Gender dynamics, routine activities, and place in haudenosaunee territory: An archaeological case study from the cayuga region of central New York State

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the spatial arrangement of gendered activities on the landscape within and outside an archaeologically recovered, Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) longhouse in the Cayuga region of upstate New York. The large size of longhouses (ca. 20-40 or more meters long) means that their interiors form a cultural landscape that people move across to perform spatially distributed activities that are also related to spatially distributed activities in the broader landscape outside the longhouse. Several longhouses have been documented at two sites occupied during the mid to late 1500s in this region. I will discuss the manner in which the spatially and temporally repeated performance of gendered routine activities, particularly those associated with food preparation and domestic manufacture, organizes and determines the archaeological record, as well as the impact this has on the relative visibility of women's and men's work at the level of a village landscape. The analysis of feature contents results in the identification of differences between the routine practices undertaken in separate areas of one of these structures. The implications of this study for understanding the organization of economic activities as well as gender relations in Haudenosaunee society are also explored. However, analysis of activities in the structure discussed here needs to be framed within the context of the broader landscape and the patterns of activities in other longhouses that have been researched. I therefore begin by placing the settlements within the context of the broader environment. In addition, the current context of these sites includes contemporary land use and the current owners of these sites. The encouragement and participation of the landowners has allowed this research to move forward and has helped to preserve the sites within the current rural landscape. © 2010 Springer-Verlag New York.