Η αρχαιολογια και η κοινωνικη ταυτοτητα του φυλου: Προσεγγισεισ στην αιγαιακηπροϊστορια by Dimitra Kokkinidou; Marianna NikolaïdouReview by: Donald C. HaggisAmerican Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 99, No. 4 (Oct., 1995), pp. 738-739Published by: Archaeological Institute of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/506196 .Accessed: 01/11/2011 08:29

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738 BOOK REVIEWS [AJA 99

"great regard for personal status differentiation" (p. 178). Qatal Hiiyiik represents a fairly simple ranked society, prob- ably based on heredity. The ranking cuts across gender lines and perhaps reflects religious statuses. There is no stratification or much personal aggrandizement. Indeed, the surprise of the site is the ubiquity of high-quality arti- facts. Nevertheless, finer subtleties in the distribution of certain artifacts suggest to Wason some small levels of in-

equality, possibly based on both heredity and religion. There are two reasons why natal Hiiyilk is an excellent

choice for the case study. First, few sites have endured such extreme interpretations by serious archaeologists. Recent

analyses of Qatal Hiyiik have been highly charged and somewhat tendentious. A sober examination of the site's social organization is warranted. Second, archaeologists frequently assume that the social organization of Neolithic cultures is egalitarian (i.e., unranked). There are, however,

many ethnographic examples of subsistence agricultural- ists that suggest otherwise. In spite of this, Neolithic cul-

tures are frequently studied under the rubric of "egalitar- ian subsistence farmers" that eventually display "complexity." Nonetheless, the Neolithic of the Near East and the East Mediterranean potentially represents all forms of unequal social organization that can lie between unranked and strat- ified societies. For his case study, Wason could not have chosen a better and more difficult site than Qatal Hilyiik.

There are two problems with the book. There should be more illustrations and tables. The definitions of social

categories could have been clarified by figures. The dis- cussion of a site as rich in iconography as natal Hiiyiik certainly deserves some illustration. Secondly, the case

study is somewhat disappointing in light of the excellence of the earlier chapters. Wason is not completely specific about the archaeological correlates that explain his inter-

pretation. A more exhaustive analysis of the artifacts might have generated more definitive conclusions. Perhaps the

question Wason asked was not completely answerable by the excavation reports. In any case, the study is still a very cogent analysis of the site.

In general, I appreciated this well-written and honest defense of the processual school. In addition, Wason makes rich use of ethnography with archaeology specifically in mind. His analysis of natal Hiiyiik is cautious and prag- matic. Finally, Wason often states that further research at

Catal Hiiyfik could answer many questions. The "big- man" of the post-processual collective is now conduct-

ing fieldwork at natal Hiiyuik, so Wason may have his answers soon.

THOMAS F. STRASSER

PROGRAM IN CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY

INDIANA UNIVERSITY

408 NORTH INDIANA AVENUE

BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA 47405 STRASSER@SACLINK1.CSUS.EDU

H APXAIOAOFIA KAI H KOINQNIKH TAYTOTHTA TOY

DYAOY: TIPOZEFFIEEIE ETHN AIFAIAKH HPOI'TOPIA,

by Dimitra Kokkinidou and Marianna Nikolaidou.

Pp. 163, figs. 27. Banias, Thessaloniki 1993.

Studies of gender in classical archaeology are now com- mon in conferences, symposia, and collected papers, but

this book, Archaeology and the Social Identity of Gender: Ap- proaches to Aegean Prehistory, represents the first synthetic overview of this kind of analysis in the field of Aegean ar-

chaeology. Given the methodological advances in gender studies in the 1970s and 1980s in areas of anthropological archaeology by scholars such as Conkey, Gero, Gimbutas, Hastorf, and Spector, and the obvious relevance of such work to Aegean prehistory (demonstrated by various ap- proaches of Cameron, Marinatos, Nixon, Rehak, and

Waterhouse), this book is a welcome and much-overdue contribution. Chapter 1, "Women's Studies and the Social

