Reconstructing sexual divisions of labor from fingerprints on Ancestral Puebloan pottery
Abstract
The evolution of the sexual division of labor within human societies is difficult to reconstruct because of the scarcity of direct evidence recovered from archaeological contexts, and yet many disciplines make assumptions regarding how labor first became specialized in our species. We propose an innovative method for identifying the sex of potters through the analysis of fingerprint impressions recovered from material culture. An application of the method to ancient pottery demonstrates that males and females were both significantly involved in producing vessels. The study further suggests that the exact proportion of each sex involved in pottery making was quite fluid, and may have varied among different groups in the same community, as well as changed from generation to generation.
- Publication:
-
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
- Pub Date:
- June 2019
- DOI:
- 10.1073/pnas.1901367116
- Bibcode:
- 2019PNAS..11612220K