İspanya çalışma izni ve vizesi

İngiltere'de yasadigimiz zaman bize yetti ve simdi de, Ispanya'ya tasiniyoruz.

Bu vizeyi almak Ingiltere'den daha zor ve daha pahaliya mal oluyor.

Oncelikle Ispanya'da calisacaginiz sirket sizin icin calisma bakanligina basvuruyor ve calisma izninizi aliyor. bunun icin diplomaniz ve pasaportunuzun butun sayfalarinin fotokopisi gerekiyor. Calisma izniniz tam bir ay sonra cikiyor ve size postalaniyor. Bu işlemler icin Madrid'te bir avukat kullanmaniz iyi olur. Benim calistigim firma oldukca iyiydi, merak eden olursa ismini paylasirim.

Sonrasinda,

diploma, sabika kaydi ve heyet raporu aliyorsunuz. Bunlari noterden ispanyolca'ya cevirtip uzerlerine apostil şerhi vurduruyorsunuz. Sonra buyukelcilikten randevu alıp/sıraya girip bekliyorsunuz. O da ne, sabika kaydiniza bir apostil daha vurdurmaniz lazim. Tıpış tıpış geriye gidiyorsunuz ve ikinci apostili vurduruyorsunuz :(

apostil şerhi kaymakamlıklarda ve valiliklerde vuruluyor. Kadıköy kaymakamlıgı anadolu yakasında apostil muhru vurmaya yetkili. Sabika kaydi adli bir belge oldugu icin, buna bir apostilde birinci derece mahkemesinde bulunan adalet işleri masası gibi bir yere gidiyorsunuz, Fatih Adliyesinde vuruyorlar :)

Bu arada ben bu evrakların hepsini ingiltere'den de aldim. Apostillenecek evraklarinizi postayla gonderiyorsunuz ve apostilleyip geri gonderiyorlar, bu kadar kosturmanin geregi yok.

Her seyiniz tam ve vizeye basvurdunuz. Ortalama 2-3 hafta icerisinde vizeniz elinizde, Viva Espana.

ps: Calisma izni almak icin bankada paraniz olmasi gerekmiyor.

İngiltere çalışma izni (ICT tier 2)

Merhaba arkadaslar,

Ingiltere'den ICT Tier 2 Established staff vizesi aldim ve bunu alirken yasadigim tecrubeyi sizinle paylasmak istiyorum.

Oncelikle bu vize turu, kendi kendinize basvurabileceginiz bir vize turu degil.
Ulkenizde calistiginiz firmanin Ingiltere subesine kisa sureli tayin olmaniz karsiliginda size veriliyor.
Acilimi: Intra-company transfer. Established staff. En uzun 3 yıl süreyle alabiliyorsunuz ve belirli bir puani toplamaniz gerekiyor. Geliriniz 24.000 Poundun uzerindeyse ve universite mezunuysaniz bir de calistiginiz sirketin sponsorluk yetkisi varsa hemen bu puanlari topluyorsunuz. Vizeyi almak yaklasik 3 iş gunu suruyor. Sonra Ingiltere'de polise kayit oluyorsunuz ve işlem bitiyor.

the weary herakles

The Weary Herakles of Lysippos: Some Art Historical Concerns

Introduction:

The sculpture type called “Weary Herakles” was an artistic creation of Lysippos, who was one of the most important sculptors of the Classic Period. This statue soon became a prototype to be copied in several forms of media, including coins and later came to our day as one of the most common features of the Classical Art. Besides its popularity in all art book and many museums, the particular statue of Lysippos is an important benchmark. First of all, Lysippos was the personal sculptor of Alexander and thus was one of the pioneers of Hellenistic sculpture.
On the other hand, Lysippos was still a sculptor belonging to the Classical Greek tradition, a contemporary of other important artists such as Praxiteles and Skopas, and a follower of Polykleitos. Lysippos enjoyed a long life and a long career and he achieved fame as the most creative and influential artist of the Hellenistic period. His numerous Works or art include the famous Apoxyomenos, Herakles Farnese, Herakles Epitrapezios, Agias, and many portraits and colossal works. In this paper, I intend to study some aspects of the “Farnese” type, together with its many copies, because it is an interestingly popular work of art and it aptly reflects some of the problems art historians face today. Also, its popularity through different ages and geographies depicts the artist’s arability to create an attractive, influential iconography.

Because there are many copies of the weary Herakles statue, I find it useful to divide the subject into pieces and start from the very beginning, the original work of art which comes to our day only thanks to the written sources. An account of Lysippos’ art and style will be given as it is the key factor in identifying both the closest copies of Lysippos’ Herakles and the “ Lysippic” Herakleses which are iconographically similar but deviate in style. The main emphasis will be given to the sculptural works which are grouped an un-grouped by several scholars according to their style. Because of the high number of statues and fragments, only the most relevant will be mentioned, in order not to go beyond the scope of this paper.
The passage from Hellenistic into Roman copies is striking and another interesting feature of this statue is that Commodus had himself sculpted in the same fashion. In Asia Minor, the iconography is conservative, but the style is closer to Aphrodisian School.
A different medium that represents the “Farnese” Herakles is the numismatic evidence. Although the type existed in Corinthian coins, it found great popularity in Imperial coins and it shows that the image of Lysippos’ creation reached an iconic level in the late Imperial period.

Lysippos and his Weary Herakles:

Among all other ancient sculptors, Lysippos holds a special place because of his very long and innovative career (according to ancient sources he was artistically active for 75 years) and his split artistic achievement which made him one of the creators of the Hellenistic art.
We learn about his life from ancient writers; especially Pliny the Elder. According to Pliny, Lysippos was from the city of Sikyon and not a student of any artist, but a self-made bronze worker having been influenced by the painter Eupompos. Pliny places him in the 113th Olympiad (328 BC) ( N.H. XXXIV. 76), and we know from several sources that he was very popular and active during Alexander the Great’s reign (336-323 BC). Pliny mentions that he
made numerous portraits of Alexander beginning from his boyhood (N.H. XXXIV, 63). Athenaios (XI, 784) mentions that Lysippos was a friend of Kassandros. All these dates place Lysippos’ artistic activities to the second half of the fourth century. We learn from Pliny again, that he was more prolific than any other artist. According to Pliny (XXXIV, 87) when Lysippos died his statues amounted to 1500, and that “all of such artistic value that each would sufficed by itself to make him famous. The number became known after his death, when his heir broke open his strongbox, since it had been his custom to set aside a piece of gold from the price of each statue.” Among the many works of Lysippos, the very famous is mentioned: the Youth Scraping Himself (Apoxyomenos) of which the Emperor Tiberius was very fond. Pliny mentions that Lysippos was also famed for his “Flute-Girl”, “Quadriga of Helios” belonging to the Rhodians. According to Plutarch, Alexander liked Lysippos’s art so much that he ordered that only Lysippos should make his portrait. (De Alexandri Fortitudine seu Virtute,II, 2,3). In one passage Pliny cites a colossal Herakles made at Tarentum by Lysippos and praises the weight distribution system (Pliny, N.H.XXXIV, 40), such that, no matter how strong the winds and storms are, the statue holds itself together. Libanios, a fourth century rhetoros, (Ekphraseis, XV- see Pollitt 1990) defines the Farnese Herakles in great detail:
To begin with his head bends towards the earth and he seems to me be looking to see if he can kill another opponent. Then his neck is bent downward along with his head and his whole body is bare of covering, for Herakles was not one to care about modesty when his attention was directed towards excellence. Of the arms, the right one is tautand is bent behind his back, while the left is relaxed and stretches towards the earth… And so the club supports him while he rests just as it saved him when he fought… Of Herakles’ two legs the right one is beginning to make a movement, while the left is placed beneath and fitted firmly on the base, and this arrangement makes it possible fort he onlookers to learn just what sort of man Herakles is, even though he ceased from his labours.
Pausanias, the second century AD traveler, mentions a bronze Herakles by Lysippos in the agora at Sikyon (2.9.8.). Although the ancient author does not describe the statue, it is sometimes assumed that it was the original work. However, Pliny gives a specific description of Lysippos’s style:
He is said to have contributed much to the art of casting statues by representing the hair in detail, by making the head smaller than earlier sculptors had, and by making the bodies slenderer and more tightly knit. There is no Latin term for symmetria which he observed with the utmost precision by a new and previously unattempted system which involved altering the square figures of the older sculptors; and he used commonly to say by them men were represented as they really were, but by him they were represented as they appeared. What seem to be especially characteristic of his art are the subtle fluctuations of surface which were apparent even in the smallest details (N.H.XXXIV, 65).
We learn from this passage that Lysippos tried to incorporate an ideal set of proportions in his statues and ultimately developed his own canon, which is different than, for example, Polykleitos’ canon. He tried to use the optical experience of the viewer in his art works, so he modified the proportions of his works in order to make them look tall, and slender. (Pollitt 1986:47).



