the former
Yugoslavia in the 1950s, at least 20% of some 60-80 archaeologists were women,
and according to the exact figures published in Slovenian archaeological journal
Arheo 1 from 1981, of 404 listed archaeologists, 165 (40%) were women. According
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to the data from Arheo 8 from 1989, in the course of ten years the gender ratio
became even more balanced, with 54% men and 46% women out of 535
archaeologists (Novaković 2021: 431).
Gender bias is also visible in some seminal publications in Yugoslavian archaeology.
For example, a bibliometric analysis of the five volumes of the seminal Prehistory of
Yugoslavian Countries, conducted by Vesna Merc, showed that male authors are
significantly more cited than female authors. This is followed by a higher number of
male than female authors within the volumes themselves (Merc 2005: 2733; Merc
2010: 127–129). Novaković (2021: 431) highlights the effects of the emancipatory
social environment for the gradual achievement of higher gender balance in
Yugoslavian archaeology, but he nevertheless stresses that this does not concern
leading positions (cf. Curta & Stamati 2021). Therefore, a critical gendered history
of west Balkan or Yugoslavian and post-Yugoslavian archaeology is still to be
written. Even the recent critical histories of archaeology in Serbia mostly focus on
the life and works of men (Janković 2018; Mihajlović 2017; Mihajlović 2020;
Palavestra 2020; exceptions are Milosavljević 2017; Palavestra 2015). This is in
strong contrast with archaeological communities centred on gender outside Serbia,
where the lives and works of women in archaeology have been recognized as
marginal voices in dire need of visibility (Díaz-Andreu & Sørensen 1998; cf.
Novaković 2021: 431–432). Therefore, critical research histories should also focus
on women in Yugoslavian and Serbian archaeology, among them prehistorians
Draga Garašanin and Zagorka Letica, and classical archaeologist Aleksandrina
Cermanović-Kuzmanović, or other women in Yugoslavian archaeology, such as
prehistorians Ružica Drechsler-Bižić and Ksenija Vinski-Gasparini. Additionally,
the critical research history of Serbian archaeology should finally come out of the
closet and tackle the life and work of Dragoslav Srejović, whose sexuality remains
the topic of backroom discussion (AngraMaina 7 Sep 2023).
Last but not least, gender bias is observable in an asymmetrical exposure to violence,
since it should be stressed that women in archaeology in Serbia are more exposed
to violence and various forms of harassment (including sexual) than men (Coltofean-
Arizancu, Gaydarska & Plutniak 2020). This does not differ from the general higher
exposure of women to violence in Serbia in general, including violence resulting in
femicide (see Izveštaji o femicidu u Srbiji 7 Sep 2023 for reports from 2010 to 2022).
Also, this is not to be confused with the lack of action by professional bodies, since
the Department of Archaeology in Belgrade does not only have an ethical policy
(Univerzitet u Beogradu, Filozofski fakultet, Odeljenje za arheologiju 31 March
2022) but also a mechanism to counter gender violence (Univerzitet u Beogradu,
Filozofski fakultet, Sigurno mesto 7 Sep 2023). These followed relatively fast after
the 2020 Gender Statement of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA
2020 Statement on Archaeology and Gender 27-29 April 2022). This demonstrates
that the Department for Archaeology in Belgrade is in tune with the European
archaeological community concerning issues of gender.
Furthermore, it should also be stressed that members of the LGBTQAI+
community in Serbia are frequently victims of violence (Coltofean-Arizancu,
Gaydarska & Plutniak 2020), among them being students of archaeology and
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archaeologists. I am aware of at least one incident of physical violence which
involved a student of archaeology in Belgrade, and similar stories are abundant from
other countries world-wide (Dowson 2006: 99100). Again, as in the case of
asymmetrical exposure to violence on the lines of gender, the cases of violence
against LGBTQAI+ students of archaeology are only a drop in the sea of violence
against this community in Serbia in general. Also, it must be stressed that this should
not be considered the result of a lack of mechanisms from the professional bodies,
especially not those at university departments. The Department for Archaeology at
the University of Belgrade remains a safe space, with institutional solutions and allies
present, and the problems it faces are the problems many societies in the world face.
Teaching Gender in Serbian Archaeology
I previously argued that the number of women employed at the Department for
Archaeology of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, gradually
increased after the establishment of archaeology as a university subject in Serbia.
However, the gradual rise in the number of employed women and the current gender
balance at the Department for Archaeology in Belgrade has by no means led to more
gender awareness in archaeological teaching and research (cf. Novaković 2021: 432).
It is clear that gender archaeology was and still is a term used only by some lecturers
at the department, but there are clear and positive signs of change.