Identity of Gender," is a brief introduction to and survey of the main trends in scholarship in gender studies; and

chapter 2, "Androcentrism in Archaeology" is an explana- tion of how the field has encouraged male-oriented and

male-designed interpretive frameworks in archaeological scholarship. While this chapter is perhaps to be expected in a work on gender studies in a traditionally male- dominated field, it would have been more useful if it had

provided a detailed and historical examination of perva- sive theoretical biases in scholarship that have framed sys- temic models in terms of hierarchical structure; this, how-

ever, the authors do touch upon later in chapter 4 in the context of their discussion of matriarchy. Chapter 3, "The Formation of the Social Identity of Gender," is a critique of various disciplinary approaches to gender, gender studies, and interpretive methodologies in the analysis of

categories of material culture. These introductory chap- ters set the stage for chapter 4, which is a survey of gender roles and changing patterns of gender identity (that is, how

gender is expressed in culture and in the archaeological record) from the Palaeolithic until the end of the Bronze

Age. The book also contains an excellent 28-page bibli-

ography of works in gender studies, and relevant papers and books in anthropological archaeology and Aegean pre- history. A detailed and dense seven-page English-language summary accompanies the text.

Kokkinidou and Nikolaidou's book should perhaps be seen less as merely an Aegean contribution to anthropo- logical or classical-studies discourse in "women's studies" or "gender studies" than as an important reassessment of the usefulness of power models and systemic hierarchies in interpreting prehistoric cultures. The focus on gender roles in the context of a diachronic Aegean-culture survey has not only a synchronic vividness, but great potential for explaining aspects of culture change; and the conclud-

ing section of the book, on Mycenaean culture should re- mind the reader of the potential usefulness of the approach in understanding later Dark Age and Classical Greek re-

ligion and society. The collective basis of Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers is

carefully and conservatively presented in terms of group survival, subsistence, and technological advancement (pp. 47-49). A possible central role (practical, social, and sym- bolic) attributed to women is tempered by the caveat that any functional importance of a gender group on the com- munity level should not in itself imply social stratification or dominant authority (p. 50). The authors propose a so- cial importance of women in the early Neolithic commu- nity because of their connection to food acquisition, pro- duction, child-rearing, and parallel technological advancements; the female role is carefully delineated for the Palaeolithic-Neolithic transition and is treated well

1995] BOOK REVIEWS 739

within the bounds of the archaeological evidence and

ethnoarchaeological analogy. Kokkinidou and Nikolaidou's own contribution, on the social importance and central symbolic significance of the female, is, however, rather underemphasized in the text (pp. 51-55), but fully elab- orated in the English-language summary (p. 159), sug- gesting that the latter is perhaps complementary to the text rather than merely a synopsis. And it is not until later, in a detailed digression on Neolithic figurine types (pp. 55-63) and the discussion of the problem of "matriarchy" (pp. 64-69), that the reader will find an explicit con- nection between female roles within the community and the potential symbolic significance of the female with- in a social-religious system (pp. 62-63, 69): "Mcao trIq yuvatKefa4q g0op(piD optooeto6vtrat oUlpoxtKwd ot KaOt1gFptvwq

Tpo0poxaptoGKguaoGtK Kqat anXO0KEOrtKIKq 6potrlpto6tNTSq

Kat t oU avaptsi xpoq au q KotVCovtKS sK681X6)oatq" (p. 63). This connection between the symbolic and religious as- pects of culture and the functional roles of women within the community is crucial to Kokkinidou and Nikolaidou's argument, that of diverging gender roles within Bronze

