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Nomadic Subjects: Sexual Difference in Ancient and Ethnographic Studies of Pastoral Mobility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2022

Claudia Chang Open the ORCID record for Claudia Chang [Opens in a new window]
Claudia Chang*
Affiliation:
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World New York University 508 Fellows Avenue Syracuse,NY13210-3125USA Email: cchang@sbc.edu
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Abstract

This essay explores Braidotti's nomadic subject as the starting point for a posthumanist perspective for the interpretation of ethnographic and ancient pastoral societies. Why has women's labour and positionality in such societies tended to be ignored by archaeology? The author's autobiographical discussion of her earlier work on village and transhumant pastoralists in Greece frames her personal discovery of gender and power dynamics in mobile societies. The main case study, however, examines the household archaeology of Iron Age Saka (eastern variants of Scythians) and later pastoral groups in order to put forth hypotheses about gendered production in semi-sedentary societies. Haraway's concept of the cyborg and Braidotti's concept of the nomadic subject are examined. Material studies of ceramic serving dishes, household debris and house form at an Iron Age agropastoral settlement apply some of the concepts of new feminisms. A comparison is drawn between the philosophy of nomadology and the anthropological archaeology of pastoral nomads.

Type
Special Section: Posthuman Feminism and Archaeology
Information
Cambridge Archaeological Journal , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , May 2022 , pp. 321 - 330
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research

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