Sunday night I was reading Sherm’s new issue of National Geographic, and was intrigued by the Peruvian archaeology of a Moche woman that was perhaps a ruler in the very patriarchal group.
The great mystery surrounding it all is that this woman was found laid to rest at the top of a sacrificial mound, adorned with beads, tattoos, and accompanied by a variety of ceremonial looking ceramic objects. But previously, it was thought that only men were rulers among the Moche, and the fact that she was a young woman and had given birth to at least one child (yeah for pelvic notching!), seems to be really throwing them off.
Now, sure there might be a simple explanation. Perhaps she was the daughter of a high priest, or wife of a ruler. Perhaps she was just a very skilled artisan. But I like a more complicated, gender-theory-laden approach, similar to that which was applied to Tomb 7 of the Monte Alban site in Oaxaca, Mexico by Rosemary Joyce, et al. (Joyce, Rosemary A., Maria J. Rodriguez-Shadow, Patricia Plunket, Marcus Winter, Cira Martinez Lopez. 1994. On Engendering Monte Alban Tomb 7. Current Anthropology 35:284-287). Though it seems that this particular burial was much easier to sex than those in Tomb 7, sexing is different from gendering. I’m intrigued to know if the things found in the woman’s burial are similar to objects found in men’s burials. Bascially, as usual, I’m interested in a more gender-theory type approach. But that’s probably not practical, and as I once wrote in a finely titled paper, “While correcting past androcentrism, and taking exploitation into account are important, unbiased interpretation should be the primary concern. Sacrificing impartiality for a particular theoretical stance will only be counterproductive for both ideology and the discipline of archaeology.” Now I feel like Hill, quoting myself and all.
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