Bodily Entanglements: Gender, Archaeological Sciences and the More-than-ness of Archaeological Bodies

Abstract

Critical feminist Posthumanism provides novel ways of dealing with bodies as material-discursive phenomena. As such, bodies come about, change and dissolve by re-workings of entangled relations. Such relationships are making human bodies more-than-human. Bodies can be understood as full of excesses - that will not be captured by, for example, gender or age categories alone - albeit occasionally materially shaped by them. Examples of such excessive relations are captured by DNA analysis or various isotope analyses - where diet as well as geological habitat gets imprinted into the body and become a part of the personhood - and can be discussed as the landscape within. This paper deals with some misunderstandings around Posthumanism, but also with how critical posthumanist feminist theory can breathe new life into archaeological gender studies and thereby also forge new relationships with the archaeological sciences.