Age society. The authors isolate and define bilateral components of

Aegean society that can be linked to symbolic represen- tations in the material culture (p. 86): the female-centered (or matrifocal) is suggestive of the "communal," the fun- damental aspects of the early agrarian Neolithic commu- nity as it emerged from the Palaeolithic where women were the core of the group's food gathering, processing, and re- ligious (fertility) concerns and activities. The male-centered or "androcentric" is linked to the "individual," the "com- petitive," and tendencies toward structural "hierarchies" (p. 91). While clan identity remained strong in the Early Bronze Age, with the female structure being the continu- ing cohesive force within the social group (pp. 73, 86), the protopalatial and neopalatial periods show the rise of ex- plicitly hierarchical administrative organizations (pp. 87, 90), with roots apparent in the Neolithic (p. 54). Here Kok- kinidou and Nikolaidou's identification of gender-defined organizational components suggests dimensions of social complexity in palatial society that are frequently lost or obscured in the traditional unilateral focus on stratifica- tion and hierarchy (p. 69). As religion emerged in the Bronze Age within a symbolic system that expressed a distinctly female-centered societal component (pp. 87-96), it re- mained the basic element of the communal aspect of the culture; male-generated hierarchical palatial political or- ganization (pp. 90-91) and war symbolism then eventually became integrated into a ritual framework (94-95). As rit- ual integrated both male- and female-centered aspects of the society, palatial iconography began to project instances of violent sacrifice, hunting, and social dominance. While notions of neopalatial "matriarchy" are surveyed and sum- marily criticized (pp. 100-102), iconographic representa- tions, especially in wall painting, suggest religious and po- litical hierarchies (p. 104); in the former, the female element is dominant.

Obviously there is much here for the student of early state societies in the Aegean. The authors' characterization of protopalatial organization and the early palaces less as centers of power than as "ouvTovtoGtKo1 JtllXavtoGtio zt1i

6StatKOtVOtK1i 6paooript6rtlatq" (p. 89) should be a signifi- cant conceptual contribution to discussions of early state

formation, and a reminder of crucial functional differences between MM II, LM I, and Mycenaean palace societies. Kokkinidou and Nikolaidou's work is a step in the direc- tion of considering such difficulties in the analysis of state formation and palace function. The implications of a

non-authoritative, non-politically dominant, and most im-

portantly, non-hierarchical structure within Bronze Age society should emphasize the problems inherent in the exclusive use of social or economic ranking as the basis of models of cultural complexity and palatial organization in the Bronze Age Aegean.

DONALD C. HAGGIS

DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL

212 MURPHEY HALL CHAPEL HILL, NORTH CAROLINA 27599-3145 DCHAGGIS@EMAIL.UNC.EDU

ELMALI-KARATAS II: THE EARLY BRONZE AGE VIL-

LAGE, byJayne L. Warner. Pp. xxxii + 219, figs. 21, pls. 206, tables 12. Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr 1994. $40.00. ISBN 0-929524-80-2.

In the second of a projected six-volume account of Bryn Mawr College's long-term exploration of the Early Bronze

Age site at Karata? in southwest Turkey, Jayne Warner ad-

mirably fulfills her goal of producing a "factual account of the archaeological data." The importance of this vol- ume lies in its detailed, copiously illustrated presentation of the architecture and stratigraphy of the village and its houses of megaron and apsidal plans. Warner has pieced together information from 106 trenches (representing 7.6% of the 19-ha site surrounding the central mound) into a coherent picture of a changing community through six

major periods from Early Bronze I to Early Bronze III. Warner has incorporated data from the other projected volumes, especially the ceramics and small finds, so that one obtains an outline of the village community and not

just the architecture. Some of the results contained here have been presented elsewhere, especially Warner's study of the megaron and apsidal house plan published in AJA 83 (1979) 133-47.

Two short chapters introduce the site and its excavation, chronology, and geology. The core of the book, and its stated

purpose, is chapter 3, the "catalogue of habitation remains." In some 120 pages, accompanied by dozens of plans and

photographs, Warner systematically presents the essential information for each trench, even those that produced no finds. For those trenches with features she describes the architectural remains, interprets the plan, lists the prin- cipal finds, and often provides a short discussion. Burials are listed, but unless they contribute to the understanding of the stratigraphy or the architecture, discussion is left for a future volume.

The trench entry headings list all illustrations and ref- erences in this volume as well as in all previous publica- tions. Associated finds and their contexts are listed and these finds are briefly catalogued in chapter 6, a massive table of finds that lists page and plate references and gives a brief description. Virtually all the finds are illustrated