Weary Herakles: Generalia

The original of the colossal statue of Herakles Farnese is in Naples, signed by Glykon of Athens as a copyist. The statue was copied fort the baths of Caracalla in Rome, probably during 3rd century AD, which is also the date fort his bath complex. It is the most often copied and imitated Lysippic Herakles, the one that is leaning on his club, portrayed as weary after his deeds during his twelve labors. This statue is about twice life-size and it is characterized by the heavy, imposing musculature and “strong” appearance (Richter 1950: 289)
In order to understand Lysippos’ style, one must look at his many works, which would surpass the aim of this paper, but we should assume that at least in his younger years, Lysippos followed the Classical canon before developing his own style. It is the pure Lysippos style that we are interested in. Lysippos was a master in athletic sculpture, and in the representations of male divinities and heroes; such as Herakles. Apoxymenos type is the best example to understand Lysippos’ style and the statue is best represented in bronze from Ephesus in the Kunsthistorischen Museum in Vienna and a marble copy from Ufizzi. There are a few striking points in the statues. The representation of the hair is very careful, detailed, giving a realistic effect of thick locks. The attention that Lysippos gives to the hair is already attested by Pliny and the hair is reproduced faithfully detailed in the Ufizzi version. The body and the legs are proportionately slim, and there is a general vigor on the poses. The heavy muscularity of the shoulders and torso is also striking (Morgan 1949:228-234).
In the surviving works which can be plausibly associated to Lysippos, three specific stylistic features present Lysippos’s principles of design. First the heads of his statues are smaller than it had been the case with the Classical Greek sculpture (about one eighth the height of the body, as opposed to one seventh). Second, torsion is used in the composition in such a way that there is no single point from where the viewer can best study the work of art. So the viewer has to adapt to the statue’s space. Third, arms and knees Project out of the Classical envelope, attracting the attention of the viewer. All these effects make the sculptor achieve his aim of presenting the human body as “it was seen” or “it appeared”. The Apoxymenos type is Lysippos’ most typical “Classical” work, perhaps from the sculptor’s early phase. So the young Lysippos was an artist who had a sense of tradition but also who wanted to break through the traditional canons and measures and who concerned with the emotional effect this works had on his viewers (Pollitt hell.art.:48-49).
The Farnese Herakles has the torsional pose and the unstable balance typical of the era and his head is relatively small with respect to his body; this increase the size of the body even more. On the other hand, Lysippos’ Herakles figure offers a different element of his style. It offers the development of emotional expressionism. The colossus at Tarentum and the Farnese Herakles types are not only important for their size and vigor, but they also bare a certain pathos. The weary Herakles who endured the trials of life yearns for rest. So the musculature and the scale of the figures are contrasted by the pathos and weariness so vividly expressed in their faces. The worn faces and the heavy brows all reflect to us the hero who experienced the stages of ponos, (labor), and pothos, (great yearning). Perhaps Lysippos attempted to capture a human psyche with his statues of Herakles – which was an important element of Hellenistic thought- so we can say that Lysippos was one of the early followers of this philosophy (Pollitt 1986:52).
The massive corporality of the statue is not just a product of proportions, although in this copy the statue is ten feet high and very muscular. The treatment of the surface and the lines which stand through the thin and worn flesh make this a portrait of a man whose life and body have been spent in achieving heroic acts. Masculinity is basic in this and other copies. The expectations of the viewer are over-confirmed by Lysippos and the fatigued and over- developed body of Herakles draws attention to the expectations form this hero, which is not only saving the world from dangers but also achieving the limits of his power. (Osborne 1998: 23-24)
Because of this reasons, the Farnese Herakles is attributed to the more mature years of the artist, when he was fully involved in theatricality, emotional expressionism ant pathos. We can see that there is a stylistic difference between the “Apoxymenos” type and the “Weary Herakles” type. There is a certain evolution from the Classical towards Hellenistic, and with the presence of ethos and pathos in his works, we can also assume that he was an early Pioneer of the later Hellenistic Baroque. In order to persuade, he exudes good character, moves the viewer by appealing to emotions, and, of course, advance good reasons. He persuades the viewer by directly addressing to the emotions. The Farnese Herakles is still the symbol of strong superhuman masculinity, but on the other hand, there is this weariness, the fatigue that can be read on the face of the hero, which calls for sympathy for Herakles who runs throughout his life from adventure to adventure, achieves the things unachievable by the ordinary human being, but this is the human side of Herakles that Lysippos tries to present us in here.
From the very detailed descriptions of Pliny, we can at least assume that the original weary Herakles was probably cast in bronze, then copied and re-copied in marble. Here the problem of bronze originals and marble copies comes forth, because actually it is thought that none of Lysippos’ originals, just like many Hellenistic bronzes, survived to our day and marble copies come in slightly differing styles. We should also keep in mind that none of the sculptural works attributed to Lysippos were dated on a very firm basis, so a chronological ordering of the statues can only be made by purely stylistic grounds.

The Problem of Originals vs. Copies:

It has been questioned by scholars whether it is appropriate to assess Lysippos’ style on the basis of copies, made by other artists in other media, and to argue from those where the original statue fits into the career of a man whose works are all lost.
Other statues that are similar to Farnese Herakles come from different places and were made at difference dates. Among the close parallels are three large scale marble statues. One is dating from 1st century BC, found in the Antikhytera shipwreck, the other is from Roman Argos and the third is a third century twin of the Farnese Herakles. If a prototype was made by Lysippos, Mattusch states that it should be questioned whether his bronze statue was colossal and very heavily muscled like the Farnese Herakles or smaller and more delicate like the statue from Argos. We should ask if Glykon’s Herakles, which has no less artistic magnificence than other works attributed to Lysippos, is the closest copy to the lost work of Lysippos (Mattusch 2004: 277-291).
The weary Herakles type was attributed to the sculptor because of the label on a statue found in the second half of the 16th century at the foot of the Palatine, now the Piti Palace in Florence. On the other hand, a silver tetradrachm from Peloponnese dated to 330-280 BC, shows that the type existed to the late 4th early 3rd century BC. Troxell attributed the coin to Corinth which implies that the original statue stood in that city (H.A. Troxell, “The Peloponnesian Alexanders”, ANSMN 17 (1971) 44-50). The statue type also appeared in Athenian coins during the first century AD, which led some scholars to suggest that the original statue stood there (LIMC 4 763 no.694). By the middle of the second century AD the type spreads to Asia Minor and appears on coins from Phrygia, Bithynia and Propontis (LIMC 4 763 nos. 688, 691, 692, 695, pl.492). Some Hellenistic remains, like the Antikhytera shipwreck Herakles for example, show that at least in the 1st century BC the original statue was in Greece and had not been carried off to Rome (Edwards 1996:146).
In the early comparisons of those artworks, there was a thought that the marble statues could also be made by Lysippos, or at least made by the Lysippian workshop. Hyde (1907: 396-416) thought that even if the marble statues were copies, the inference is that they reproduced the originals, if not mechanically as it was the case in Rome, but at least faithfully, for having employed noted artists like Lysippos, the dedicator would have wished a careful and accurate reproduction. This view is not plausible because we know that Lysippos was a sculptor working in bronze, and that the marble copies are probably later in date. The copies are spread over a large period of time from early Hellenistic to late Roman, and it would be naive not to expect any deviations in style.
In 1928, Franklin Plotinus Johnson identified at least fifty marble and bronze statues, torsos and heads based on the Weary Herakles motif ( see Pollitt 1974 for a review of the book). The book shows that type was copied in different geographies by different sculptural schools.
Krull (1985: 305-351) stated that the most accurate copies of the original statue by Lysippos are the statues found in the Baths of Caracalla and in the Piti Palace (these are twin copies). He gives less credit to the Antikhytera shipwreck statue, which differs in the more erect position of the club and a shift to the right in the upper chest. The same issue can also be observed in the Roman Argos statue. On the other hand, the Antikhytera Herakles is alert and attentive, but the Farnese Herakles is in a kind of daydream.
There is no intrinsic evidence to indicate that the two monumental statues were the original ones. So there is a need to compare with a better attributed example. The Farnese Herakles has traditionally been compared with the Antikhytera and Argos types, which are stylistically related to the Apoxymenos. Opposing Krull, Edwards (1996: 148) thinks that the compositional principles of the Antikhytera and Argos Herakleses are more in accordance with other works attributed to Lysippos, and that the Farnese Herakles is a copy that is modified from the original design.
Neither Ridgway (1997: 306) is sure if the original was by Lysippos, but she states that it was a very influential work that set the traits of all Herakles portraits. After its creation, Herakles was seen with the traits of the Farnese type. Its composition is very complex and the viewer has to turn around the sculpture in order to see the apples of Hesperides that Herakles is hiding behind to understand the story that the statue is narrating. Ridgway also thinks that it is the Apoxymenos, which is the most consistent attribution to Lysippos.
In his article “The Weary Herakles of Lysippos”, Cornelius Vermeule tried to put certain statues and fragmentary pieces into a chronological order, form the early third century BC to Late Roman Imperial period (Vermeule: 1975:323-332). Vermeule thinks that the original works were the colossal versions, which survived almost till Late Antiquity, and which were copied in smaller forms in Asia Minor (like the Herakles from Nicosia, from Basel, from the Metropolitan Museum). There was no full sized bronze fragment or copy of any of the works Weary Herakles. These are the full-scale marble copies which give us an idea about the lost bronze(s) of Lysippos. Vermeule’ s Group Two, is called the Hellenistic or Pergamene version of the Lysippic Herakles. Examples from the New York Metropolitan Museum are counted, on which a clear influence of Pergamene Scholl can be observed. This version proves itself to be the most common copy type, and implies that the archetype was probably available in many centers by that time. Vermeule puts the Farnese Herakles and its forerunners to Group Three and groups the remaining –mainly the Roman copies- as Group Four. In this case, the Farnese Herakles is placed in the Late Roman Period and is joined with the statues adapted as the portraits of Commodus, who, in his last years of reign was thinking he was Herakles. Vermeule states that the Farnese Herakles is based on a late Hellenistic or Roman imperial version, which became especially popular in the late Antonine or Severan Age. He puts the statue together with the Antikhyreta shipwreck Herakles and the Argos Herakles and states that this shipwreck dates around 80-65 BC, so the third group can also be late Hellenistic rather than purely Antonine or Severan in origin. Here Vermeule opposes other art historians who place the Farnese and the Antikhyreta and Argos Herakleses to two different categories according to style.
It is not sure which Herakles reflects the creation of Lysippos but if we assume that he invented this particular depiction of Herakles, it is clear that his creation was much appreciated and spread quickly during the Hellenistic period to Asia Minor and was being copied there, then to Rome. Expecting the copyists to be one-by-one loyal to the original work is not plausible, as there are several sculptural schools and individual artists working on the same subject. It is possible that the Weary Herakles first comes as a production of Lysippos, but then it becomes an iconic figure that is much appreciated and copied by several artists. It can become a subject on its own, and can be worked by other sculptors, being stylistically more and more independent from Lysippos’ initial work.

