The Archaeology of Gender: A View from the Bronze Age (and Later)

To investigate Neolithic gender, let's begin, counterintuitively, by looking briefly at Bronze Age gender. From the third millennium BC onward, there is a substantial and well-developed archaeology of gender (Back Danielsson and Thedéen Reference Back Danielsson and Thedéen2012; Brück Reference Brück2009; Sofaer Derevenski Reference Sofaer Derevenski, Moore and Scott1997a; Sørensen Reference Sørensen1997, Reference Sørensen and Nelson2006, Reference Sørensen, Fokkens and Harding2013b). Commonly cited evidence includes the following (Figures 1 and 2):

• • Metal ornaments are often found with burials, and particular forms often appear to have been gendered. Habitually worn, contributing to appearance, movement, and sound, and possibly important biographical items, they may have formed part of a gendered habitus (Sørensen Reference Sørensen1997, Reference Sørensen, Fokkens and Harding2013b).

• • Where clothing survives, this too follows demarcated patterns of male and female dress that map onto the biological identities of the people wearing it (Sørensen Reference Sørensen, Fokkens and Harding2013b).

• • Weapons are commonly deposited in male burials, and in imagery they often define maleness and the warrior as a Bronze Age kind of person. They formed a type of male jewelry for performing masculine identities in multiple contexts (Harding Reference Harding, Carman and Harding1999, Reference Harding2007; Kristiansen Reference Kristiansen2002; Robb Reference Robb1994; Treherne Reference Treherne1995).

• • When we can correlate skeletal sex with burial treatment, burial often displays clear gender dichotomies of grave goods or funerary practice. As Holst (Reference Holst, Fokkens and Harding2013:107) remarks, “the standardised burial equipment in this way appears first and foremost to express widespread and generalised social roles. Among these roles, gender distinction particularly stands out.” Male and female identity provided “a dominant structure in burials” (Holst Reference Holst, Fokkens and Harding2013:107) across Bronze Age Europe.

• • Human body representations in various media (particularly statue-stelae, but also clay and metal figurines and rock art) often show males and females, clearly gendered through anatomical traits, posture, dress, or diacritic objects such as weapons.

Figure 1.

Bronze Age gender: male and female bodies with gendered material culture. Reconstruction, Plsen Museum, Czech Republic. Photo: John Robb.

Figure 2.

Bronze Age gender. (a) Male (top) and female (bottom) Copper Age statue-stelae, Lago di Garda, Italy. Drawings: Vicki Herring. (b) Rock art, Tanum, Sweden. Top: males with weaponry. Bottom: woman, with hairstyle and dot between legs. Photos: John Robb. (c) Typical gendered burial assemblages, Wolnzach-Neiderlauterbach, Germany (top: male; bottom: female; Jockenhövel Reference Jockenhövel, Fokkens and Harding2013:Figure 40.3). With kind permission of Dr. Albrecht Jockenhövel.

In other words, Bronze Age gender is in sharp focus: we know who the boys and the girls are. This clarity persists through the Iron Age, and on through the early medieval period, during which male and female gendered burials often show a clear concordance with skeletal sex and with gendered objects and personas in life.

Was Bronze Age gender binary? The assumption that gender is inherently binary has come under broad, well-considered critique (e.g., Arnold Reference Arnold2016; Ghisleni et al. Reference Ghisleni, Jordan and Fioccoprile2016; Joyce Reference Joyce2008; Schmidt Reference Schmidt, Casella and Fowler2005; Voss Reference Voss, Casella and Fowler2005), building strongly on Butler (Reference Butler1990). As Weismantel (Reference Weismantel, Stryker and Aizura2013:322) points out, most gender archaeologies have problematically assumed that gender is fundamentally binary. We fully agree that archaeological analysis should problematize essentialist and binary approaches to gender. However, we must also remain open to the possibility that, in particular historical contexts, ancient people essentialized their own gender and imposed normative binarism on themselves. The archaeological evidence for often quite clear and explicit gender structures suggests this was the case in the European Bronze Age; our argument below that Neolithic gender differed from this pattern should suffice to show that such a configuration of gender is neither universal nor inevitable. We also do not claim that Bronze Age gender was exclusively and narrowly binary. No gender system can ever be simple and totalizing, and there is evidence of divergent or contradictory identities in these periods (Alberti Reference Alberti2001; Hjørungdal Reference Hjørungdal1994; Nordbladh and Yates Reference Nordbladh, Yates, Bapty and Yates1990; Yates Reference Yates and Tilley1993). Moreover, even when general, widespread gender patterns exist, exceptions may tell us about their fluidity (Arnold Reference Arnold2016; Jordan Reference Jordan2016). Indeed, paradoxically, it seems likely to us that clearly recognized third (and fourth, and so on) genders may emerge more often in societies such as those of Bronze Age Europe, characterized by strongly prescribed gendered behavior, than when gender is more fluid and more latitude is tolerated; the multiple genders of North American Plains Indians, among whom normative male gender was marked by a strong emphasis on performing male prowess, may exemplify this. In any case, while the European Bronze Age, like any gender system, must have produced individuals who challenged and subverted its norms, the overall ideal of binary, complementary male and female genders forming stable lifelong identities remains unambiguous.