Within the course Introduction to Archaeology, taught by Aleksandar Palavestra at
the Department for Archaeology of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of
Belgrade, gender and feminist archaeology are introduced to the students within the
general topic of interpretative or postprocessual archaeology (Univerzitet u
Beogradu, Filozofski fakultet, Odeljenje za arheologiju, Silabusi 7 Sep 2023).
Palavestra is one of the few in the department to teach about feminist and gender
archaeologies. Just like in his book Cultural contexts of archaeology (2011), in his lectures
I had the opportunity to attend (2006-2011), he recognized the importance of
feminist criticism of androcentrism in archaeology and the need to seriously consider
past gender systems and their differences to modern ones. He also highlighted less
considered cases of narratives in archaeology, argued to be based in feminism, such
as that of Ruth Tringham (1994) told from a perspective of a Neolithic widow
burning her house (Palavestra 2011: 255256).
Gender archaeology in its bright spectrum was taught by Staša Babić at the
Department for Archaeology of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of
Belgrade as part of the doctoral studies plan from 2007 (Univerzitet u Beogradu,
Filozofski fakultet, Odeljenje za arheologiju, Silabusi 7 Sep 2023). The
recommended literature for this course included standard works in gender
archaeology (Daz-Andreu 2005; Sørensen 2000; Gilchrist 1999). It can even be said
that Babić (2004: 118) initiated a critical approach towards “sexing graves” based on
modern assumptions about the gender associations of material culture such as
jewellery and weapons. Babić regularly includes gender themes in her courses and
encourages students interested in gender archaeology. I was introduced to gender
archaeology by Babić myself when, in my first year of BA studies in 2006-2007, she
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lent to me the Reader in Gender Archaeology (Hays-Gilpin & Whitley 1997). Babić
continued considering gender and sexuality themes in her other works too, devoting
an entire chapter to eroticism in the discipline of Greek archaeology (Babić 2008:
103117).
Gradual changes at the department introduced new courses, which have also
included perspectives on sex, gender and sexuality in archaeology, like Monika
Milosavljević’s course Archaeology between nature and culture that includes the
works of Roberta Gilchrist and my own (Matić 2021) in the course literature
(Univerzitet u Beogradu, Filozofski fakultet, Odeljenje za arheologiju, Silabusi 7 Sep
2023).
As far as I know, gender archaeology is a non-existent subject in the archaeology
programs at other Balkan universities, but this does not differ from many
international archaeology departments (Gaydarska & Gutsmiedl-Schümann 2024).
During my BA and MA studies (2006-2011) at the Department of Archaeology of
the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, I was one of a few male students
interested in gender archaeology, and female students showing similar interest were
also only a few. Back then, the reluctance to deal with themes concerning women
and gender among my colleagues was primarily based on fear of being labelled or
outed as gay, something already noticed in other university environments of the
global West (Dowson 2000: 162). Nevertheless, I have to stress that, alongside
Palavestra and Babić, some professors of prehistoric archaeology, such as Dušan
Mihailović, encouraged my women and gender-focused choices of seminar themes
on their courses. As I already stressed above, there are clear signs that the situation
has changed towards the better.
Although gender archaeology is not omnipresent in the study programs of
archaeology departments across the Balkans, and elsewhere for that matter, the
region has a much stronger tradition of feminist, women, gender, and queer studies
outside of archaeology (Merc 2010: 117–120; Zaharijević 2008). One only has to
think about influential figures such as Slovenian anthropologist, classical philologist
and historian Svetlana Slapšak or Serbian social anthropologist and feminist theorist
Žarana Papić (1949-2002), some of whose works being of much use to
archaeologists (Papić & Sklevicky 2003; Slapšak 2013). Also worth mentioning is
Genero. Journal of Feminist Theory and Cultural Studies, the only journal in Serbia explicitly
tackling themes in women and gender studies, feminist, and queer theory. It
publishes papers in both the Balkan languages and English, and thus presents a
platform for scholarly exchange in the region and beyond.
Where archaeological publishing is concerned, Predrag Novaković stressed that the
Arheo journal was the first archaeological journal in ex-Yugoslavia to publish texts
on gender archaeology (Novaković 2021: 59). This is indeed true. As early as Arheo
7 from 1988 a paper on Antigone was written by Iztok Saksida, and a paper on
Artemis and Greek women by Helen King was translated into Slovenian. In Arheo
15, Saksida (1995) wrote his critical treaty on the gender revolution and the paper of
Salvatore Cucchiari (1981) on the origins of gender hierarchy. Tatjana Greif (2000)
wrote a review of the Reader in Gender Archaeology (Hays-Gilpin and Whitley 1997)
soon after its publication, and Vesna Merc (2005) conducted the gender bibliometric
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analysis of Prehistory of Yugoslavian Countries I referred to previously. Although sex-
based differences concerning physical activities and social status in, for example,
Early Bronze Age Mokrin have been considered by Serbian archaeologists (Porčić
& Stefanović 2009), in Serbia, the first papers on gender archaeology have been
published in non-archaeological journals Genero (Matić 2010; Matić 2011),
mentioned previously, and Issues in Ethnology and Anthropology. Being an author of two
of these, I have to stress that the reasons behind my choice of Genero journal over
10 years ago were twofold. Firstly, back in 2010-2011, I enrolled on the Women´s and
Gender Studies program at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of
Belgrade, and I was introduced to the journal Genero through my studies there.
