In Their Own Words

Gender differentiation is a universal human social norm. Every society has a mechanism intact for casting people into socio-sexual roles and this gender process can be traced in the archaeological record. That said, one must quickly counter that HOW gender is expressed varies drastically. Within a culture, the engendering process varies according to caste, class, economic standing or other cultural sub-group. Between cultures gender is continually interacting with other social norms. Gender takes on a life of its own as it changes through time, like all other aspects of a society. Tracking this change through time and space is the study of what I call "archaeogender."