The Roman Figures, Statues and Coins: the Fame of Weary Herakles throughout the Late Antiquity

An interesting and hilarious example showing the popularity of the iconography created by Lysippos is a fragment of a statue which is now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, having a portrait of the emperor Commodus depicted as weary Herakles. Large bronze medallions which are depicting the same are also dated to the same period and identify the statue (C.Vermeule, AJA 68 (1964) 331, pl, 106 fig 18; Vermeule 1975: 327). During the reign of Commodus and Septimius Severus the cult of Herakles had gained great importance and became an instrument of Roman imperial power.
In the excavations at Side in Pamphylia, a small Weary Herakles was found near the theater and agora complex (Mansel 1963: 21,24, fig.10) and was associated with the Aphrodisian School which reflects the mannerist style of Asia Minor sculptural works.
The last example of Weary Herakles in Classical art are the Roman Imperial coins of the last quarter of the third and the first decade of the fourth centuries AD. These coins are the aureus of Carnius (283- 285) where the weary Herakles stands at the reverse of the coin together with the inscription VIRTVS AVGG which shows the hero’s connection with the emperor. Another coin is a bronze follis of Maximinus Daza, the image probably derived from a representation on a Greek Imperial coin of Asia Minor at around AD 175-275 (Sutherland C.H.V. and Carlson R.A.G. 1967: 639, no.152, pl.15.).

Conclusion:
The weary Herakles of Lysippos poses the same basic problem that if faced with every Classical Greek or Hellenistic sculptural work. None of the original works of the sculptor exist; there are only copies that are not totally consistent in style. However, the Weary Herakles type became so popular in the antiquity that it was copied in mass amounts, and the hero’s fatigue and great yearning was worked out so masterfully that it is still one of the most famous art objects of the world.







Bibliography:

Dobbins, E.
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“Inscribed statue of ‘Weary Hercules’ Solves Numismatic
Mystery in Characene” Celator 1/1993, 32f.
Edwards, C.M.
1996
“ Lysippos” pp. 130-153 in Personal Styles in Greek Sculpture Ed.by O.Palagia and J.J. Pollitt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres
Hyde, W.W.
1907
“Lysippus as a Marble Worker” AJA 11: 396-416
Johnson F.P.
1928
Lysippos. Durham: N.Carolina
J.J. Pollitt, J.J.
1974
The Ancient View of Greek Art: Criticism, History and Terminology. New Haven: Yale University Pres
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“Der Herakles vom Typ Farnese Kopienkritische Untersuchungen einer Schopfung des Lysipp”. s.v. Herakles: 305-351 in LIMC 4 frankfurt am Main
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Die Ruinen von Side. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter & Co.
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“The Style of Lysippos” Hesperia Suppl 8: 228- 234
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The Roman Imperial Coinage VI. London: British Museum Pres
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fourth crusade