Secondly, I was aware that most archaeological journals in Serbia and their editorial
boards would probably not be so keen to publish archaeological studies of gender,
especially not from a final year undergraduate student. In fact, the only other paper
in this direction was published in an anthropological journal, Issues in Ethnology and
Anthropology (Porčić 2010), a journal that provided an intellectual safe-house for
archaeologists writing with a theoretical and methodological background other than
descriptive accounts of excavation results or culture-historical synthesis of cultures,
diffusions and migrations (Babić 2018). A decade later, papers dealing with
archaeological studies of prehistoric women appeared in Issues in Ethnology and
Anthropology (Vuković 2021a). Other Serbian archaeologists have started including
gender as an important factor in their studies, ranging from Middle Bronze Age
burials in tumuli in Western Serbia (Ljuština & Dmitrović 2013) to cosmetic objects
in provincial burials of Roman Moesia (Mihajlović 2011; Mihajlović 2022). It also
took a decade after the first papers on gender archaeology appeared in Serbia for a
doctoral dissertation written at the Department of Archaeology in Belgrade to focus
on gendering of the burial record of Viminacium from the first to fourth century
CE (Danković 2020). Prehistorians and bioarchaeologists in Serbia have also
investigated differences in physiological stress for different sexes in Mesolithic and
Neolithic communities (Penezić et al. 2020). Therefore, there are clear signs that
much has changed towards the better in the last decade, not only in archaeological
education but also within research. Some of my colleagues from Serbia have
informed me that despite being very much aware of gender archaeology, the
archaeological record they study limits them in their capacity to pose and answer
questions concerning gender. This critical reluctance is certainly a better
archaeological practice then the one based on assumptions.
I would like to stress that although gender archaeology may not be the scholarly
focus of Serbian archaeology, it cannot be claimed that no Serbian archaeologist has
seriously dealt with issues of gender in (pre)history. It is therefore somewhat
surprising that their works (published both in Serbian and in English in international
journals) are often not acknowledged by colleagues from other archaeological
communities (for example most recently Robb & Harris 2018; but see their revised
view in Gaydarska et al. 2023). A fun fact is also that, although often assumed
otherwise, not all Serbian archaeologists interpret Neolithic figurines as evidence for
the existence of a Mother Goddess cult. As early as the late 1970s, some chapters of
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Prehistory of Yugoslavian Countries demonstrate that archaeologists in Serbia had also
considered other interpretations (Garašanin 1979: 195).
It is also worth mentioning that a number of key publications in gender studies and
feminist theory have been translated into Serbian and Croatian (Centar za ženske
studije ZAGREB Knjige 7 Sep 2023), including the works of Michel Foucault and
Judith Butler (for the latter see a recent seminal study by Zaharijević 2020). Even a
paper by Spanish archaeologist Margarita Díaz-Andreu, who extensively dealt with
gender in her earlier works, has been translated into Serbian (Dijas-Andreu 2003).
Therefore, literature from the fields of gender studies, feminist and queer theories,
including anthropological, sociological, and philosophical studies of gender, have
been available to archaeologists in the Balkans for decades (see also Merc 2010
specifically for Slovenia). The choice not to consult them is therefore deliberate, and
not a consequence of unavailability or language barriers. This deliberate choice has
consequences on how past gender and sexuality are represented in some
archaeological research and writing in Serbia, to which I turn next.
How Queer are the Neolithic Vinča Culture Figurines?
In 2006, during excavation of Feature 03/03, archaeologists working on the site of
Vinča-Belo Brdo near Belgrade, Serbia, found a pottery assemblage of the late Vinča
culture (Pločnik phase), consisting of a conical drinking bowl decorated with eight
modelled protomes, a carinated jug, and three amphorae. According to Nenad Tasić,
the site director, the bowl with the protomes was the centrepiece of this set” and was
associated with a ritual which involves the male-female relationship” (Tasić 2007: 203). This
interpretation by Tasić is based on the shape of the protomes on the bowl. The
vessel was made in a fine fabric of reddish-brown colour and had a flat base
(diameter: 3.8cm), a simple rim (inner diameter: 10.3cm) and had a maximum height
of 7cm. Its capacity was calculated to have been 0.2 litres (Tasić 2007: 204).
