Nomadic Subjects: Sexual Difference in Ancient and Ethnographic Studies of Pastoral Mobility

Abstract

This essay explores Braidotti's nomadic subject as the starting point for a posthumanist perspective for the interpretation of ethnographic and ancient pastoral societies. Why has women's labour and positionality in such societies tended to be ignored by archaeology? The author's autobiographical discussion of her earlier work on village and transhumant pastoralists in Greece frames her personal discovery of gender and power dynamics in mobile societies. The main case study, however, examines the household archaeology of Iron Age Saka (eastern variants of Scythians) and later pastoral groups in order to put forth hypotheses about gendered production in semi-sedentary societies. Haraway's concept of the cyborg and Braidotti's concept of the nomadic subject are examined. Material studies of ceramic serving dishes, household debris and house form at an Iron Age agropastoral settlement apply some of the concepts of new feminisms. A comparison is drawn between the philosophy of nomadology and the anthropological archaeology of pastoral nomads.