pantomimes and farce:costumes and competence

[sniper]

i think we conform on site a lot simply because of practicality rather than anything else, which is also probably true for office staff. I dress differently on site than I do off site, but when I am doing my office based work, I dress as I would when I'm at home, with the addition of a lab coat, simply because its practical, comfortable, and suitable for the job, which can still be fairly mucky.

by the way, I also know someone who wears suit jackets, but probably the same person you know, and also, in reference to troll's tat, think you should pluralise...

++ i spend my days rummaging around in dead people ++

[troll]

Eggy-many thanks. I agree on some points however would emphasise the British monopoly on judgemental attitudes in a big way.Whilst I recognise of course that symbols and signifiers are endemic globally, I would clumsily mirror the apt response of Merc.Britain has/had some real class-based hang-ups. Not only that,we exported it wordwide.I would push the button further by arguing that the British have the more spiteful and vindictive snobbery variety of the phenomena.as a caveat, all archaeologists by definition talk rubbish!
Merc-absolutely right. Twenty years ago before tats became "chic" many of us had them for all sorts of reasons.For me, at twenty years old, my tats were a virtual members- only card for access to the culture I identified with at the time. In a similar way that poisonous frogs sport fantastic colours-my tats also shouted "dangerous-back off".Going further, similar to brightly coloured birds sticking their chest out in the hope of a jump-at twenty, that was relevent too!

[eggbasket]

quote:Originally posted by sniper

eggy, I cannot find any specific examples at this moment of females buried with swords, though I have certainly seen published examples and will endeavour to find references for you.

Cheers, I look forward to this. I know that Heinrich Harke has done some work in this regard and it is of interest to me as an aside from my usual studies.

With regard to my comment about the grave goods, I was obviously sufficiently imprecise but I most definitely did not state that the deceased placed them there, as some have implied in their responses. However, I still stand by the point that I intended to make which is that the grave goods are in part about appearances. Now, whether the grave goods demonstrate the aspirations of the deceased, the aspirations of the family, the actual status of the deceased or their family, or whatever other symbolic value they might have, presumably the deceased and/or their family will have been judged by them, and that is the point I was trying to make.

Troll, I agree that Britain, despite Margaret Thatcher's assertions to the contrary is ridden with class attitudes, but I still feel that we do not have a monopoly on being judgmental. I have encountered such attitudes in many countries around the world. In some it worked to my advantage, in others to my detriment, but essentially I was being judged on the basis of how I dressed, the colour of my skin and how affluent I appeared to be, amongst other criteria, and people were reacting to me on that basis.

Cheers,
Eggbasket
Gentleman Adventurer and Antique

"All human endeavour is futile"

[Tim]

Read "Symbols of Power"

Little Tim

[eggbasket]

quote:Originally posted by Tim

Read "Symbols of Power"

Symbols of Power: Masterpieces of the Nanjing Museum
Excellent work and most entertaining but not, as far as I remember, particularly relevant to this discussion.

Symbols of Power and Progress: American Trademarks 1930-1950 Volume 1
ditto

Likewise:
Symbols of Power: Studies on the Political Status of Women in India

Cheers,
Eggbasket
Gentleman Adventurer and Antique

"All human endeavour is futile"

[achingknees]

Clarke, D. V. (1985) Symbols of power at the time of Stonehenge [?]

[Tim]

Clarke, D. V. (1985) Symbols of power at the time of Stonehenge

Little Tim

[Fishslice]

While grave goods can indicated gender, this needs to be supported by oesteological analysis.

However we still make the male=sword, female=brooch equation.

There are examples in the overlap of gender and grave goods - Parker Pearson ("The archaeology of Death and Burial") suggests that in Roman Iron Age of North Germany and Scandinavia, 15% of weapon burial were with females, while 10% of males were buried with spindle whorls (2003, 10:face-thinks:. Lots of stuff on dress and grave goods as well (109ff). See also Dommanses the NAR in the 1980s for more Scandawegian stuff.

Rather than looking at type or presence/absence of grave goods alone, we should also be looking at quantity and quality of grave goods, nature and position of grave goods (which can provide a indication of female dress), presence of associated grave structures location in cemetery and burial postion and . Such features, especially in combination, may have reflected a number of social personas, including status based on, age, sex, social position, lineage, position in a hierarchy, wealth and knowledge. How this status is displayed is likely to change through time. In England how social differentiation is expressed in the burial record seem to chage from the 6th to the 7th centuries.

Also in certain periods (especially the Anglo-Saxon period) the above may elements relate to ethnicity. Use of DNA (if we can extract it) should provide better resolution on this.

While would agree that death can change the status of an individual, or that but would suggest that status in life is likely to be reflected in treatment in death.

In addition to Harke for Anglo-Saxons in England would suggest

Arnold, C.J., 1980, ?Wealth and Social Structure; a matter of life and death? in Rahtz P., Dickinson, T., and Watts L. (eds), Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries 1979, BAR 82, 81 ? 142.

Boyle, A., Todd, A. Miles.D, Mudd. A, 1995 Two OxfordShire Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries: Breinsfield and Didcot, Oxford.

Dickinson, T.M. 1993, ? An Anglo-Saxon ?cunning? woman from Bidford on Avon? in Carver M.O.H. (ed), In search of Cult, Woodbridge, 95 ? 130

Brenan, J. 1985, ?Assessing social status in the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Sleaford?, Bulletin of the Institute of Archaeology, London, 2-21, 125 ? 31.

There are cracking old chestnuts. Wealth and Stutus in early medieval Ireland seems to have been determined by numbers of cattle and the society highly was stratified. However this is not reflected in the funerary record or grave assemblages.

[the invisible man]

Arnold B (not C this time!) The deposed princess of Vix: the need for an engendered European prehistory. In Walde and Willows (eds) The archaeology of gender: proceedings of the 22nd annual Chacmool conference.

Effros B. Skeletal sex and gender in merovingian mortuary archaeology. Antiquity 74

We owe the dead nothing but the truth.

[sniper]

osteological analysis will provide an indication of biological sex, but can say nothing about gender. They are two entirely different things, sex is biological, while gender is cultural, and it annoys me when they are conflated because people think that gender is simply a PC way of saying sex. A person may be biologically male (and this also has its own problems, skeletally they may be male, but genetically they could be female, or the other way round, or even somewhere in between), but they could be masculine, feminine, somewhere in between or something that is neither in terms of their gender. The hijra of India and the berdache of North America are biologically male individuals, who superficially appear to be female gendered, but are actually somewhere in between or neither.

In any study of grave goods from cemeteries, we should avoid falling into the trap of assuming that there are only two sexes (male and female) and two genders (masculine and feminine). Just because that is the accepted current western view, it is certainly not the case in other parts of the world, and therefore may not have been in the past. Males buried with "female" grave goods, and vice versa, and those individuals buried with unusual collections of objects, may actually be examples of alternative sexes and genders (one North American berdache was buried in their mixture of male and female costume, but on the male side of the cemetery), or the sex and gender of the interred may only partly determine the nature of the grave goods, or not at all.

It is certainly a lot more complicated that simply male and female.

++ i spend my days rummaging around in dead people ++