The protomes resemble the heads of contemporary Vinča culture figurines and
include both those with horns and those without. These protomes are arranged in
pairs on the bowl and placed on the rim symmetrically. To the exterior of the vessel
there are two small plastic lugs placed ergonomically so that if the bowl is lifted with
both hands, the lugs will be placed between the index finger and the middle fingers,
allowing for an easy hold of the vessel. When the bowl is held in this manner,
according to Tasić, it is directed towards the person holding it exactly to the point
where the protomes are positioned more widely apart (Tasić 2007: 205). Therefore,
pairs of identical heads are positioned left and right from the point of view of the
vessel holder. The places for drinking are identical on both sides and have heads
with horns on the left and those without on the right. According to Tasić “the shape
of the rim of the bowl and the disposition of the protomes, suggests that it could be used as part of a
ritual involving two people (Tasić 2007: 206). He then argues that horns are almost
exclusively associated with male individuals referring to a vast region extending from
Anatolia to the Pannonian Plain. Tasić suggests that the bowl with protomes from
Feature 03/03 at Vinča-Belo Brdo represents a male-female union, and that the ritual
described above maybe some sort of a wedding ceremony” (Tasić 2007: 208).
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There are several issues with this interpretation, the first being the interpretation of
horned protomes as male and those without horns as female, the second is the
neglect of other Vinča culture bowls with protomes that have different
iconographies, and the third issue is the assumed binary of the supposed ritual, a
binary not convincingly argued. Where the first issue is concerned, according to the
largest analysed sample of Vinča culture figurines (419 from 34 sites) of the late
Vinča culture (Gradac and Pločnik phases) there is no statistically significant
association between horns and the representation of primary sexual characteristics
such breasts and vagina in the case of females, or penis in the case of males. This is
because most of the figurines with horned heads do not have primary sexual
characteristics depicted, and when they do, both male and female sexual
characteristics can be depicted on figurines with horned heads (Milenković &
Arsenijević 2009: 336-338). Therefore, there is no reason to accept the assumed
binary gender interpretation of protomes as suggested by Tasić. Regarding the
second issue, other Vinča culture bowls with protomes studied by Miloš Spasić and
Adam Crnobrnja clearly demonstrate that in many cases the protomes are so stylized
that they cannot be recognized as anthropomorphic or zoomorphic. They also stress
that horned protomes do not necessarily have to be representations of cattle horns,
and that some zoomorphic protomes can be identified as birds or reptiles (Spasić &
Crnobrnja 2014: 187).
Where the third issue is concerned, it is clear based on the evidence from Vinča
culture figurines and other bowls with protomes, that there is no good reason to
associate horned protomes with the male. Consequently, there is no reason to
accept that the presumed ceremony only involved male-female couples, as implied
by Tasić. Since horned protomes could have belonged to male or female humans or
animals, and protomes without horns could have also belonged to male or female
humans or animals, other interpretations should be considered. Alternative
interpretations could go in directions far beyond modern monogamous
heteropatriarchal unions and wedding ceremonies. Maybe whatever these bowls
were used for did not just concern relations among humans, but also with animals.
Indeed, queer archaeology has criticised heteronormative assumptions behind
archaeological interpretations for several decades (Dowson 2000). By making
assumptions about gender and sexuality in their interpretations of the archaeological
record, many scholars avoid other possible interpretations and provide their own
assumptions with the aura of scientism. In the words of Thomas A. Dowson:
Archaeologists excavate living spaces, huts and houses, among other things, and impose on those
units families. They talk of ‘owners’ and their ‘wives’. There is often no evidence produced or
discussed that suggest that a male and a female, conjoined in some form of ritual matrimony, and
their legitimate children lived in those structures. These ‘families’ are drawn from our own modern,
Western notions of what a family should be” (Dowson 2000: 162). It is striking just how
many of these same assumptions criticized by Dowson more than two decades ago
are found in the interpretation of the bowl with protomes from Vinča.
Consequently, the modern heterosexual matrix is provided with a deep past, ranging
back into the Neolithic, and comes forth as an ahistorical natural state of gender
EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 8 (2023) 53-75
63
relations and human sexuality. Numerous examples from the ethnographic,
archaeological, and historical record demonstrate the contrary (Daz-Andreu 2005).
