Poles Apart. Have There Been Any Male and Female Graves?

Abstract

This paper discusses archaeological burial analysis, and some ideological problems with the application of sex/gender defined as a dual positions construction, i.e. sex/gender as the male-female metaphor. Through traditional criteria as well as through multidimensional methods of defining male and female graves, we reproduce a binary assymetrical interpretation of gender. Alternatively, the ongoing discussion on ideological and theoretical aspects of gender is regarded as a challenge to archaeological burial analysis. A gender critical point of departure opens up the possibilities of looking away from the old tradition of burial analysis by which gender has been fixed in advance through a given male-female bipolarity.