Note the chain of interpretation here. As reviewed above, gender is usually defined as the cultural elaboration of biological sexual difference. This means that we need to start with evidence that can be tied to sexable bodies. In Bronze Age gender archaeology, as elsewhere in the world, the key data anchoring a plausible, coherent system of widespread binary gender symbolism are sexable skeletons buried with grave goods, and iconographic representations of bodies with sexual anatomies. Once we locate such gender identities, we find that they were relevant across many contexts through life and death, creating redundant, readily interpreted archaeological signaling. Gender was politically salient, corresponding to complementary, important social roles for men and women. The Bronze Age picture thus conforms well to the traditional definition of gender; it provides a socially important system of identities founded upon biological difference. Indeed, it conforms so well—along with Iron Age, Classical, and medieval gender, which share much the same underlying pattern—that such situations have created the paradigm for how archaeologists should investigate gender. We automatically seek redundant symbols anchored in “sexable” data that define major patterns of stable, lifelong identities across contexts, without reflecting about whether this picture may fit all configurations of human gender.

The Evidence for Neolithic Gender: Imagery

A recent systematic review of prehistoric art in Europe (Robb Reference Robb2015) reveals at least 50 Neolithic corpora of art that include some human body representations. Figurines comprise about half of these; they also include statuary, cave art, rock art, representations on pottery, metalwork, architectural decoration, and carved stone objects. What do they tell us about gender?

Figurines provide the most obvious evidence of gender (Figure 3). Small figurines, usually of clay, are common in southeastern Europe; they are also found in the central Mediterranean and central Europe, particularly the Hungarian basin (Bailey Reference Bailey2005; Chapman and Palincaş Reference Chapman, Palincaş and Bolger2013). In many traditions, most figurines unquestionably represent women. Traditionally, archaeologists have interpreted Neolithic figurines as an iconography relating women's fertility to agriculture; in the fullest version (Gimbutas Reference Gimbutas1989, Reference Gimbutas1991), they represent the Goddess worshipped by matriarchal Neolithic societies. Others critique this view as gender-biased, essentializing, and incorporating anachronistic ideas of both religion and women (Goodison and Morris Reference Goodison, Morris and Bolger2013; Meskell Reference Meskell1995). However, perhaps shunning the topic as dangerously value-laden, with few exceptions (e.g., Chapman and Gaydarska Reference Chapman and Gaydarska2006:53–70), archaeologists have avoided discussing what figurines actually do imply about gender. The issue need not be difficult if we stop fetishizing figurines as keystones of a sweeping ideological system. As material culture, Neolithic figurines were generally moderate-skill, low-cost objects relevant to a specific context and used, broken, and discarded almost expediently, as Nakamura and Meskell (Reference Nakamura and Meskell2009:206) have argued in a similar but non-European context (see also Meskell et al. Reference Meskell, Nakamura, King and Farid2008). As a special-purpose, disposable ritual tool, they may have been more like a medical technology than a work of “art” embodying a general ideal. They probably served as paraphernalia for a particular ritual moment involving women's bodies, perhaps a life-cycle transition. As such, they may have provided gendered representations that helped develop women's subjectivity about their own bodies (Nanoglou Reference Nanoglou2005; cf. Meskell and Joyce Reference Meskell and Joyce2003 for similar views in Egypt and Mesoamerica).

Figure 3.