It is important to come back to Vinča figurines for a brief moment. Regarding late
Vinča culture figurines, Milenković and Arsenijević have argued that figurines on
which sexual attributes are not present are most frequent (214), and that those which
have female sex representations, such as a vulva and breasts, are more numerous
(193) than those with male genitals (8). Figurines with both breasts and male genitals
are occasionally found (4) (Milenković & Arsenijević 2009: 344). However, whereas
these two authors do not make judgements on the latter, others do. For Miroslav
Lazić, “hermaphrodites” and “so-called Siamese twins” are classified as “bizarre mythological
figures” (Lazić 2015: 104). Clearly, these are not emic categories of the Late Neolithic
in the western Balkans, and as terms they are laden with meaning and prejudice.
Furthermore, in the sample of Milenković and Arsenijević (2009: 344), 60% of the
figurines are clothed and 40% are naked. Their results were confirmed by later
analyses of figurines from five sites conducted by Jasna Vuković (2021a: 754), who
also argued that figurines without primary sexual characteristics depicted are
considerable in number, quantitatively sometimes even being the most dominant.
However, whereas Milenković, Arsenijević and Vuković are careful in interpreting
clothed figurines without clear depictions of primary sexual characteristics, Lazić
groups the asexual figurines in the classification of Milenković and Arsenijević into
male figurines (Lazić 2015: 100). Clearly, there is no obvious reason why this should
be done.
Similarly, when another artefact category is concerned, Vuković writes that beads
that may have been used for hair (Tasić 2008: 158–159) were used by women
(Vuković 2021b: 28). But of course, men could have had longer hair and decorated
it with beads too, since gendered patterns of beauty are cross-culturally diverse and
what seems feminine to one society can be less feminine or even masculine in
another (Matić 2022 with contributions). Similarly, in his paper on women in Roman
provinces on the territory of Serbia, Miroslav Vujović points to finds such as
jewellery (bracelets of bronze, bone or glass), hairpins made of bone, or glass beads
in military forts along the Danube in Đerdap, eastern Serbia. According to him, these
could with great probability be interpreted as the property of women, possibly
reflecting the presence of wives of the high officers, servants or slaves (Vujović
2021: 41). Indeed, nothing excludes these possibilities, but one should also bear in
mind that other possibilities are not excluded, since exactly the material culture
mentioned here could be used by men who wanted to appear feminine and could
have also visited the military forts, either providing sexual services or as entertainers
(Sapsford 2022: 2547). When the possibilities are many, archaeologists should try
to consider them all equally seriously.
Gendered Spaces and Activities in (Pre)History of Serbia
Gender-based assumptions and stereotypes have a long tradition in western Balkan
archaeology, just like in other archaeologies (Coltofean-Arizancu, Gaydarska &
Matić 2021). In fact, the seminal Prehistory of Yugoslavian Countries is full of such
UROŠ MATIĆ
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assumptions. For example, Dragoslav Srejović (1979: 67) assumed that mobile
groups of Early Neolithic Lepenski Vir communities probably consisted of adult
males, without explaining why. He also added that since some graves at Lepenski
Vir demonstrated special respect towards elderly women, experience gathered over
years was especially valued, leading him to conclude that in the older phases of
Lepenski Vir some type of gerontocracy had been established (Srejović 1979: 67; for
similar arguments see Vuković 2021b: 28). Similarly, Alojz Benac makes the
assumption that a double pit-dwelling at the Neolithic site of Nebo, assigned to the
Butmir culture, was a “men’s house” in which unmarried young men spent part of their
lives (Benac 1979: 446). Šime Batović (1979: 515) assumed that social relations in
the Neolithic were based on “woman-mother” as the carrier of social and ruling
relations, which he terms a matriarchy and to which he relates the Neolithic female
figurines (Batović 1979: 663–664; for criticism of assumptions about a Neolithic
matriarchy in recent Serbian archaeology see Vuković 2021b: 14–15). However,
recent studies of 159 Early Neolithic Starčevo figurines have shown that pregnancy
was not unambiguously depicted (Tripković, Porčić & Stefanović 2017), although
studies of tooth cementum indicate that Neolithic women experienced a higher
number of stressful life episodes than Mesolithic women, possibly including more
pregnancies during their lifetimes (Penezić et al. 2020).
One of the commonly found gender stereotypes in archaeology is that of gendered
labour division. For example, in their text for the catalogue Vinča. The Prehistoric
Metropolis, Jasna Vuković, Milorad Ignjatović and Duško Šljivar (2008: 122) describe
as certain the picture of an early evening at Neolithic Vinča-Belo Brdo when
housewives prepared food, fishermen, satisfied with their catch repaired their nets, children set around
the fire and listened to the stories of the elderly, and young female strutters enjoyed luxurious jewellery
made out of shells, brought by traders from far away”. Unfortunately, there is hardly any way
we can be “certain” about the gendered division of labour behind this picture. Since
there is no cemetery associated to the settlement of Vinča-Belo Brdo, we cannot
even use the burial record to strengthen the idea that “young female strutters” wore the
shell-jewellery rather than male strutters or both. Even if we had a cemetery and a
clear sex/gender division between those buried with or without jewellery, nothing
can guarantee that this same division existed among the living. There is also no
reason to assume that only men went fishing. The authors claim that knowledge
from related archaeologies, primarily ethnoarchaeology, allow an assumption to be
made that in the Neolithic female mistresses of the house fire” produced pottery in single
households (Vuković, Ignjatović & Šljivar 2008: 126). This is also hard to prove.
