Next stop: Gender. Women at Roman military forts in Germany

Extract

As a Palaeolithic archaeologist I am often surprised by the paucity of research on issues of social relations in more recent time periods. The wealth of archaeological evidence and written texts seems so plentiful from where I stand. Thus when I look into Greek and Roman archaeology for examples of research on gendered being and for a discussion of difference in the past I am reminded that archaeological evidence is the consequence of research questions as much as their starting point. We only see that which we are able to comprehend, and archaeological finds and their interpretations become visible through the questions we ask. Issues of gender in the archaeological record are a very useful reminder of the firm grip that disciplinary traditions have on our imagination. In archaeology material determinism and scientific positivism, coupled with the straw man of subjective distortion of objective reality, continue to drive our imagination at a comfortable speed that does not threaten to overturn the theoretical cart. Furthermore, firmly held disciplinary boundaries, such as those that separate history and the study of texts and representations from the practice of archaeological fieldwork, can result in a limited conversation between the social and material traces of the past. In this sense classical archaeology can appear suddenly familiar to a prehistoric archaeologist, if the refusal of history in one context effectively parallels its absence in another. As someone both used to prehistoric contexts featuring minimal physical evidence, and interested in issues of gender as understood by contemporary feminist scholars, I wonder why this should be so.