Neolithic figurines. (a) Macedonia. Drawing: Vicki Herring, after Naumov (Reference Naumov2015:T31 3a). (b) Cucuteni-Tripolye style, Romania (Robb and Harris Reference Robb and Harris2013:Figure 26c; after Bailey Reference Bailey2005:Figure 5.11). (c) Hungary. Drawing: Vicki Herring. (d) Vinča style figurine, Belgrade, Serbia. Drawing: John Robb. (e) “Volumetric” style figurine, Sardinia. Drawing: Vicki Herring. (f) Abruzzo, Italy. Drawing: Vicki Herring. (g) Calabria, Italy. Drawing: Vicki Herring. (h) Linearbandkeramik figurine, Slovakia. Drawing: Vicki Herring, after Hofmann (Reference Hofmann, Ursu and Terna2014:Figure 3) and Hansen (Reference Hansen2007:Plate 504).

Figurines are of interest not only for what gender is represented but for how it is represented. Although most are female, many corpora include at least a few male figurines, often in unusual postures or activities. Most corpora also include not only fragments whose sexual characteristics may simply have broken off, but also complete figurines that lack sexual features. Even if the latter were implicitly understood as gendered, or gendered through signs other than anatomical references, this would nevertheless suggest that gender was not a simple, obvious binary system anchored in anatomy and obligatory to mark on all bodies. Moreover, the gender ascribed to some examples may be doubtful. In particular, Maltese “fat ladies” (Vella Gregory and Cilia Reference Vella Gregory and Cilia2005) and Sardinian “volumetric” figurines (Lilliu Reference Lilliu1999) have traditionally been considered female simply because they represent massively corpulent people; clothed in elaborate costumes, it is more likely that their corporeality signified their status as senior ritual celebrants or cosmological beings. Ambiguous figurines include examples from the Balkans (Chapman and Gaydarska Reference Chapman and Gaydarska2006) and Italy (Holmes and Whitehouse Reference Holmes, Whitehouse and Whitehouse1998) that represent either erect phalli or a female with globular buttocks and a simple, shaft-like body. Stylistically, European Neolithic figurines are extremely heterogeneous. They vary wildly in what parts of the body they emphasize or even represent, what postures they adopt, and how much the body is clothed or decorated. Figure 4 gives one example, from Riparo Gaban in Alpine Italy. Four human body images have been found at the site: two female and two not overtly gendered. Even within one site, they highlight as important quite different qualities from the body. Even when the body is gendered, unlike the clear Bronze Age model, there is no consensus about what anatomical or cultural features essentially constitute a Neolithic gendered body.

Figure 4.

Heterogeneity in microcosm: Neolithic human imagery from Riparo Gaban, Italy (for context, see Pedrotti Reference Pedrotti, Kruta, Poppi, Lička and Magni2009; images courtesy of Lila Janik, Annaluisa Pedrotti, and Fabio Cavulli). (a) Female figurine, worked bone. Photo: Lila Janik. (b) Female figurine, pig tooth. Photo: Lila Janik. (c) Anthropomorphically carved pebble. Photo: John Robb. (d) Anthropomorph on carved bone. Photo: Lila Janik.

Other Neolithic body imagery is even more varied (Figure 4). Neolithic rock art in Italy includes males (depicted with phalli) hunting deer, and probable females (denoted by a dot between the legs) in dancing postures (Graziosi Reference Graziosi1980). In Spanish rock art, men are shown hunting and fighting, while women are shown dancing and in other activities; it has been suggested that gender was performative rather than narrowly prescribed (Dowson Reference Dowson2009). A lakeside house in Germany was ornamented with a pair of breasts, Macedonian clay models show houses with female torsos growing out of their top, and breasts also turn up on Balkan gold “ring idols.” Carved phalli of flint and chalk are known from Britain (Teather Reference Teather, Larsson and Parker Pearson2007), and a stone model of three conjoined phalli comes from Malta. In such examples, the gendered body is a free-floating anatomical diacritic that is applied to different contexts of action. Two wooden statues from Britain are either ambiguously gendered or hermaphroditic (Figure 5h gives one example). More elaborate bodies without evident gendering include the anthropomorphic designs from Breton megalithic tombs, thought to be an ancestral or spirit figure, possibly semi-skeletonized (Thomas and Tilley Reference Thomas, Tilley and Tilley1993). Like the massive Maltese and Sardinian figures noted above, these may suggest an association between death, cosmological power, and beings without—or beyond—gender. Neolithic body imagery also includes ungendered, free-floating particulate anthropomorphism: schematic anthropomorphs, a face, or even simply a pair of eyes are known from all over Europe (Figure 5).

