Discussing Gender at Perdigöes

By Gillian Scout Jaffe

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Located in South Portugal, Perdigöes is a ditched enclosure that was continually used as a ceremonial and mortuary complex beginning around 3400 BCE through the third millennium BCE; there is no evidence of long term habitation. Throughout the period of use, its architecture was continually being expanded and manipulated; there was a steady influx of human remains in the form of primary and secondary burials and depositions of human cremains in ditches, pits, and tombs. Accompanying these burials and depositions is a wealth of archaeological material that represents over a thousand years of material culture from across the South Iberian region. The site is complex and I recommend this paper for a more detailed overview of the sire.

Bird's eye view of Perdigöes from 1996

Excavations here are far from complete and, therefore, so are any analyses or conclusions to be drawn. Despite this, it is still possible and worthwhile to investigate what Perdigöes reveals about gender and its conception within the societies active there. In the following paragraphs I explore gender using some of the iconographic and burial data available for the site.

Figure 1: Array of the different types of mobilary idols found in South Iberia during the Neolithic.

There are fewer overt examples of human imagery at Perdigöes than one might expect from a site so rich in material. Because of its long period of continuous use, most of the idol types that can be found in Southern Iberia from the Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic are represented at Perdigöes (Figure 1) (Valera & Evangelista 2014). They run from ambiguous and fairly shapeless, like the almeriense idols (Figure 2) to ones that show sex characteristics.

Figure 2: Almeriense idols.

One interesting example of the latter are the ivory figurines of Pit 40. Found highly fragmented among the human cremains covering the rare instance of a (male) primary burial at Perdigöes, they showed evidence of having been burned with the human remains. It is estimated a minimum number of eight fragmented and burned figurines were in the pit along with the remains of at least 240 individuals. Found intentionally and carefully placed next to the deposited cremains was one unburned, intact figurine (Figure 3). Interestingly, a broken off part of a lower leg had been repaired with a piece of calcified, most likely human, bone. A total of thirty figurines of this type have been found in southwestern Iberia, many made of ivory, some made of soapstone. The figurines represent a strict and consistent body posture and, in contrast to other figurine types, dutifully recreate proper body proportions and are naturalistic in their representations.

Figure 3: Unburned figurine including figurine in situ with calcified bone.

The presence, context, and style of these figurines provide a treasure trove of potential clues to social, political, or cosmological changes happening in the Late Neolithic/Early Chalcolithic, but what can they tell us about gender? According to the data published by head researchers Antonio Valera and Lucy Shaw Evangelista, at Perdigöes, only two of these figurines have their torso area preserved, allowing for observation of sex-representation, and they are both male. Of the twenty-two other figurines of this type found to date, some show no sex attributes and some have been sexed as female (based on hair positioning over chest), but the vast majority represent biological males. Some of these males are shown holding a bat or club. The facial characteristics: large eyes, eyebrows, lines most likely representing facial tattoos, and hair, are also consistent.

If the figurines do, in fact, represent biological males, females, and the ambiguous, the consistent facial characteristics and body posture might hint at some level of equality across gender, or, at the very least, an equality in the way physical bodies are seen, with the only strong distinction being genitalia. In this case, it would seem even body decoration in the form of facial tattoos was not restrained by gender. Alternatively, the figurines sexed as female could be reinterpreted as male, perhaps in a different life stage or social grade than the idols sexed as male. For instance, Aztec young men had hairstyles that were essentially identical to the hairstyles of young women of the same age (Joyce 2000). Either way, there is clear novelty of style present when these ivory figurines are viewed together with other types of figurine styles at Perdigöes and the southern Iberian region. Also notable are the proportions of each sex represented by the ivory figurines as opposed to the more schematic figurines. While males dominate the small collection of ivory figurines, the more schematic figurines are almost all depictions females or genderless individuals.

Interesting to note is the presence of the carefully placed, male figurine at the primary burial of an adult male. If we view figurines as agents in the spread of ideologies (Brumfiel 1996), the emergence of a new style depicting naturalistic males rather than schematic females suggests the development of a new ideology, perhaps one in which men held a more central or important position than in the alternative, more widely proliferated ideologies of the time. expand reference.

Figure 4: Decorated loom weight.© A.C. Valera

Another intriguing example of anthropomorphic imagery can be found on a broken loom weight (Figure 4) found near the entrance of the encircling Gate 1. On one side of the weight is a depiction of a person in a rarely-seen schematic-linear style (Milesi et al. 2013); only the body can be seen as the head was on the lost fragment. On the other side is a zigzag motif that likely represents hair; this patterning style of hair can even be seen on the ivory figurines previously discussed. This loom weight is an anomaly, nothing else like it has been found at Perdigöes. The image was made before the loom weight was fired, so it wasn’t an afterthought; why was this loom weight intentionally decorated? More insight into the question might be found if it is determined that the society associated with its production divided labor by gender. In this way, both the gender most likely to have made the decorated weight and the gender most likely to have used it might be ascertained. Currently, while there is much research into the Late Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic societies of southwest Iberia, the incredibly dynamic and complex cultural landscape has prevented many reliable broad conclusions from being drawn regarding gendered divisions of labor.