Certain Issues and Remarks about the Fourth Crusade
Introduction:
In light of the three preceding crusades, the fourth expedition was organized for succeeding in what the second and the third failed. Guided by the same religious fever, it ironically ended up with the conquest of Christian territories and the death of Christian fidels. If we believe the historians, the fourth crusade even became imperialistic. (Stated by Jean Dufournet in his book about the writers of the fourth crusade Dufournet 1969;52) Apart from the dogmatic belief it was a fierce devotion to more obscure causes, it was also the confrontation of two Christian peoples once united under the wings of Rome.
This crusade determines definitively a medieval conflict between the East and the West, between oriental Christianity and occidental Christianity. It shows at the same time that the papacy, at the peak of its power, witnessed for the first time its lack of power: Innocent III, the strongest pope of the middle ages, had completely lost control of the crusade. (Dufournet 1969;52)
In his preface to the chronicle of Edmond Faral, Jean Dufournet observes in the spirit of the crusaders that “the enterprise was not unjust: it was attested by the constant protection of God and the absolution of the Pope”. ((Dufournet 1969;52)
Even if Villehardouin underlines several times the necessity and the legitimacy of the crusade over Constantinople, he conforms to the interests of justice, of the papacy and of the crusades, and his writings remain incomplete in the description of the factors that involved them to the conquest of the Greek capital. His chronicles are an ultimate example of the loyalty of a knight towards his masters.
Among the specialists of the fourth crusade, there is a general agreement upon the fact that Villehardouin pretends to show that only a chain of circumstances led the leaders of the expedition to take a series of decisions, which were all the most favorable in the ruling of the crusades, and which as a result led to the paradoxical conquest of a Christian Empire. (Pauphilet 1952; 559)
The heart of the historical debates about the fourth crusade have, since the 19th century been the question on the honesty of the marshal of Champagne. ( Heer 1970; 258) The crusades would not have taken place without the encouragement of smart and powerful men who made it work to their profit. Among these men, we must name the Doge Dandolo, the Pope Innocent III and the Marquis of Monferrat, successor of Thibaut de Champagne at the head of the crusade recommended by G. de Villehardouin.
In 1875 the Comte Riant noted two antagonistic lines of opinions among the observers who judged the fourth crusade: the official line and the line of the discontents. (Riant 1875; 22-34) The official line sees in the events of 1204 a glorious but unexpected adventure, something like the realization of brilliant dreams. Riant stated that it was the least important mission to conquer Jerusalem, and suggested that the real objective of the expedition was “the consolidation of the new oriental Latin empire” and that “we must seek for the signs of it in the circularly letters of the army leaders, and especially in the chronicles of Villehardouin”.
In the line of the discontents, Riant grouped knights like Roberts de Clari who did not hide his suspicion about the chiefs of the crusade who, according to him obeyed to the inspirations of hatred against the Byzantine Empire. In the chronicle of Clari, (Clari 1868; i) one finds Gunther of Pairis who himself doubts about “the legitimacy of the crusade” looking at himself as a passive instrument of the divine anger. (Riant 1879)
At the same time, as underlined by Alfred Andrea, Gunther expresses himself zealously while he describes the behavior of Abbot Martin at Constantinople. (Gunther of Pairis; 85)
He doesn’t hesitate to use plenty of excuses whenever he thinks it is good to use them, practically at almost every turn, and he extols Martin’s monastic virtues and endeavors to show that he was always scrupulous in confronting to the highest standards his vocation. Gunther takes special pains to portray his Abbott as “obedient, humble, shy and abstemious, and with no worldly possessions or pleasures” (Gunther of Pairis; 85) The doubtful acquisition of certain relics by the Abbott Martin while Constantinople was invaded by the Franks was indirectly denounced by Villehardouin (Gunther of Pairis; 85)
It is over this antagonist structure that the critiques of the modern historians are founded, either partisans of the chronicle of Villehardouin, satisfied by the official narration of the fourth crusade, or the skeptical questioning of the authenticity yet the sincerity of the chronicle writer, ranking themselves behind Robert de Clari. The latter ones opposed to the theory of accident as defined by Riant, arguing that “Villehardouin only saw the public events of war negotiations; he neither knew nor penetrated the secret aim which was held by the counsil of the Republic. (Gunther of Pairis; 86)
In fact, in order to gain more insight on these debates, we should observe the crusade more closely as a whole. The fourth crusade was initially an attempt to capture Palestine. It never made its way there, since it was sidetracked into attacking and sacking Constantinople and also, since the number of participants and the money they could gather was falling short on meeting the huge financial needs of such a great expedition.
The history of the fourth crusade is an intricate set of events. The most fundamental details are pertinent here as the relationships of the crusaders in their French-speaking homelands as well as in Constantinople and the events of the crusade itself are extremely important to the nature of the resulting history. The reasons for the expedition are obvious. On one side we have the pilgrimage and even martyrdom besides the need to “capture” Jerusalem, on the other, military victory and booty. The story of the failed crusade is well-known; however there are some blank points that are not clarified by most of the general history books. Generally it has been stated that the Venetians mislead the crusade by their pecuniary greed and the whole burden of the failure is saddled on the Venetia Republic. (Runciman 1953; 114)
On the other hand, the trick played by the Byzantine Alexius is generally underestimated. Actually some claimers of the Byzantine throne made agreements with their enemies the “Latin” Christians, which ultimately led to the capture of their capital Constantinople. The capture of Constantinople and its environs by the crusaders changed the allure of the Byzantine Empire completely. It was stripped of its wealth and put into political chaos; the crusaders’ rule over the peninsula of Morea lasted very long.
How did the call to crusades, issued by Pope Innocent III in 1198 (CMH VI; 13-14)
in the hopes of re-conquering Muslim-controlled Jerusalem, lead instead to the 1204 conquest of Constantinople and much of Greece by Latin armies? Innocent's call to the cross was not widely taken up until in November, 1199, when a group of predominantly Champenois nobles, led by Theobald III, Count of Champagne, and his kinsmen Louis, Count of Blois, pledged the crusade at a jousting tournament at Ecry-sur-Aisne, a suitably profane venue to ensure the endeavor would probably fail. Despite having the crusade sanctified before God and man, the crusaders did fail and spectacularly so (CMH VI; 13-14) the force and its leaders became embroiled in one mess after another. A treaty was signed with the Venetian Doge, Enrico Dandolo, in April, 1201 for the transport by sea of the crusading force, whose ranks had swelled to include Champenois and Burgundians, but also Flemish, Lombardian and other French-speaking participants. ((Madden 1993; 166-185)
They were to sail to Egypt, which, once taken, would be the gateway to Jerusalem. Theobald died in May 1201, and a baronial parliament met at Soissons in June to choose a new leader. Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat, a highly respected vassal of Philip of Swabia, King of Germany, was elected. In addition to his powerful liege loyalties, Boniface was also related by marriage to the Hohenstaufen and French royal families. In the late summer of 1201, Boniface proclaimed the cross at Soissons Cathedral and was acclaimed leader of the crusade at the chapter general of the Cistercians' primary and greatest monastery, Citeaux. The crusaders gathered at Venice in the summer of 1202 for departure and found that their numbers were far lower than had been expected. There were different groups who came to the Crusade apart from the Venetians and these did not come together in Venice and did not follow the official leadership. They had a variety of motives. (Haris 2003; 259)
Walter of Brienne and his followers had the support of the Pope and they were behind their personal plans when the army joined at Venice. But they were too late when the army sailed and could never join the Crusade. (Queller 1974; 42)
On the other hand there were those who sailed from Apulia, Marseille or other ports instead of Venice. In many cases those who did so did it because of its convenience. For example the French crusaders set sail at Marseilles in order not to walk to Venice. Those who embarked on the ships from Apulia thought that the prices would be more favorable in Apulia than in Venice.
However, those who had had to come to Venice did not show up and their betrayal to their rendezvous coasted heavily to the crusader army, because it reduced their number and caused some others to hesitate and turn back. This caused the crusaders not to fulfill the enormous transport agreement they had made with the Venetians.
Among the historians there is a common belief that Venetians were betraying the Crusader army. Among the several reasons found by the historians, we can mention that the Venetians were interested in the financial gains they would gather from the Crusades, that the Egyptian target was against the Venetian benefits so they hampered the plan, that the Venetians were interested in the conquest of Constantinople because it meant to secure a monopolistic position in the Mediterranean trade. (Queller 1974; 42)
A widely believed opinion which can be read in the writings of the historians claims that the aim of the northern knights and kings was only sublime religiosity and martyrdom, while that of the Venetians was only materialistic. This seems to be an exaggerated belief, since it is known that the crusaders were not only interested in martyrdom but also in the richness of the East as their plunder of the relics and all riches of Constantinople can prove that they were not there for religious reasons. On the other hand, we cannot deny that the Venetians were interested in the fourth crusade because of financial interests, but they should not be reproached as being solely a mercantile state. After all, it is generally economic motives, not religious or moral ones that trigger the states to wars. The Venetian republic had also invested considerable resources in the crusade, which shows that they were expecting a lot from the crusaders. For example, in the early 1120’s, a Venetian armada fought against the Fatimid navy at the battle of Ascalon and gave support to the conquest of Tyre. During the third crusade, Venice sent a large fleet to the Holy Land in 1188 although nothing is heard of the further actions of this fleet. In 1198 Venice responded positively to a papal legate sent to gain support for a new crusade. The Venetians agreed to ensure the transportation of the armies and joined the army themselves. Since they invested so much to this expedition, both in terms of money, ships and manpower, the Venetians’ anger when their host could not pay the fee was understandable. (Madden 1999; 27)
While some of those who decided to come to the crusade could not meet their brothers-of-arms, it became more and more apparent that the crusade was ill-planned and there were more and more financial problems. This caused more and more people to take ships elsewhere or to give up the crusade due to the lack of finances.
The schisms in ideological grounds started to appear, too, because there was rumor that the objective of the crusade was not Jerusalem but Egypt. An assault upon the Nile Delta and then using it as a stepping stone towards the Holy lands would sound at first reasonable but most of the crusaders were taking the Holy Land issue very seriously and wanted to go there directly instead of waiting for their commanders’ strategical games to realize. Some wanted to receive a certification of their pilgrimage while others feared that the money given to them as the cost of the journey would not be enough and more would be needed.
The crusaders landed to Zara in late fall and winter of 1202-3. (Madden 1999; 22)
The official leaders thought that the attacks to Zara and Constantinople were necessary steps towards Jerusalem. Villehardouin charged certain people of quitting the crusade but against his charges, men such as Simon de Monfort, Enguerrand of Boves, the abbot of Vaux-de-Cernay and the Abbot of Pairis quitted the army because they thought they would jeopardize their souls if they remained in it. However, those who did not sail together with the Crusader army had little success, as Villehardouin rightly points out not many of them arrived at Accra, and those who arrived there found out that there was truce with the Muslims and engaged themselves in small skirmishes with the locals. However, they contributed nothing to the conquest of Jerusalem. (Andrea 1997; 23)
This left them very heavily in debt to the Venetians for boats and supplies that were no longer needed, with no sources of funds for repayment. In order to free themselves from the debt, the crusaders agreed to aid Venice in its maritime wars by helping her capture Zara, on the opposite side of the Adriatic coast. This incident took place in November, 1202, against the Pope's express order, and at a further cost to their numbers, as many now left the crusading party disappointed in the diversion from their stated goals. Before leaving Venice, the Crusaders further negotiated to help Alexios IV, the son of the deposed Byzantine Emperor Isaac Angelos, to regain his throne in Constantinople in return for Alexios's financing their onward trip to Jerusalem. Alexios IV was the brother-in-law of Philip of Swabia, Boniface's liege lord, easing the Crusaders' agreement to the plot. Acting in support of the deposed Isaac II’s son prince Alexius, the French and Venetian crusaders attacked Constantinople in july 1203, causing Alexius III to fly. Isaac II was hastily brought back to the throne and prince Alexius was welcomed to the city and crowned as co-emperor. Isaac II was forced to ratify his son’s agreement with the crusaders so he consented to pay them two hundred thousand silver marks, accepted papal supremacy over the Byzantine church, and send troops to Palestine. Isaac II was aged and already blind, so he had virtually no power over the empire, on the other hand his son was reckless and depended only on the force of his comrades, the crusaders. (Madden 1999; 7)
The two emperors were first eager to do whatever possible in order to rid their empire of the crusaders. Isaac gave them all the money he could find, seized the land and property of the aristocrats but couldn’t fulfill half of the debt he owed to the crusades. Then they turned towards the churches and melted down whatever precious thing they found in order to pay the crusaders. Alexius and the patriarch sent letters of submission to the pope in 25 August 1203. So the two emperors literally betrayed their own country in order to gain the power with the help of their proven enemies. (Stephenson 2005; 279)
As the crusaders began to lose patience, Alexios was himself overthrown and murdered. The Latins were ordered to leave the area of the city by the new Byzantine authority. Angry, low on food and funds, and thus unable either to move on to Jerusalem or to return west, the Franks instead laid siege to the city. They captured Constantinople in April 1204 and in May, Baldwin, Count of Flanders, was crowned leader of the Latin Empire of Constantinople in Haghia Sophia. Jerusalem was forgotten.(Stephenson 2005; 279/80)
From here the armies moved on through what is now Greece, pushing the Byzantine leadership into three diminutive territories, the Despotate of Epirus, in northwestern Greece as well as two others in Asia Minor. Boniface of Montferrat ruled a new Kingdom of Thessalonica, in the north of mainland Greece; the Venetians took the Ionian Islands, the Adriatic coast and Crete; and the Champenois and Burgundians, under Geoffrey de Villehardouin, the powerful Marshall of Champagne and son of a prominent first crusader, headed the Principality of the Morea in the Peloponnesus. The western knights extended their area of control over the whole peninsula, with the exception of Coron and Modon, which were under Venetian rule. Although major changes happened in its boundaries, the Frank principality of Morea remained in existence for more than two centuries, eventually disappearing in 1432.
In the first period of the history of the Principality, ties between East and West remained very close, as did the kinship, and social and religious relationships between people who emigrated. This is seen in both the secular and the ecclesiastical contexts. Several powerful local landholders of the region had already grown quite independent of the Byzantine capital prior to the 1204 conquest. There was thus a local Greek elite that was ready to be acculturated into the Franks' society in order to benefit from close association with their new colonizing overlords. There are several cases of Greeks who changed rites to practice Latin Christianity.
Yet what of the polemics we have that are railing against the Latins and the destruction of Constantinople by the invading army? To be sure, the forces of Boniface and the other collected leaders of the Western conquerors devastated the capital city and also parts of the outlying territories on their march through Greece and Western Anatolia. The account of Niketas Choniates provides ample evidence of this as do the statements of the crusaders themselves, though to a lesser extent. But two factors must be borne in mind when using these sources. The first one, of course, is that these authors were entirely biased in favor of the Byzantine government and presented the most orthodox view possible of the conquest, both in the religious as well as in the political sense. The documents need to be read with this in mind and, if not corroborated by other historical sources, the accounts should therein be taken with a grain of salt. However, even Choniates grudgingly signals that there was cooperation between the Latins and some Greeks: (Choniates 1994; 321-323)
“Their former lords [the former Greek lords of Moreote territories] were content to submit in disgrace and revilement without feeling any pricking of heart or quitting themselves like men for their own sake and that of their children; ... There were those who were consumed by burning ambition against the interest of their own country, servile men corrupted by wantonness and other senseless actions who took possession of precipitous fortifications and fortresses and well-walled cities. There they established wretched tyrannies, and, whereas their duty was to take up arms against the Latins, they set their faces against one another and surprisingly made peace with the Latins”
Choniates' indignation at his fellow Greeks' collaboration with the Latins does not negate the evidence he provides that some powerful archons did participate in the Franks' political and economic hierarchy.
Second, it must be acknowledged that these texts mostly reflect the attitude of the highest ranks of the Byzantine political and social hierarchy toward the conquest. Michael Angold, in the most recent history of the Fourth Crusade, points out that the Fourth Crusade hit hardest at the Byzantine elites, based in Constantinople. This was the sacred city of the empire, where its power and pride resided and the basis for its corporate identity. (Angold 2003; 221)








BIBLIOGRAPHY

Andrea,J.A., The Capture of Constantinople: The Hystoria Constantinopolitana of Gunther of Paris, Upenn Press, 1997.