Figure 5.

Other Neolithic body representations. (a) Face on pot, Budapest, Hungary. Photo: John Robb. (b) Face on pot, TRB vessel, Copenhagen, Denmark. Photo: John Robb. (c) Human figure on Impressed Ware vessel, Sardinia. Photo: John Robb. (d) Gold “ring idol,” Zagreb, Croatia. Photo: John Robb. (e) Copper Age anthropomorphic plaque, Spain. Photo: John Robb. (f) Anthropomorphic mace head, Knowth, Ireland. Drawing: Vicki Herring. (g) Anthropomorphic carved chalk object, Folkton, England. Drawing: Aaron Watson. With kind permission of Andrew Jones. (h) Carved wood sculpture, legible as male or female, Dagenham, England. Drawing: John Robb. (i) Anthropomorphic, possibly female, figures in rock art, Valcamonica, Italy. Photo: John Robb. (j) Men and women in Levantine art, Spain. Male archer, Abrigo del Milano; females dancing, Roca del Moros. Drawings: Vicki Herring, after Hernández Herrero (Reference Hernández Herrero1998:22,50). (k) Anthropomorphic being, megalithic tomb, Brittany, France. Drawing: John Robb, after Shee Twohig (Reference Shee Twohig1981:Figure 146).

In sum, the simple pattern in Neolithic gender imagery is that there is no simple pattern. A lot of body imagery exists, and it exhibits a huge range of variety. When gender is represented, it is shown heterogeneously; ambiguously gendered bodies are known, as are ungendered bodies and free-floating anthropomorphic motifs. With so much evidence, this heterogeneity is not simply a failure of data to reveal a clear pattern that must once have been there. Instead, how gender was understood probably varied contextually, and there were contexts of action for which gender was not particularly relevant. That this is a meaningful pattern is clear by contrast with what happens from about 3500 cal BC onward, when new patterns emerge. While older traditions of imagery—particularly female figurines—persist and even intensify along the southern margin of Europe (Cyprus, Crete, the Aegean, Malta, and Sardinia), across much of continental Europe a new imagery arises: statue-stelae (Robb Reference Robb2009). Statue-stelae show clearly identified males and females in a highly standardized form, with males identified by weaponry and females by breasts and necklaces. If statue-stelae represent ancestral figures, as is usually maintained, then for the first time it had become important to maintain gender in death. Echoed in other imagery such as Copper Age rock art, as well as in grave goods and material culture, this heralds the new cross-context pattern of gender symbolism typical of the Bronze Age.

The Evidence for Neolithic Gender: Burials

Neolithic deathways were rarely clearly gendered. Before the late fourth millennium BC, deathways do not generally involve formal cemeteries of individual burials. In the Balkan Early Neolithic, in occasional inhumations in settlements, men are slightly more frequently represented than women, but there is little difference in position or grave goods (Borić Reference Borić, Fowler, Harding and Hofmann2015:931). In Early-Middle Neolithic Hungary, there is no explicit gender differentiation regarding grave goods or orientation (Chapman Reference Chapman, Moore and Scott1997:138). In the central Mediterranean, well-preserved single burials are exceptional, and even when they are found there is little formal marking of male-female difference. In northwestern Europe, monuments with commingled depositions are constructed from the Early Neolithic onward. In both southern Scandinavia and Britain, megalithic burial coexisted with single graves, secondary burial, cremation, and other practices; bodies were deposited in long barrows and megalithic tombs whole and subsequently mixed through postdepositional practices. Neither area shows systematic gender differentiation (Fowler Reference Fowler2010; Sjögren Reference Sjögren, Fowler, Harding and Hofmann2015). The Iberian Early Neolithic featured collective inhumations in cave sites among other practices; again, gendered differentiation in funerary practice or grave goods is difficult to detect (Oms et al. Reference Oms, Daura, Sanz, Mendiela, Pedro and Martínex2017).