There are certainly studies based on pre-firing fingerprints from other archaeological
contexts, that pottery could have been produced by individuals of different ages and
genders (Sanders et al. 2023; for forensic analyses of fingerprints on clay Neolithic
Vinča culture artefacts see Balj 2017). The ethnographic record is equally diverse
(Bolger 2013: 162165) and actually cannot not support anything relating to past
gendered labour divisions. Recently, Vuković (2021b: 18) has suggested that sex-
based division of labour can be recognised with great certainty as early as the
Neolithic. Supposedly, women did not move much, in comparison to men, so that
their activities were probably tied to the house and its immediate vicinity”. Next to agricultural
EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 8 (2023) 53-75
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work, women supposedly took care of the household, prepared food and took care
of the offspring and the elderly. Vuković even assumes that at least two women
processed grain using two stone querns found in a house in Vinča-Belo Brdo. Men
supposedly did “more physically demanding work” such as production of stone tools or
woodcutting work (Vuković 2021b: 18). However, we do not have written records
nor iconography which could indicate some clear-cut labour division. Even if we
did, we would still have to be source critical. The ethnographic record indicates that
the degree of labour division concerning food preparation (Mauriello & Cottino
2022) and taking care of offspring and the elderly along gender lines differs from
culture to culture. In fact, a new study of Neolithic bone spoons from the site of
Grad-Starčevo indicates that new types of weaning food were followed by new types
of motherhood, which could now involve other members of the community
(Stefanović et. al. 2019).
It is also unclear why only men would conduct more physically demanding work.
Yes, evolutionarily and historically speaking men are on average more strongly built
than women, but this does not mean that all men and all women are physically built
the same and that girls have been allowed to roam free and train their bodies only
in some societies (Fausto-Sterling 1992: 214215). It goes without saying that not all
men are equally strong and able, just as all women are not. Another assumption
Vuković seems to be certain of, is that pottery production was in the hands of
women bearing in mind that work in relation to the preparation and keeping of food is
traditionally female, it does not come as strange that pottery too belongs to the female sphere
(Vuković 2021b: 19). Just as the ethnographic and historical record are diverse
concerning the gendered division of labour concerning food, so are they concerning
pottery production. For example, according to the written evidence (titles) and
iconography, pottery production in Middle Kingdom Egypt (ca. 2040-1650 BCE)
was predominantly in the hands of men (Stefanović 2013).
The catalogue for the recent exhibition First Kings of Europe even boldly claims that
Neolithic communities of south-eastern Europe are “commonly assumed” to have been
egalitarian and that social status was based on age and gender or was achieved
through personal skills and actions, rather than being passed on automatically to the
next generation (Gyucha & Parkinson 2023: 7). However, neither is this commonly
assumed (Vuković 2022 with further references), nor is it clear what the authors
assume here with status based on gender division, since we do not know much about
gender systems in Neolithic societies in the first place (Robb & Harris 2018).
Other authors have been more careful in making assumptions on gender in the
Neolithic of the western Balkans. In his study of Neolithic households of Banjica in
Belgrade, Boban Tripković (2007: 13, 27) uses the words man and woman once
each, and not in relation to the primary research theme of his book. The author is
indeed careful in avoiding gendering of the archaeological record based on
assumptions, which is observable in his comment on the inductive nature of other
author’s interpretations of ovens as the zones of women who prepared food in them
(Tripković 2007: 27). The author is equally careful not to make assumptions on the
gender of family members and their relations in his more generalist study of late
Neolithic households in the central Balkans (Tripković 2013: 247, 252).
UROŠ MATIĆ
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Nevertheless, the choice of the image for the front cover of the book titled
Household and Community. House and Dwelling Histories in Late Neolithic of Central
Balkans (Tripković 2013) is revealing. A Serbian couple, a man and a woman, who
worked on excavations at the site of Vinča Belo Brdo, can be seen seated on the
remains of a Neolithic house. Was this really the natural state of things in deep
history?
Towards an Activist Gender Archaeology in the Balkans
That the past serves as an identity anchor for various social groups and that
archaeology has a strong role in construction of nationalist identities in Serbia has
long been recognized (Milosavljević 2022 with further references). However, the
past in the service of constructions of modern gender identities and ideals of beauty
has only recently been explored in Serbia (Teodorski 2022).
