this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024
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Archaeology

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Archaeology or archeology[a] is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes.

Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time.

The discipline involves surveying, excavation, and eventually analysis of data collected, to learn more about the past. In broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Read more...

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Woman the hunter: Ancient Andean remains challenge old ideas of who speared big game (www.science.org)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
4 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Early hunting was “gender neutral,” archaeologists suggest

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[–] Gigan 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I think they're making wild assumptions with very little evidence, and this line pretty much confirms it:

Robert Kelly of the University of Wyoming applauds the discovery of the female hunter but isn't convinced by many of the other potential cases. He points out that having tools in the same grave as a person doesn't always mean they used them in life. Two burials were female infants found with hunting implements, for example. Buried tools could also have been offerings from male hunters to express their sorrow, he says.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I think they’re making wild assumptions with very little evidence

Don't you think it is a wild assumption with very little evidence to suggest that only men hunted?

Also, after the part you quoted, the article continues by saying:

Pitblado says that even if not all of those female remains belonged to hunters, the meta-analysis suggests women have long been capable of hunting, and provides hints about where to look more closely for evidence. Human ecologist Eugenia Gayo of the University of Chile agrees. Such research could help answer questions such as "What were the type of environments where everybody got involved in the hunting?" she says.

It shouldn't be surprising that women could hunt, Pitblado adds. "These women were living high up in the Andes, at 13,000 feet full time," she says. "If you can do that, surely you can bring down a deer."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Don't you think it is a wild assumption with very little evidence to suggest that only men hunted?

I used to think archeologists were cool, but over time it has become readily apparent that something is only considered evidence until it doesn't fit preconceived notions based on sexist attitudes (and racist for that matter) in most cases. On the plus side, there has been a lot of progress in the last couple of decades to at least admit that there is bias, which is a step needed to be able to better understand how much bias influences discoveries.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I think it’s a very difficult task to try and interpret findings without being influenced by contemporary stereotypes. As you mention, there have been voices in the past decades of archeologists, anthropologists, etc who do a dissent job in trying to just examine the findings.

Others -unfortunately- try to fit the findings into a preconceived narrative. To my understanding "man the hunter hypothesis" is one of those, because as it is mentioned in the article:

the idea that all hunters were male has been bolstered by studies of the few present-day groups of hunter gatherers such as the Hadza of Tanzania and San of southern Africa.

And I would argue that it was a very limited research based on a few (not the few) of those hunter-gatherer groups that are/were considered contemporary.