Androcentric Archaeology
Gender archaeology has so far mainly explored and discussed women in
prehistory. This one-sided focus is justified by the more or less explicitly
pronounced premise that while androcentric archaeology ignores women it
deals with and informs us broadly about men. Still, beyond the questions
of invisible women and the men representing them, this is rarely examined
or discussed any further. A few have remarked that also male stereotypes
may be transmitted to the past and thus shape the understanding of prehistoric
men just as much as of women. However, this is not explored
either or even considered as a problem (e.g. Conkey and Spector 1984;
Gilchrist 1999). But can we expect that androcentric archaeology, which is
not aware of the importance of gender in the first place, really provide
knowledge about men and masculinity in prehistory? Stig Welinder
(1997:63) even asks whether we, in spite of 200 years of androcentric
archaeology, may now have more knowledge of prehistoric women than of
prehistoric men as individual human beings.
To answer this we have to read androcentric archaeological literature
with an explicit attention to how men and masculinities are presented
(Caesar 1999b; Alberti 2006; Caesar 1999a; Welinder 1997). I have chosen
two examples which I find representative for their present time and tradition,
Brøndsted (1960)1 Danmarks Oldtid, Jernalderen (Prehistory of Denmark,
Iron Age) and Anthony Harding’s (2007) Warriors and Weapons in
Bronze Age Europe. These works have been chosen because they are thorough
material studies which also consider social aspects of society, but they
represent completely different traditions of archaeology. They are also
picked because I beforehand expected them to be androcentric. In the following
I will explore and discuss how these works actually present men
and masculinities and what kind of knowledge they provide about prehistoric
men.