Individual archaeological studies of gender in prehistory on the territory of Serbia
(Matić 2010; Matić 2012b) attracted the attention of some members of the public in
Serbia, for better or worse. As is to be expected, there were those who were
negatively critical, on social media such as Facebook, but never in a scholarly journal
subjected to peer review. Nevertheless, the criticism was without serious arguments
and based on the interpretation of one of the paper’s titles (Matić 2010) and not its
content, and it was wholeheartedly defended online by one Serbian archaeologist,
Jasna Vuković, to whom I am grateful.
However, what seems to have been a positive reception came from organisations
fighting for the rights of the LGBTQAI+ community in Serbia, where on the
website of Geten organisation, a link to my paper on the Dupljaja cart (Matić 2010)
was posted (MJ Geten 17 Feb 2020). This is of course not coincidental, since the
paper argues that the Middle Bronze Age communities of the Danube Valley in the
region of modern Serbia had a non-binary understanding of sex/gender (Matić
2010). In this sense, I understand the reference by Geten to this paper as more than
just informative for the local LGBTQAI+ community, but also as a form of
legitimisation and empowerment. In fact, this is in my opinion one of the most
important roles of archaeology for marginalized groups. Indeed, I support this move
in the current climate of heteropatriarchal attacks on all forms of non-
heteronormative identities in Serbia and the western Balkans in general. As I stated
in the introduction, gender studies and feminist and queer theory are under attack
by certain organisations and politicians in Serbia. They, just like those like-minded
individuals in other countries, such as Hungary, claim that the West is introducing a
sort of a gender ideology. However, such claims neglect or deny decades of
research in biology, anthropology, sociology, history and archaeology. Furthermore,
the way these attacks are formulated is a form of heteropatriarchal ideology.
Studies of homophobia among high school students in Serbia from 2019 have
shown that it is conspicuous but less present than in 2011. Only 24% of high school
students support LGBTQAI+ rights, 31% is moderately homophobic, whereas 44%
is homophobic. Girls have more tolerant attitudes than boys. However, 50% of the
Serbian public is of the opinion that homosexuality is a disease, and this has not
EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 8 (2023) 53-75
67
changed between 2011 and 2019, and almost every third high school student is of
the opinion that LGBTQAI+ individuals should be beaten up (Radoman 2020: 70
74). According to the same study, Muslim students in some cities, such as Novi
Pazar, are more homophobic than students of other Serbian cities (Radoman 2020:
71). The same study has shown that attitudes towards trans people are even worse:
60% of high school students to not support sex change, 50% deny the statement
that trans people are equally valuable and stable as parents as everyone else. All in
all, the results show that even after more than three decades of movement for the
improvement of the rights of sexual minorities, there is no significant improvement
and social attitudes are changing slowly (Radoman 2020: 74). Therefore, biology and
history teachers in Serbian high schools have a crucial role in forming the opinion
of future generations. However, high school history handbooks do not deal with the
prehistory and history of gender.
Furthermore, it is widely known that nationalist, homophobic and clero-fascist
ideologies in Serbia rely heavily on an imagined Medieval Serbia which is understood
as an ideal from which modern Serbian society has distanced itself under the
pressure of Western ideologies. Bearing this in mind, the Serbian public and future
generations such as high-school students should be educated on actual evidence for
same-sex activities in the Medieval period (Bojanin 2014) and Ottoman and liberated
Serbia of the nineteenth century (Jovanović 2014). Written evidence from Medieval
Serbia suggest that same-sex practices were not singled out from other sexual
practices that were considered sinful. Not all same-sex activities were judged the
same way by Church authorities, so that passive participation in same-sex activities
between men was considered to be a lesser sin (Bojanin 2014: 36). The fact that in
other past and contemporary cultures one finds exactly the opposite, namely, a
judgemental attitude towards the passive rather than the actively penetrating
participant (Matić 2021: 113–123; Matić 2024), demonstrates that attitudes towards
same-sex intercourse and the role one takes in it are not natural but socio-culturally
negotiated and therefore subject to change.
The impact of imperial-colonial Ottoman rule in Serbia on formations of attitudes
towards same-sex relations, especially among men, was of great importance. The
conquering culture tolerated desire of men towards adolescent boys and younger
men and practiced this desire to feminize the conquered side. Consequently, same-
sex desire, which was already stigmatized by the Church, acquired the additional
label of a condemned practice associated with the oriental Other (Jovanović 2014:
4547). These complex queer histories could play a crucial role in destabilising
homophobia among both Christian and Muslim communities in Serbia. Regarding
this, archaeologists in Serbia also have to consider spaces in which non-normative
sexual practices (male-male; female-female) could be carried out in secrecy, the
Ottoman bathhouse being one of them (as evidenced in Ottoman sources for other
parts of the Empire and in sources written by outsiders, Murray 1997a: 24, 46;
Murray 1997b: 99100; Semerdijan 2015: 259).