Angold, Michael., The Fourth Crusade; Event and Context, Harlow, UK: Pearson Longman, 2003.

Clari, Robert de., Li Estoires de chiaus qui conquisent Coustantinople. Paris: Jouanst, 1868.

Dufournet, Jean., Introduction. La Conquete de Constantinople. Ed. Edmond Faral. Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1969.

Gunther of Pairis., Hysteria Constantinopolitana. Trans. Alfred. J. Andrea. Philadelphia: Upenn Press, 1997.

Haris, J., Byzantium and the Crusades, New York: Hambledon and London. 2003.

Heer, Friedrich. L'Univers du Moyen Age. Trad. M. de Gandillac. Paris: Fayard, 1970.

Madden, Thomas. F., "Venice and Constantinople in 1171 and 1172: Enrico Dandolo's Attitude towards Byzantium," Mediterranean Historical Review 8, 1993.

Madden,D & Queller,T., The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople, Upenn Press, 1999.

Niketas Choniates., City of Byzantium. Annals of Nikaetas Choniates.-trans, by Harry J. Magoulias, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994.

Pauphilet, Albert., Historiens et chroniqueurs du moyen age: Robert de Clari, Villehardouin, Joinville, Froissart, Commynes. Paris: Gallimard, 1952.

Queller, D & Compton,T&Campbell,D., The Fourth Crusade: The Neglected Majority, Speculum, Vol: 49, No:3, 1974.

Riant, Paul Edouard., Didier Innocent III, Philippe de Souabe et Boniface de Montferrat; examen des causes qui modifierent, au detriment de F empire grec, le plan primitif de la quatrieme croisade. Paris: Librairie de V. Palme, 1875.
Riant, Paul Edouard., Le Changement de direction de la quatrieme croisade d'apres quelques travaux recents. Genes: Imprimerie du R. Institut sourds-muets, 1879.

Runciman, S., A History of the Crusades, Cambridge University Press, 1953.

Stephenson, P., Byzantium's Balkan Frontier: A Political Study of the Northern Balkans, 900-1204, CUP Press, 2005

The Cambridge Medieval History VI, Cambridge, 1936

annotated bibliography on gender archaeology

Ceyhun ÇOKAL

In his article Trigger’s main idea is that the positivist methods of archaeology and humanistic methods that emerged in the last three decades are not rival to each other, but should build an archaeological methodology by complementing each other.
His first area of research is the philosophical concerns in today’s archaeology. In the dominantly post-modernist world, archaeology has to deal with issues like subjectivism, conventionalism, relativism, constructivism, de-constructivism etc. However, only very few archaeologists are able to understand and evaluate this broad range of ideas let alone implementing them in their work. Chippendale states that archaeologists are using these terms as if these were new items in the intellectual supermarket. So certain items are becoming popular without anyone understanding their real value for archaeology and soon after they are out of fashion and get discarded. Also, it is a danger that archaeologists play too much with useless issues and lose time and effort. Since the archaeologists do not have time and necessary training in order to become philosophers, they can misuse certain philosophical methods into intellectual nihilism.
Trigger points at an important element of philosophy which is epistemology. The main competing parties on epistemology are rationalism which emphasizes reason, and empiricism which emphasizes sense experience. Throughout the history of archaeology, the archaeologists have been using the philosophical trend that was popular and the ancient understandings were soon buried down as a new trend emerged. The main problem is the lack of background in the archaeologists which led them to misunderstand the philosophical theories. It is very hard to create an interdisciplinary work between philosophy and archaeology, according to Trigger, because the two disciplines do not share a common ground. He thinks that a simplified framework should be created for the use of archaeologists. For this, he supposes the sociocultural evolution to be the fittest “common ground” for both archaeologists and philosophers. Today, most of the philosophers are no longer interested in social evolution, however most of the archaeologists, especially the prehistorians are keen on seeing all human action from an evolutionary point of view. There are two epistemological extremes facing the archaeologist. These are positivism and idealism. The third and most recent is realism. Unfortunately none of these epistemologies are able (by themselves) to work with archaeological data. Archaeology studies the human behavior and action over a very long period of time and this is an issue too complex to be handled with ease. Instead Trigger proposes an evolutionary approach. Evolutionary approach means that by natural selection only the ones that adapt better to the environment will reproduce succesfully. He claims that human behavior is also the result of such a natural selection over a long lineage. As cultural change occurs very quickly the human beings should also be quick in adapting to the new social environment. However the more complex the society becomes there is more risks of misconceptions and wrongdoings. According to Trigger this is why different approaches should be applied to archaeology in order to understand the human behavior.
I think that Trigger’s approach to the problem (why the archaeologists cannot understand philosophy) is a good-willed one, but there are a lot of other fields where the archaeologists do not have enough knowledge and no more time to remedy their deficiencies. It can be sociology, philosophy, statistics, economy and the list can be made even bigger. Normally the archaeologists are trained to recognize a certain material culture and to date them, however too much is expected from the archaeologists later. perhaps they are expecting too much from themselves too. I do not think that a clear understanding of past human behaviour can be drawn by “dating” and “classifying” objects that we find in excavations. There is need for a wider scope. However, this is very difficult to obtain for one person – one discipline-. Most of the issues that the archaeologists are challenging are no less complex than what today’s social scientists are studying, however there are many disciplines under the umbrella of social sciences – from political sciences to economy, till social psychology- while archaeology remains as archaeology. The natural result of this lack of subdisciplines is that the archaeologists only acquire a very superficial knowledge about other disciplines if they are ever willing to do and apply what they learn rather clumsily. We cannot expect the archaeologists to learn everything since it would take ages of study before the archaeologist can start to work, but a specialization of labour (as interdisciplinary study or specialization within the archaeology departments) is necessary. So far, the specialization in the archaeology departments – at least in Turkey and Europe- was mainly between different periods, however I think that different aspects of a past society should be handled by differently specialized researchers. However, a basic study of philosophy is quite necessary for the archaeologist because a scientific work should be based on a theory and should have a methodology, so a preliminary study of current philoophical approaches would be helpful to the archaeology student to build his or her own epistemology and ontology in the future.

Trigger and Archaeology

In his article Trigger’s main idea is that the positivist methods of archaeology and humanistic methods that emerged in the last three decades are not rival to each other, but should build an archaeological methodology by complementing each other.
His first area of research is the philosophical concerns in today’s archaeology. In the dominantly post-modernist world, archaeology has to deal with issues like subjectivism, conventionalism, relativism, constructivism, de-constructivism etc. However, only very few archaeologists are able to understand and evaluate this broad range of ideas let alone implementing them in their work. Chippendale states that archaeologists are using these terms as if these were new items in the intellectual supermarket. So certain items are becoming popular without anyone understanding their real value for archaeology and soon after they are out of fashion and get discarded. Also, it is a danger that archaeologists play too much with useless issues and lose time and effort. Since the archaeologists do not have time and necessary training in order to become philosophers, they can misuse certain philosophical methods into intellectual nihilism.
Trigger points at an important element of philosophy which is epistemology. The main competing parties on epistemology are rationalism which emphasizes reason, and empiricism which emphasizes sense experience. Throughout the history of archaeology, the archaeologists have been using the philosophical trend that was popular and the ancient understandings were soon buried down as a new trend emerged. The main problem is the lack of background in the archaeologists which led them to misunderstand the philosophical theories. It is very hard to create an interdisciplinary work between philosophy and archaeology, according to Trigger, because the two disciplines do not share a common ground. He thinks that a simplified framework should be created for the use of archaeologists. For this, he supposes the sociocultural evolution to be the fittest “common ground” for both archaeologists and philosophers. Today, most of the philosophers are no longer interested in social evolution, however most of the archaeologists, especially the prehistorians are keen on seeing all human action from an evolutionary point of view. There are two epistemological extremes facing the archaeologist. These are positivism and idealism. The third and most recent is realism. Unfortunately none of these epistemologies are able (by themselves) to work with archaeological data. Archaeology studies the human behavior and action over a very long period of time and this is an issue too complex to be handled with ease. Instead Trigger proposes an evolutionary approach. Evolutionary approach means that by natural selection only the ones that adapt better to the environment will reproduce succesfully. He claims that human behavior is also the result of such a natural selection over a long lineage. As cultural change occurs very quickly the human beings should also be quick in adapting to the new social environment. However the more complex the society becomes there is more risks of misconceptions and wrongdoings. According to Trigger this is why different approaches should be applied to archaeology in order to understand the human behavior.
I think that Trigger’s approach to the problem (why the archaeologists cannot understand philosophy) is a good-willed one, but there are a lot of other fields where the archaeologists do not have enough knowledge and no more time to remedy their deficiencies. It can be sociology, philosophy, statistics, economy and the list can be made even bigger. Normally the archaeologists are trained to recognize a certain material culture and to date them, however too much is expected from the archaeologists later. perhaps they are expecting too much from themselves too. I do not think that a clear understanding of past human behaviour can be drawn by “dating” and “classifying” objects that we find in excavations. There is need for a wider scope. However, this is very difficult to obtain for one person – one discipline-. Most of the issues that the archaeologists are challenging are no less complex than what today’s social scientists are studying, however there are many disciplines under the umbrella of social sciences – from political sciences to economy, till social psychology- while archaeology remains as archaeology. The natural result of this lack of subdisciplines is that the archaeologists only acquire a very superficial knowledge about other disciplines if they are ever willing to do and apply what they learn rather clumsily. We cannot expect the archaeologists to learn everything since it would take ages of study before the archaeologist can start to work, but a specialization of labour (as interdisciplinary study or specialization within the archaeology departments) is necessary. So far, the specialization in the archaeology departments – at least in Turkey and Europe- was mainly between different periods, however I think that different aspects of a past society should be handled by differently specialized researchers. However, a basic study of philosophy is quite necessary for the archaeologist because a scientific work should be based on a theory and should have a methodology, so a preliminary study of current philoophical approaches would be helpful to the archaeology student to build his or her own epistemology and ontology in the future.