Beyond iconography, the grave goods associated with sexable burials might help shed light on gender at Perdigöes. However, the body manipulation, secondary depositions, and deposition and cremation of many individuals together, often in different stages of decomposition, make that task nearly impossible. Current excavations have unearthed two instances of burials in which the sex of those interred can be determined: the primary burial in Pit 40 previously discussed, and three non-adult males buried in Pit 11 (Valera et al. 2012).

The Pit 40 burial could likely of someone in an emerging elite class due to the central location of Pit 40 within the enclosure add figure and the uniqueness of the burial itself. This is supported by similarities in grave goods to other burials (Pit 16) in the center of the enclosure which are chronologically (and spatially) contemporaneous. Included with the fragmented ivory figurines, among the cremains previously described were found limestone and marble idols, arrowheads, beads, metal awls, pottery fragments, faunal remains, and a marble pot, all of which were also burned. While sex could not be determined for any of the 9+ individuals whose cremains filled the contemporaneous Pit 16, the presence of at least 3 non-adults supports the idea that the assemblage of common grave goods between Pit 40 and Pit 16 is related to some aspect outside of age.

In contrast, the grave goods associated with Pit 11, which is dated approximately 500 years before the cremations of Pit 40 (as of this writing, only the first few layers of cremains in Pit 40 have been dated), consist only of one sus paw (pig) and a cockle shell (Valera et al. 2012). The sus paw is a gender nonspecific addition to the mortuary contexts at Perdigöes as it is commonly found in pits, ditches, and tombs containing remains of males and females of all ages. Spatially, Pit 11 is located outside of the enclosure, which also stands in stark contrast to the location of Pits 40 and 16. These differences fuel many lines of questioning: are the different treatment of the remains linked to changing ideologies, difference in social standing, status in the life course, or something else entirely? Were the differences a result of the mortuary practices of different cultural sects or the same group evolving? Unfortunately, as these inquiries have yet to be answered, little light can be shed on the concept of gender at Perdigöes, and in the absence of female-only burials, it is nearly impossible to draw any strong conclusions about the gender roles and relations of the people who used the site with the current data set.

Thus far, little of the analyses or examined data has been enlightening in terms of understanding gender at Perdigöes. Putting the absence of female-only burials aside, perhaps there is something different getting in the way of observing and conceptualizing gender. In their paper “Becoming Gendered in European Prehistory” John Robb and Oliver Harris argue that people living in Neolithic Europe might have had a different relationship with gender than we do today (2017). As opposed to the ensuing Bronze Age, where explicit gender structures can be observed in the archaeological record in life and death, gender in Neolithic Europe was less tied to personal identity and more contextual or performative. When analyzed collectively, iconographic depictions of human/anthropomorphic bodies vary widely and are depicted in many different ways, suggesting gender was based on context and at times was not relevant at all (2017:14).

Robb and Harris’s argument is bolstered by its reflection in mortuary practice: Neolithic burials rarely show distinction in materiality, position, or orientation based on gender; mass burials were the norm as were commingling deposits. Then, beginning around 3500 BCE, instances of gendered mortuary practice begin to emerge, to be widespread and profuse by 2000 BCE (2017:17). The period of use at Perdigöes coincides with (and reflects) the period of transition between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age; perhaps the ivory figurines are evidence of the first rumblings of a new system of gender being formed; representing an abandonment of ambiguity and heterogeneity in favor of an emphasis on anatomical realism and specific, rigid body postures, in many ways echoing the ideologies to come.

This preliminary exploration of gender at Perdigöes is obviously far from complete, and not simply because the site itself has only been partially excavated. The complexity of the site compounds with the challenges of examining sex and gender in the past to paint an incredibly enigmatic portrait. But even such a limited inquiry as this proffers avenues for future study. In the absence of a comparative perspective, sex and gender can best be understood when examined in a broad regional context and while considering long-term histories (Brumfiel 2006). With this in mind, a study of the bioarchaeological data available from Iberia and what is present-day Morocco, across a long stretch of time, could be very enlightening, especially regarding sex-based divisions of labor. Jane Peterson engages in this type of long-term, regional analysis of bioarchaeological data for the southern Levant region, over the same time span of interest here, with much success. Because gender is inextricably linked to a host of other variables, from politics to ecology (Brumfiel 2006), the content and contexts of Pits 40 and 16 in comparison to other chronologically contemporaneous depositions demands further exploration. They hint at the dual emergence of social strata and a stricter conception of gender and could potentially shed light on the origins of our current gender structures.

More than anything, it seems an exploration of gender at Perdigöes must take into consideration cosmological differences between our present day societies and those of the past, and how these differences might challenge the modalities we hold as universal. .

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