Therefore, archaeological and historical interventions in the content of high school
handbooks are direly needed if Serbian high school students are to be confronted
with a cultural diversity of gender systems with the goal of de-naturalizing the norms
UROŠ MATIĆ
68
that they take for granted in forming their homo- and transphobic attitudes. For this
to happen, we first need change within the profession of archaeology in Serbia.
Conclusion
Archaeology in Serbia and Balkan archaeologies in general have made some
important steps in the direction of epistemological maturity, critical awareness of
different theoretical and methodological stands in archaeology, international co-
operation and interdisciplinary research. This also includes changes to courses at the
Department of Archaeology in Belgrade, which are increasingly acknowledging the
importance of gender and sexuality in the past, feminist and queer theory, and
gender studies. Alongside an ethics policy and clear institutional measures against
gendered violence, the changes at the department in the last few decades have indeed
brought improvement.
Still, much like many other archaeological communities, those in the Balkans
struggle with heteronormativity in interpretations of the past. This is especially
observable in prehistoric archaeology, where there is a lack of written sources that
could provide insights into gender systems. Consequently, and this is the major issue,
heteronormative pasts and modern Western heteropatriarchy are simply assumed as
a logical and natural state. They are thus provided with deep history and legitimation,
which can then be easily used by some groups with dangerous intensions. The case
of a bowl with protomes from Vinča-Belo Brdo and its interpretation as a vessel
used in matrimonial ritual for male-female couples, which relies on other equally
problematic assumptions, is exemplary. It is ultimately a consequence of gendering
horned protomes as male and those without horns as female, something not
corroborated by the archaeological evidence. The underlying heteronormativity is
also observable in the language some authors used to describe figurines with
depictions of both breasts and male genitals as “hermaphrodites” and “bizarre.” Not
far removed are interpretations of prehistoric gendered division of space and
activities that rely on assumptions or poorly supported arguments.
Numerous examples that illustrate different understandings of gender and sexuality
to those rooted in heteropatriarchy are attested in the prehistoric societies who lived
on the territory of modern Serbia. Nevertheless, they are not used to their full
potential for activist purposes in combating homo- and transphobia. Bearing in
mind that these examples are well known to professionals in archaeology, the first
step towards unlocking their full educational potential is introducing these examples
in history handbooks for high school students. Furthermore, bearing in mind that
the LGBTQAI+ community follows the works of Serbian archaeologists on
questions of gender (pre)history, archaeologists in Serbia should enter into a more
socially responsible dialogue with them.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to the editors of the journal and this issue for
accepting my paper. Furthermore, my gratitude goes to Monika Milosavljević and
EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology, Volume 8 (2023) 53-75
69
Ivana Živaljević for providing useful comments on the paper. I am also grateful to
Amra Šačić Beća and Inga Vilogorac Brčić for providing useful information. To
Susan Stratton, I am most thankful for proofreading the English. Finally, I thank
those colleagues who provided me with information and reference suggestions, but
chose to remain anonymous, only demonstrating further the necessity of writing this
paper.
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... This is extremely worrying at many levels, not least that such a linguistic and conceptual gaffe can happen at the national level or that the existence of a "third sex" can be threatening to the Bulgarian Constitution. Although such a very serious linguistic challenge can explain why gender education in archaeology is lacking, it does not excuse its absence (for comparison with neighbouring Serbia, see Matić 2023). Like in the Anglophone tradition, the "natural" place to teach gender is within course/s on Archaeological Theory, a subject that is almost non-existent in University curricula, with a token one-semester course in both Sofia University (only in MA courses) and the New Bulgarian University. ...
Chapter
Higher education in archaeology is drawing increasing attention from academics and institutions in order to improve the methods of teaching and learning. A parallel trend in mostly, but not only, academic circles is the establishment of sexed and gendered patterns in past societies and the present professional discipline of archaeology. How these two trends interrelate is unclear at present. This chapter looks at current and archival data on module descriptions from universities in Bulgaria, Germany and the United Kingdom in an attempt to identify trajectories in gender education in archaeology, with the presumption that key issues, methods and theories in archaeology will have an equal mention. The results show a very low level of publicly available archival data and sporadic to entirely absent mention of gender, identity and diversity in descriptions aimed to inform and attract potential students. We conclude by identifying steps towards improving this dismal situation.
Chapter
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Chapter
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