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The complex relation between sex and gender

Floor 0, Room 9, Showcase 9.3. Cist of Herrerías
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While in archaeology, bones tell us mainly about the sex of a person, their material context, in this case the funerary context, that is, their position, the space they occupy, the objects that surround them, or the shape of the tomb, are elements that allow us to study their gender. An example of this can be found in the so-called Cist of Herrerías, a burial site of the Argar Culture, which developed in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula in the Bronze Age. The weapons placed next to this skeleton tell us about the construction of a male identity, while in other burials, elements such as jewellery point to the construction of a female gender identity.

In most cases, estimates of sex and gender coincide for a given individual. Howe ver, archaeology also tells us about the complexity of the relationship between sex and gender. On the one hand, the ambiguity already mentioned regarding sex in some individuals may become even more acute when it comes to matters of gender. Certain items found in burial sites or other archaeological contexts cannot be clearly linked to one particular gender, while other items can be linked to more than one gender. On the other hand, even in cases where an individual’s gender may be identified with some certainty, this gender might not fully match that same individual’s sex. For example, in a Chalcolithic burial in Valencina de la Concepción, an individual was estimated to be male, both from the analysis of the bones and the grave goods, yet recent DNA analysis has repeatedly shown that the individual’s karyotype was XX. Similarly, different studies in different territories and cultures have found that, certainly in a minority of cases, sex and gender markers do not coincide.

It would be problematic to speak of trans or non-binary people in such a distant past. But what archaeology does teach us is that the relationship between sex and gender has always been complex, fluid, and has often defied strict categorisations of what defines a 'male' or 'female' human being.

Next QR. Floor 0, Room 7, Showcases 7.5 y 7.6 >

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