Sex, Transsexuality and Archaeological Perception of Gender Identities

Abstract

Reconsideration of some previous archaeological interpretations of gender may offer much more variability and freedom to our current understanding of gender identity. The perception of gender in archaeological interpretations commonly reflects our current social reality. In our Christian Western worldview, the traditional gender categories of men and women are based on biology and presume the primacy of the reproduction in human societies. Alternative social roles were judged as deviations by the biased majority. The extremely difficult position of homosexuals in twentieth-century Western society was caused mainly by the lack of an appropriate and commonly recognized gender category. No surprisingly, the concept of transsexualism developed in cultures that only recognized and valued two gender categories based on biological sex while the tribes in North America and Siberia had gender categories ready for such cases. In Western society, Christian norms instigated a social neglect of homosexuals mainly due to the absence of appropriate gender categories. As archaeologists, we should change our approach to the interpretation of past societies because our current gender categories do not always correspond to those of a former reality.