Gender Archaeology

05-05-2006

GENDER ARCHAEOLOGY
Gender difference can be claimed as the origin of the binary oppositions that have been occupying the Western thought for a long time, creating many other binaries that are in one way or another related or attributed to gender, such as body and soul, or matter and essence. Especially philosophy and literary theory are the fields that are more concerned about these categories. Discussions of the subject, not necessarily by feminist thinkers and theorists, have been around since the ancient times as we can see in Plato’s writings on the difference of body and soul, and have entered into almost all kinds of theories as we can see in Freud’s and Lacan’s theories of psychoanalysis or the concept of logocentricism of Derrida’s structuralist theories.
This difference is perhaps the most ancient, most universal and most powerful origin of our current moral codes, and of how we understand and analyze the world around us. Throughout history, societies have developed moral conceptualizations, and organized the overall social activity in terms of gender differences. Even in today’s postmodern, antiauthoritarian and allegedly scientific atmosphere of social life, we continue to use gender as the main tenet of categorization, thus fueling its power of shaping the civilization. After all, even the effort to erase the difference adds to it, as the newly flourishing concept of positive discrimination inadvertently emphasizes the presence of discrimination. Yet, on the other hand, trying to project these ideas to the archaeological record is not so easy. Is it right to look for “our” mode of thinking in the past cultures or is it a prolific endeavor to try to apply the data to our understanding of gender? In any case, we can’t know the situation of gender difference in many periods of history. Actually, this is what the gender archaeologists mainly criticized: the androcentric bias in archaeological interpretation (Conkey&Spector 1984, Conkey&Gero , Gero ). Women were absent in the archaeological record, or they were attributed “tasks” according to the present day’s understanding of gender difference and sexual division of labor. Therefore the goal of the studies on gender archaeology is to discover the “absent” woman of the past, to study her daily life and social status not in today’s, but in her own time’s standards. In this way, making “woman” its main subject, gender archaeology is chiefly a feminist critique.
With this perspective, this paper intends to trace the different trends in gender archaeology, and to present it in an outline. First, after a short introduction to feminism in general and also in science, it will focus on the feminist approach to the archaeological epistemology, using the ideas from different perspectives. Then, with these perspectives in mind, it will look at the history and evolution of the gender archaeology theory. Finally it will assess how the theory has been applied to practice and how it was criticized or accepted by the archaeologists and anthropologists.
Feminism is a movement against patriarchal society and male-dominated values. Its main concern has always been to assign a voice and visibility to women even if its ways of accomplishing this differed in many different phases, or waves, of feminism.
The beginning of the first feminist movement, which is called “First Wave Feminism”, started with Mary Wollstonecraft and her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), after Enlightenment around the second half of the nineteenth century and lasted until 1960s. First wave underlined equality; it regarded women as equal to men, sought for an egalitarian society and wanted to include women into the society. First wave feminists wanted the same rights as men and they tried to make their voices heard within a male-dominated society.
The reaction against the egalitarian society and the elimination of differences emerged during 1960s, which paved the way for “Second Wave Feminism”. “Second Wave Feminism” points out that when women choose to eliminate their differences, then they will start to function within the patriarchal society and male values. If “First Wave Feminism” could be summed up with the word “equality”, then “difference” would be the key word for “Second Wave Feminism”. Second Wave feminists emphasize difference and differentiate between sex and gender. They are also politically charged as we can see in one of their mottos: the personal is political.
The third wave or as it is mostly called, the postfeminism, appeared as a result of the postmodernism and also as a reaction against the Second Wave. It welcomed all kinds of differences, rather than accepting the binary opposition of man and woman. It is the current state of feminism, embracing colored women, lesbians and transgenders, however, in the last decades, a new approach in feminism has been flourishing, namely the cyberfeminism. It mostly focuses on science and how the discourse adopted by it has been affecting the situation of women. In her highly significant essay “The Cyborg Manifesto” (buraya tarihi eklicem), Donna Haraway accuses scientific discourses for bringing forth gender and gender differences and argues that gender is constructed by these scientific discourses. Her analyses of present scientific and political material reality reveal gender as a constant taken for granted. The narratives of culture and science, especially cultural representations and labor divisions as she cites in her discussion of the Marxism, are constantly gendered. Yet, she advocates that in reality there is no such thing as being male or female and that we shouldn’t be in search of gender categories.
Therefore, the introduction of feminism in both natural and social sciences is a recent phenomenon. Feminists, like ecologists, anti-racists, anti-colonialists, are one of the several groups which point at the uses and abuses of modern science. The two main critiques that the feminists pursue are the male bias in science-making, and the discrimination against female scientists.
According to Harding the critiques feminism directed to science are resulting from two specific factors that are linked with each other: one is the male bias in the Western mind: In the Western culture, “male” symbolizes the scientific, and the rational, especially after the Enlightenment, and it is related to intellect and mind. On the other, the “female” is seen as emotional and irrational. That’s why science is generally attributed the male gender which creates a gender based bias in assessing the credibility and objectivity of the results of scientific endeavors. The other factor is the problem of legitimating. During the twentieth century, social sciences have shifted to social, economic and political projects which lead to a problem of legitimating: the scientific research needs to be socially applicable rather than being merely an impracticable theory without examples and usefulness. If it cannot contribute to the interests of social progress of the current society, then it cannot be legitimized at all. Feminism emerged as a political movement for social change, with a claim for social progress. But when feminism is introduced into science, there is a need for solid grounds in order to justify these feminist claims and legitimize the theory.


