Abstract
This work demonstrates the importance of integrating sexual division of labour into the research of the transition to the Neolithic and its social implications. During the spread of the Neolithic in Europe, when migration led to the dispersal of domesticated plants and animals, novel tasks and tools, appear in the archaeological record. By examining the use-wear traces from over 400 stone tools from funerary contexts of the earliest Neolithic in central Europe we provide insights into what tasks could have been carried out by women and men. The results of this analysis are then examined for statistically significant correlations with the osteological, isotopic and other grave good data, informing on sexed-based differences in diet, mobility and symbolism. Our data demonstrate males were buried with stone tools used for woodwork, and butchery, hunting or interpersonal violence, while women with those for the working of animal skins, expanding the range of tasks known to have been carried out. The results also show variation along an east-west cline from Slovakia to eastern France, suggesting that the sexual division of labour (or at least its representation in death) changed as farming spread westwards.
Highlights
Gender is acknowledged to be a produced, performed, and regulated cultural construct that can be materially documented and analysed [1, 2]
In view of the above, this paper aims to make a contribution to better understanding the processes by which women, men and other potential genders came to be practically and ideologically associated with certain tasks and activities during the Linearbandkeramik period in Central European Early Neolithic (LBK; ca. 5,500–5000 cal BC)
The use-wear and technological analysis of LBK stone tool grave goods suggests the presence of a sexual division of labour associated with PBAs, bone tools and projectiles
Summary
Gender is acknowledged to be a produced, performed, and regulated cultural construct that can be materially documented and analysed [1, 2]. Sexual division of labour and gendered task specialisation have been noted to be key issues for understanding social, political, and economic systems in the social sciences worldwide. This has been widely discussed through ethnographic research in hunting-gathering-fishing communities [see reviews in 3–6] as well as in agrarian societies [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14]. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript
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