There are only two well-investigated cases of clear gender differentiation in Neolithic burial. One is a minority of Linearbandkeramik (LBK) cemeteries in central Europe (5500–5000 cal BC) where males were sometimes buried with axes. However, this represents a complex situation. At Nitra, Slovakia, Spondylus shells, beads, and arm-rings occurred in different frequencies in male and female burials, but were not categorically associated with one gender (Whittle et al. Reference Whittle, Bentley, Bickle, Dočkalová, Fibiger, Hamilaton, Hedges, Mateicuicová, Pavúk, Bickle and Whittle2013:154). Age also formed an important variable (Whittle et al. Reference Whittle, Bentley, Bickle, Dočkalová, Fibiger, Hamilaton, Hedges, Mateicuicová, Pavúk, Bickle and Whittle2013:154). At Aiterhofen, Germany, among 20–40-year-olds, Spondylus shells are preferentially found with men, but for older age groups, grave goods increasingly overlap (Hofmann Reference Hofmann, Hofmann and Bickle2009:225; Hofmann and Whittle Reference Hofmann, Whittle and Jones2008:293). Moreover, isotopic analysis shows that, at some cemeteries, it is specifically locally born men who were more likely to be buried with axes (Hedges et al. Reference Whittle, Bentley, Bickle, Dočkalová, Fibiger, Hamilaton, Hedges, Mateicuicová, Pavúk, Bickle and Whittle2013:368). The other notable case of gender-differentiated burials is the Cerny group of the Paris Basin around 4500 cal BC. Here, arrowheads are exclusively buried with men (Chambon and Thomas Reference Chambon and Thomas2010:4), linking hunting and male identity. Beyond these two cases, even when sporadic male-female differences exist, they tend to be statistical matters of degree rather than category. For example, the chambered tombs and earthen long barrows of southern Britain tended to have more men than women buried in them, but the pattern is not clear-cut (Edwards and Pope Reference Edwards, Pope and Bolger2013:463–464; Smith and Brickley Reference Smith and Brickley2009:88). Similarly, in Late Neolithic (5400–4500) Hungary and Slovakia, polished stone tools were found with both men and women, though more often with the former (Borić Reference Borić, Fowler, Harding and Hofmann2015:936). On the whole, throughout Neolithic Europe, burial shows very little gender distinction; when it does, it is rarely a clear-cut binary categorization but a matter of degree and overlap, sometimes polythetically combined with factors such as age and localness.

This picture changes slowly as we move into the later Neolithic and Copper Age. The first hints of the gendered patterns to come appeared in the Balkans (mid-late fifth millennium BC). For example, at Gomolova, Serbia, all burials were potentially male (Borić Reference Borić, Fowler, Harding and Hofmann2015:937). Similarly, at Tizsapolgár-Basatanya, Hungary, burial position became increasingly gendered, with men's heads facing to the right and women's to the left (Borić Reference Borić, Fowler, Harding and Hofmann2015:942; Sofaer Derevenski Reference Sofaer Derevenski1997b). More clearly gendered grave goods began to emerge in the later fourth millennium BC in the central and western Mediterranean Copper Age in eastern and central Europe with the Globular Amphora and Corded Ware groups (3300 cal BC onward) and in Western Europe with the Bell Beakers (2500 cal BC onward). In all of these, burial was increasingly characterized by consistent sets of gendered grave goods (Vander Linden Reference Vander Linden, Fowler, Harding and Hofmann2015:610–611). This set the pattern: while it contained local variation and occasional exceptions that violated binary separations (e.g., Chapman and Palincaş Reference Chapman, Palincaş and Bolger2013:425), Bronze Age burial reflected a straightforward, widespread set of differences between men and women. The contrast with the Neolithic pattern is unmistakable.