Harding offers comments of three main feminist epistemologies. The “Feminist Empiricism” argues that sexism and androcentrism are social biases that are correctable by stricter application of the existing methodological norms of scientific inquiry. According to this epistemology, only the science manipulated by men is a problem, not science as a whole. But there is a controversy here: it disregards most of the scientific inquiry according to the gender of the inquirer. The science is bad, because it is made by men. On the other hand, feminist empiricism claims that, women are more likely than men to produce more objective results. Therefore what the feminist empiricism offers is the female bias instead of the male bias and it doesn’t bring any solution except than doing what it exactly criticizes.
The “Feminist Standpoint” states that men’s dominating position in the social life results of the perverse understandings while women’s subjugated position provides more complete and less perverse understandings. Again, there are logical incoherencies in this approach stemming especially from the narrow perspective that categorizes understandings and again itself brings forth the duality of men and women in social life instead of curing it. Social identity of the observer influences the objectivity, and the privileged group in grasping the objectivity is again shown as women.
The third epistemology that Harding mentions is the Feminist Postmodernism, which challenges the assumptions of the two previous approaches. The post-modernist approach in feminism asserts that it is not possible to increase objectivity through authoritarian and elitist practices. Yes, there must be a unified science, but with participatory values of anti-racism, anti-elitism and anti-classism (Harding 1986: 24-29).
There are still other problematic issues with the feminist critique. For instance, is there a pure and value-free scientific research, and if there is any, how will a politicized research like feminist science increase the property and objectivity of the inquiry? What are the proper uses of science versus improper uses? According to whom? We will return to these questions in the discussion of the different archaeological approaches and the feminist perspectives about them after a brief look at the history of gender studies in archaeology.
After these insights on feminism and the feminist critique of scientific inquiry, the question of when archaeology started to become “engendered” arises. The feminist movement of 1960’s is given by authors such as Nelson, Sorensen, and Wylie as a starting point. The main concern of this first stage was the statistical absence of women in the theory and practice of archaeology, and the fact that the women have been ignored in evolutionary and prehistoric representations and interpretations. The aim was to include women in the science as archaeologists on the one hand, and to show that women actually existed and had an active role in shaping the history on the other. So basically it was an effort to gain visibility as Sorensen claims (Sorensen 2000: 17). In 1980’s however, gender archaeology moved towards rewriting and reinterpreting prehistory in order to include gender into archaeology as a social construct. Here Sorensen states that this was first done through empiricist arguments along with traditional practices, especially with positivism, rather than being based on political arguments (Sorensen 2000:18-19). On the other hand, Alison Wylie emphasizes that gender archaeology emerged quite contemporarily with the post-processualist challenges to positivism (which, in fact, caused the beginnings of an interest on gender among other ethnographic dimensions) (Wylie 1992). Both Sorensen and Wylie agree that feminism was introduced into archaeological field comparatively later than it was in the other social sciences, but the causes they give for this are based on different factors. According to Wylie the reason is the theoretical inappropriateness of the archaeological environment for the feminist theory, whereas according to Sorensen, there were sporadic studies on gender archaeology indeed, however these were deliberately ignored and undermined by the androcentric archaeological scene (Sorensen 2000:21, Wylie 1992:17-18).
Before assessing the feminist concerns of the different theoretical archaeological approaches, it might be better to have a look at how feminist theory finds a place in the archaeological epistemology.
Because archaeology cannot directly observe the societies it studies, the question of how knowledge is produced is quite a problematic one. From the point of the feminist-inspired epistemology within archaeology, the knowledge is constructed and multimodal. Therefore, the purpose of feminist archaeology has been to re-write and reinterpret prehistory in order to erase the previous biases and stereotypes from the records (Sorensen 2000). However, of course, it is doubtful if a feminist version of the prehistory will be less biased than the current, androcentric prehistory.
It is not unexpected that gender studies in archaeology did not adopt a positivist/processualist approach, since processualism sought for regularities and generalizations in societies and this was what the gender studies have been trying to change, at least in terms of gender. Postprocessualism was a more holistic archaeology, and contextualism and structuralism especially helped feminist archaeology to build valuable claims on symbolism and ideology (Gilchrist 1999 : 27). But the feminists had to remain aloof to extreme epistemological relativism because of their political stance.
Wylie, in her article “The Interplay of Evidential Constraints and Political Interests” ,
gives an extensive explanation of gender archaeology epistemology. Since she is not sympathetic to partisan standpoint feminists, she states that if political interests are allowed to produce knowledge, this inquiry cannot produce scientific and objective results. It is important for her that the researchers can aim at producing objective knowledge only if they exclude all factors that could cause bias from their study. Nonetheless, as even the most radical objectivist would confess, such a scientific inquiry is impossible. It is almost never that a single conclusion is drawn from the archaeological evidence. Wylie states that the archaeologists, because of the very nature of their discipline, actively constructed the past and what we need to know, according to her, is not to what stage of objectivity our constructs can reach, but how data are interpretively laden such that, they can stand as evidence for or against a given knowledge claim. This, as Wylie calls it, is “Mitigated Objectivity” (1992: 25).
It is true that archaeologists use a number of evidence, objective or not, but here Wylie means that we need to know the process of the interpretation of the archaeologist - the given assumptions in evaluating evidence- so that we can assess and use this interpretation in a healthy way.
Wylie also states that there is no set of standards to which all models and hypotheses can be referred, yet there are a number of evidential reference points. The archaeologist should choose the epistemic stance which is appropriate for his or her study in light of what he or she knows about the nature of specific subject matters. So a general epistemic stance cannot be appropriate for and applied to all knowledge claims (1992: 30).
In the end of her article, Wylie states that considering these general points, feminist research in archaeology is not “political” in any troublesome sense, because politically engaged science is often “more rigorous, self critical and responsive” to the facts than the neutral sciences “for which nothing much is at stake” (1992:30).
However, there are also many critiques written on Wylie’s theories that argue that a feminist perspective can lead to a better, more rigorous scene of archaeology, thus enhancing objectivity. Barbara J. Little states that there is a great diversity inside the feminist theory, ranging from the liberals who aim to achieve equality between men and women to the radicals who reverse the current, “androcentric” understandings of science with a gynocentric discourse, and to the socialists who link patriarchy in the sciences with class and racial oppression, and seek its abolishment through a complete transformation of the system. Little inquires which one of these very different viewpoints gender archaeology would use. The main criticism of Little directs on Wylie’s defense of feminist research on archaeology is that Wylie is radical, and conservative in the same time (1994: 543). Like the feminist politics, feminist archaeology needs to defend and explain its rationality and acceptance in science, in a way legitimizing its existence, and in order to justify itself and support its own political values, feminist archaeology will need to “rehabilitate” the current structure of science. On the other hand, its conservativity comes from its postmodern rejection of the meta-narrative and at the same time, from its faith in the possibility of knowledge, “even if that knowledge is never finalized” (1994: 543).
Michael Fotiadis, in his article “What is Archaeology’s ‘Mitigated Objectivism’ Mitigated by? Comments on Wylie” (1994) , comments on the same article of Wylie, and finds the relationship between truth and politics as offered by her as confusing, and criticizes the disjunction of the two notions. The main critiques are addressed to Wylie’s “mitigated objectivism” as a remedy to relativism. Fotiadis thinks that there is an inconsistency on Wylie’s thoughts, when she on the one hand claims that politics both generate the questions we ask about the past, and also shape the answers, and on the other hand, all of a sudden makes politics disappear from archaeology with the mitigated objectivism she suggests (1994: 548). According to Fotiadis what Wylie does is the “reification” of gender; she transforms it from a political field into a “docile” object of scientific knowledge. Conversely, Fotiadis himself sticks on Foucault’s view on power and truth instead, because power always has the capacity to form and regulate and even manipulate and tint the objects of knowledge. And feminism is one of the diverse political practices leading up to new objects of knowledge (like gender) on which it is possible to make true or false propositions (Foucault, after Fotiadis 1994: 548).
Wylie, in a later article titled “On ‘Capturing Facts Alive in the Past’ (Or Present): Response to Fotiadis and to Little” , responds these criticisms by clarifying what she means by politics. In Wylie’s point of view, a feminist standpoint in archaeology is some sort of oppositional thinking. Such political and opposing analysis of archaeology will help to destabilize taken for granted concepts and constructs in the discipline. She even suggests that there must be further, more systematic political examinations of archaeology in order to attain “better” and untainted archaeology (Wylie 1994: 558-559).
However, while saying that by its oppositional standpoint feminist archaeology and its political claims will create a “better” science, Wylie does not mention in which ways this correction will take place. It is as doubtful as the solution that the feminist archaeology brings forth after all these criticisms and claims to objectivity. It seems that, at least from the articles this paper assesses, with its undefined borders, rather than eliminating biases, the gender studies introduce even new biases themselves to the field.
Gender Archaeology and Main Theoretical Approaches:
Processualism and Ecosystem Approach:
Processual archaeology, based on positivism, was the dominant approach in Anglo-American archaeology during 1960’s and 1970’s. It was operating under the assumptions of the Ecosystem approach. It was a long-lived and productive approach which enabled archaeologists to observe the interconnection between social and ecological variables. However, for the gender archaeologist it has been the less promising approach.
According to the feminist perspective, most significant of the shortcomings of processualism was the units of analysis. Processual archaeology was operating through whole populations and whole behavioral systems and was prone to generalizations. It disregarded certain factors such as gender, class and faction (Brumfiel 1992: 551) . Although, due to the importance given to the positivism applied, it was recognized that age and sex were important factors in determining status of people and division of labor in the societies under study, little attention was given to those factors. In line with the male bias of the sciences, if gender roles were not defined in a certain area, they were implicitly assumed according to current values and generally men were represented as working and creating civilizations while women stayed at “home” and made babies (Brumfiel 1992). Brumfiel also states that, the processual approach was not satisfying in understanding that a cultural system is not adaptive, but contingent, and that the agents of cultural change are not systems but human actors (1992: 559). Since women are actors, too, in a society, this approach prone to generalizations was not suitable for the feminist trying to make women visible in history and science.
Another problematic issue that may be touched upon about processualism would be the notion that science must be value-free (Nelson 1997:50) . According to the approach, gender studies and feminism would be considered as value-laden, therefore, not positivist enough. Nonetheless, processualists were applying the idealized values of science into archaeology and this held back the analysis of gender, agent and social structure.

Marxist Theory:
Marxist theory seems to be the perfect approach for the gender studies because of the fact that it, too, was interested in social inequality and class conflict. However, apparently Marxist archaeology has either ignored gender or considered it as another class (Nelson 1997: 52). Yet, after all, some tenets of Marxist theory found appreciation in gender archaeology and gender anthropology (di Leonardo 1991: 11).
The model developed by Engels in his The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884) was adopted by feminist anthropologists as a mode of analyzing male domination in an evolutionary framework. The model associates social levels to particular modes of production and traces an evolutionary line from a simple matriarchal society to the more complex, patriarchal society with the emergence of private property and institutionalized social stratification. However, the Marxist approach accepted this theory as a given, never discussing the applicability and truth of Engels’ 19th century work and the evolutionary framework, and this was the main drawback of the approach (Nelson 1997: 52).


Evolutionary Theory:
Evolutionary models in archaeology classify sociocultural systems in an order beginning with the simple towards complex, and these models could be useful in studying the regular changes in the evolution of gender systems as in many other systems (Conkey&Gero 1997: 418). The evolutionary models in gender follow more or less Engels’ model of an early matriarchic period later turning into a patriarchal society through property owning and social stratification in which women were not as lucky as men to find a place for themselves. Therefore the approach seems to be fit for the feminist claims. However, being a contemporary of Darwin, Engels believed that the human society was developing by evolutionary laws and according to him the activities and duties of men and women were determined by biology. So, as a whole, Engels’s general theory of female degradation was based on both the perceived cultures of the Western world, like classical Greece and modern Europe, and his own biological bias which made the approach an extremely dubious one for the gender studies (Silverblatt 1991: 145).

Agency Theory:
Agency and the “practice theory” is a very promising theoretical ground for gender studies. Recent discussions in social theory, especially Giddens’s Central Problems in Social Theory (1979) and of Bourdieu’s Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977) opened the ground for discussions about the relationship between the individual and society (Sorensen 2000:65) . In these discussions, some scholars considered gender as one of the “acts” played within the society as a social identity, regarding it as a construct to be adopted. This assumption led to the reassessments of gender role in every aspect of the ancient society (Conkey&Gero 1997: 420). Sorensen stresses that the agency concept influenced gender studies in two ways: One was the importance given to the analysis of women in variable conditions and cultures. This way it was easier to erase the picture the more conservative perception of the woman as a stable, conservative gender character. If gender was a goal-oriented act played by the individuals, the position of the individual within the structures of power and dominance should also be studied whether the individual is a woman or a man (2000: 65). This way, the individual, instead of woman or man as a gender category enters in the study of gender and it becomes harder to project biases or at least allow biases to function in the outcome of the research. However, with the current archaeological knowledge of the prehistory, it might also be difficult to identify the individual woman in the archaeological context, altogether with a clear understanding of the particular society in which she lives.

