Gender Trouble and Current Archaeological Debates

This volume challenges the status quo by addressing a selection of intensely discussed themes in contemporary archaeological practice from a gender perspective. It aims to demonstrate that gender is intrinsic to archaeology and that gender archaeology can enrich our studies, irrespective of the discipline’s possible future directions and so-called paradigm shifts. The scholarly contributions commissioned for this volume critically discuss and reflect on a wide range of concepts, ideas, principles and theories presently applied in archaeology within the framework of gender.The chapters included in the first part deal with themes in world archaeology that have little or no focus on gender, such as the Third Science Revolution (e.g. ancient DNA, stable isotopes analyses, big data), posthumanism (e.g. new materialism, symmetrical archaeology and the ontological turn) and digital archaeology and heritage. The second part focuses on themes in which gender archaeology has made serious advances (intersectionality, social inequality, violence, mobility). The third part deals with themes crucial for contemporary archaeology and society, namely, gender education, gender representation in museum exhibitions and the future of gender archaeology. The volume concludes with a coda chapter that critically assesses the preceding contributions and the volume as a whole. The book offers a gender-balanced and inclusive authorship consisting of both well-established and early career researchers closely connected to the EAA, whose professionally, culturally and geographically diverse backgrounds and experiences enrich the viewpoints discussed in the chapters. The targeted audience is archaeologists from all theoretical and scientific backgrounds at all stages of their career.Chapter 2 “Sex, Gender and the Third Science Revolution” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Uros Matic is an archaeologist and Egyptologist based at the Institute for Ancient History and the Ancient Near Eastern Studies, University of Innsbruck. His main expertise is in war and violence in ancient Egypt, ancient Egyptian interrelations, settlement archaeology and gender studies in archaeology. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Münster in 2017 and received two prizes for this work (Philippika prize of Harrassowitz in 2018 and Best Publication Award of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 2020). He held a DAAD P.R.I.M.E fellowship from 2018 to 2019 and received the grants of the Foundation for Postgraduates of Egyptology in Vienna in 2016 and 2022. He was co-chair of the Archaeology and Gender in Europe (AGE) community of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) from 2016 to 2019. He taught at the University of Münster (Germany), University of Vienna (Austria), University of Graz (Austria), and University of Innsbruck (Austria). He has over 100 publications, the most recent being the monograph Violence and Gender in Ancient Egypt (Routledge, 2021) and the edited volumes Beautiful Bodies. Gender and Corporeal Aesthetics in the Past (Oxbow Books, 2022) and Bodies that Mattered. Ancient Egyptian Corporealities (Sidestone Press, 2024, with Dina Serova). Bisserka Gaydarska is a Bulgarian-born prehistorian who lives and works in the United Kingdom. Her main expertise is the prehistory of Eastern Europe but with much wider research interests, such as material culture studies, particularly (non-)deliberate fragmentation, GIS applications in archaeology, personhood and gender, radiocarbon dating and isotope analysis, and early urbanism. She is a passionate advocate for the meaningful cooperation between archaeological science and archaeological theory, evidenced by her current vocation as scientific dating coordinator at Historic England together with her long-term sustained interest in social interpretations. She has over 100 publications, among which are the edited volume Early urbanism in Europe: the case of the Trypillia mega-sites (De Gruyter, 2020) and the monograph Megasites in Prehistoric Europe: Where Strangers and Kinsfolk Met (Cambridge University Press, Elements in the Archaeology of Europe, 2022), together with John Chapman. Laura Coltofean is an archaeologist whose research focuses on gender issues, oppressive behaviours, safety, and well-being in current archaeological practice, as well as on the development of interdisciplinary practices, knowledge production, social networks, and political ideologies in the history of European archaeology. She is a member of Research Cluster 5: History of Archaeology of the German Archaeological Institute. Previously, she was research assistant, DAAD and DAI Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Römisch-Germanische Kommission of the German Archaeological Institute, Germany (2021-2022); researcher at the University of Barcelona, Spain (2018-2020), and museum curator at the Brukentha