The Evidence for Neolithic Gender: Activities and Bodies

What about evidence for gender distinctions in daily life? It is hard to gender most material culture. We do not know who made pottery or knapped flints. Spondylus ornaments turn up in the graves of males, females, and children. Axes may be the best bet for a gendered item associated with males (as suggested by the LBK burials mentioned above), but evidence is scrappy. A second key set of evidence comes from isotopic analysis of diet and mobility, though data are patchy. At a European scale, it appears that men consumed more animal protein (Schulting Reference Schulting, Fowler, Harding and Hofmann2015:373). Paralleling this, differential caries rates in the LBK (Hedges et al. Reference Whittle, Bentley, Bickle, Dočkalová, Fibiger, Hamilaton, Hedges, Mateicuicová, Pavúk, Bickle and Whittle2013:371) suggest that women may have consumed more cereal products (Hedges et al. Reference Whittle, Bentley, Bickle, Dočkalová, Fibiger, Hamilaton, Hedges, Mateicuicová, Pavúk, Bickle and Whittle2013:371). This trend is not absolute, however. At specific sites, like the causewayed enclosure of Hambledon Hill in Britain, more women than men had access to animal protein (Richards Reference Richards, Mercer and Healy2008:527). Overall, while across Europe more men ate more meat, there are clearly some women eating more meat than some men. Again, we see no clear-cut separation of genders. With mobility, the best data come from the LBK once more. Both generally and at specific sites such as Nitra and Vedroviče, women show greater residential mobility during their lifetimes than men, possibly suggesting patrilocality (Hedges et al. Reference Whittle, Bentley, Bickle, Dočkalová, Fibiger, Hamilaton, Hedges, Mateicuicová, Pavúk, Bickle and Whittle2013:367). However, outside the LBK, there is almost no evidence from the rest of Neolithic Europe. Specific women engaged in long-distance movement, for example at Monkton-up-Wimborne in Britain (Montgomery et al. Reference Montgomery, Budd and Evans2000) and at Hazleton North, also in Britain, where people of all kinds shared mobility regimes over a 40 km or greater range (Neil et al. Reference Neil, Evans, Montgomey and Scarre2016; Whittle Reference Whittle and Topping1997).

Skeletally, male-female differences in leg morphology existed, perhaps related to differing practices of farming or mobility, but these became notably more pronounced in the Bronze Age (Macintosh et al. Reference Macintosh, Pinhasi and Stock2014:385). This suggests that the sexual differentiation of labor became greater or more formalized after the Neolithic than during it. Skeletal evidence also suggests that young boys sometimes experienced intensive physical activity (Macintosh et al. Reference Macintosh, Pinhasi and Stock2016). In Switzerland, Germany, and France, men were doing more throwing, possibly associated with hunting (Villotte and Knüsel Reference Villotte and Knüsel2014:171). At West Kennet long barrow in Britain, men showed greater rotary action with the right shoulder, and perhaps greater bilateral movement of the upper limbs, while women extended and rotated their forearms more (Wysocki and Whittle Reference Wysocki and Whittle2000:594–595). However, the same study also revealed that gendered activities may have differed between sites rather than being widespread.

Finally, while it is usually assumed that violence was practiced by men, there is no direct evidence for this. What we can say is that all groups of the population—males and females, adults and juveniles—experienced violence. Evidence ranges from the common, healed depressed cranial fractures found in all skeletal collections to occasional large-scale massacres as at the LBK sites of Talheim (Germany) and Asparn-Schletz (Austria). In the LBK, adult females and juveniles suffer more violence than men (Hedges et al. Reference Whittle, Bentley, Bickle, Dočkalová, Fibiger, Hamilaton, Hedges, Mateicuicová, Pavúk, Bickle and Whittle2013:371). In other regions such as Scandinavia, the pattern is reversed, while in Britain the numbers are about equal (Schulting and Fibiger Reference Schulting, Fibiger, Whittle and Bickle2014a:294). Across Europe as a whole, more men may have been shot with projectiles, but there was regional variation, and women also suffered violence regularly (Schulting and Fibiger Reference Schulting, Fibiger, Schulting and Fibiger2014b:14). In terms of body modifications, throughout Europe both men and women display trepanations (Germanà and Fornaciari Reference Germanà and Fornaciari1992). A pattern of deliberate tooth removal among women in Italy (Robb Reference Robb1997) was not shared elsewhere in Europe, revealing a local construction of bodily identity.

Overall, in much of Europe, there are hints of social distinction related to sexual difference, but patterns are subtle and varying. Differences in diet sometimes applied to some men and some women. Patterns of movement were gendered in certain areas but not in others, and the pattern was mixed. Violence was experienced across both sexes. Even within the LBK, the best-studied area, evidence for systematic gendered difference is far from clear cut. In well-studied regions elsewhere in Europe such as Britain, Italy, and Scandinavia, even the hints of gender patterning seen in the LBK are missing. Of course, there are the lines of evidence to which we have little access. These include those related to embodied processes such as menstruation, childbirth, and lactation that would also have affected how some people lived and worked at different times and at different points in their lives. No doubt there were real differences here, and the absence of clear symbolism should not lead us to conclude that these bodily differences never mattered. Nonetheless, it is important to realize what the increasingly substantial evidence from across Neolithic Europe does not reveal: clear-cut patterns of difference relatable to stable gendered identities.