Postmodernism:
It is hard to trace the borders of postmodernism as a philosophical or political movement. However, we can see the reasons why post modernism was attractive to many feminist archaeologists if we have a brief look at it. The postmodernism rejects the classical Enlightenment paradigms of “reason” and the products of this reason, “meta-narratives” as François Lyotard puts it in his very important book on the postmodern theory. Instead, it adopts the marginal and the decentered, this way being closer to the more voiceless and invisible rather than to the constructed powerful, this “powerful” being the “male”, of course, through the feminist perspective of the theory. Rather than drawing the whole picture, mainly focused on gaining knowledge to portray this picture, disregarding all the remaining details, or finds in the archaeological site, this postmodern approach was looking at the fragments around the main picture, thus it was suitable to be applied to gender studies. Besides, the climate of the time when post-modernism emerged was also a good time for feminists to adopt this theory because at the time many feminist archaeologists had already rejected processual methodology as “androcentric” (Wylie 1992, Conkey&Gero 1997, Brumfiel 1992 and many others). Structuralism especially had a great influence on anthropology, in terms of the study of symbolic systems (di Leonardo 1991: 19). Anthropologists began to be interested in less scientistic and universalizing human constructs, like marriage, etc.
However, there is also a very important contradiction between the feminist claims and the main tenets of postmodernism. While post-modernists are putting reason and universalizing /totalizing claims to truth aside, feminists consider gender and everything concerned with gender as the subject of the universal reason. The need for the feminist theory to legitimize itself, on the other hand, has led to an authoritarianism which dictates politically correct ways of theorizing identity, history and culture, and which, in its very foundation, oppose the postmodern anti-authoritarianism ( Knapp1996: 134) .
Moreover, the postmodern principle of the plurality of interpretations and the deferment of cultural meaning is actually undermining the feminist standing that employs a postmodernist discourse. Also the relativist deconstructions made by feminists are mostly gynocentric and they abate the feminist discourse instead of strengthening it (Knapp 1996).

Post Processualism:
Hyperrelativism and anti-objectivism, seen essential to post processual archaeology were also essential to the feminist archaeology, but it is evident that none of the chief defenders of the post processual archaeology were interested in a feminist analysis of archaeology (Nelson 1997: 52). Ericka Engelstad studies the attitude of post processual archaeology in a detailed analysis and criticizes Shanks&Tilley and Hodder. She states that the post processual view’s understanding of archaeology reduces the discipline to some form of literary criticism, “a western European male concept”, where the archaeologist values the importance of the “archaeological text” the most. According to Engelstad this problematic of post processual archaeology is related to power relations. Only those who have the power in the present will have the right to decide about the meaning of the past, which the author finds “frightening” (Engelstad 1991: 509) .
The post processualists avoided a critique of their own work, with the results remaining androcentric. A similar statement to Engelstad’s is made by Alison Wylie (1992). The feminist researchers state that scientific knowledge is theory and interest laden, contextual and constructed, and this way they place the feminist research at the postmodern side. But Wylie also finds that strongly relativist positions strengthen the ideology of the powerful: “only the most powerful in achieving control over their world, could imagine that the world can be constructed as they choose” (Wylie 1992:21). This reality makes Wylie with other feminists skeptical about extreme relativism as well as with objectivism.

Gender Archaeology and Practice
The woman’s movement in evolutionary issues had an important impact on reconsidering key issues like foraging, evolution of the physical attributes, male/female dimorphism and social life. In past studies, women were either absent in the Paleolithic scene, or they were given trivial and stereotypical roles like “sitting” at the campsite waiting for the men to bring food, and looking after the children of the camp. The role of the females in the evolution was almost entirely focused on their reproductive abilities (for example, only the size of the pelvic bone was considered) (Hager1997: 4-12) . The anthropologists who assembled in 1966 for a conference on “Man the Hunter” showed that gathering, too, was an important part of foraging activities (Dahlberg 1981) . The “Food Sharing” hypothesis forwarded by Glynn Isaac (after Hager 1997:7) suggested that there in fact was a sexual division of labor, such that while men were hunting, women were gathering and all the two sexes brought back to the site was shared.
Gender studies of the Paleolithic are concerned mostly on human evolution, division of labor by sex, and symbolic and ritual representations of women. On the other hand, the absence of women in the current scientific record is another issue that received criticism.
While observing the role of women in evolution, the behavioral aspects of primates in food sharing, use of tools, social structure and sex have also been studied in order to find possible parallels and implications for human evolution (McGrew 1981). W. C. McGrew found many similarities between chimpanzees and early hominids in issues such as division of labor, hierarchy and tool use. In fact there are interesting comments on males, that they could afford time and energy on hunting only if there was the food collected by females available at the campsite. Therefore, contrary to the previous assumptions, this means that male hunting depended on female gathering, and not the vice versa. McGrew attributes also other skills to women such as the accumulation of food in skin or other perishable containers of which the archaeologists can not find the traces, and the use of tools (which is observed more on female chimps than males), claiming that in the Pliocene, the first tools used by hominids were likely to belong to gathering females (1981: 61-62).
Adrienne L. Zihlman (1981) also emphasizes the role of women in reproduction and food gathering and states that hominid mothers who carry their children on their bodies must be moving actively, and gathering food rather than the more conventional picture of “sitting” and waiting at the campsite. Gathering is claimed to be the initial food supplying behavior that distinguished ape from human in the article. Therefore, from the beginning of human adaptation, a woman’s role included reproductive, economic and social components quite actively (1981: 90-93).
To further her comments on labor division, Zihlman states that sexual dimorphism casts the role of the big and strong men as hunters and protectors, but the absence of canine teeth dimorphism, unlike with apes; show a friendly social interaction between males and females. She concludes that there are no distinct dimorphism between males and females which shows that men hunt and women gather (1981:110).
Supporting the claim that women can hunt as well, Griffin & Griffin (1993: 206-214) give an example of hunting women through the study of the Agta living in Philippines. On the other hand, Nelson (1997: 99-101), stating that the importance of woman the gatherer is an accepted fact in anthropology and archaeology, offers a number of cases where women were gathering plant, shellfish or nuts.
Hurcombe (1995) looks at the debate from a different perspective and criticizes the illustrations about early hominids, emphasizing the fact that women were never shown in most of the site activities, and that current gender roles were reflected on the interpretation of the Paleolithic. She also correctly points at a mistake done by certain feminist critics- that women can hunt, that seeing women as gatherers is sexist-. According to her, this critique is based upon the presupposition that hunting was more important for the ancient humans than gathering, or perhaps upon our current appreciation of the big woman struggling in a masculine world, this way including some part of the patriarchal bias that they reject and try to erase(1995: 96). It may be true that it is practically difficult for woman to run behind big animals to hunt them while they are carrying children or they are pregnant. Gathering, on the other hand, is more productive since it promises more returns especially if the woman can detect the food source. Besides, the woman can teach her children how to gather food and include them into the food-gathering work.
I would suggest that the practical difficulties that prevent woman from hunting (like the larger pelvis, pregnancy and childrearing) are only at instances where there is no tool to use. It is, on the other hand, always possible for the Paleolithic women to have used some tools like sticks, stones or to set traps. Gero’s article titled “Genderlithics: Women’s roles on Stone Tool Production” (1991) gives a hint about stone tool production in Huaricoto, Peru, stating that women, as a labor force may have produced stone tools, and used them in several household activities.
Besides the subject of evolution, there are also a plethora of gender archaeology studies, which focus on the contextual aspects of space, food, symbolism, as well as others like clothing, social order etc. Space is where life is spent and tasks are done, therefore it is a gendered dimension. The meaning of the space should be perceived contextually because it assists in establishing and reproducing social order (Gilchrist 1999:100). On the other hand, food production and consumption are also important indicators of gender activities, especially in showing the division of labor among sexes, as food preparation and serving is universally attributed to women. Here are a couple of examples of the studies on these concepts that are from Engendering Archaeology (Gero&Conkey, 1991) .
Brumfiel’s research on Aztec women who work on grinding maize and weaving would be a good example on the issue (1991: 224-254). The author shows that the Mexican women of the era were active participants in the labor force and social life of the Aztec culture with both ethnohistorical data (Sahagun’s writings) and archaeological evidence. However, this article was criticized by Erica Hill (Hill 1998) on the grounds that the ethnohistorical data it used was biased. In fact Brumfiel seems to be aware of this weakness in her study because she writes that the data is “oversimplified, with no time depth” (1991: 224). I think this data shows only that the Mexican women were using the tools and the methods that we see in the pictorial evidence, not that these women using these tools and techniques had the equal or at least a high status in the society. Therefore the study can make claims only on the use of tools by women, not the status of women or their place in the public/private domains. What is more, the tools we see are mainly spindle whorls, ceramic disks, or cooking pots, which are not mostly considered as “male” tools. So, in accordance with the data, it is more convenient to deduce that the Aztec women were more actively participating in the domestic area rather than Brumfiel’s conclusion that they held an important status in the labor force.
Another study is made by Christine Hastorf, on the Pre-Hispanic Sausa culture of Peru, about the gender effects on food production and consumption. In this well inquired and objective study made strictly upon scientific evidences, in line with the focus of the research, she studies the spatial distribution of certain food and tool remains within domestic settings like the patio, and the hearth (1991: 140) and she concludes that women were involved with cooking and storage of the food according to the data from the hearths. The Patio areas don’t have any traces of cooking, yet the author claims that they were, too, used by women for chores such as crop processing (1991: 144).
Another important point in this study is in the analyses of skeletons of both male and female members of the Wanka II and Wanka III phases. The data gained from this analyses show that on the first phase, men and women were consuming quite the food, even the maize. The reason that I emphasize maize is that it was consumed in ritual and political gatherings. This possibly shows us that female subjects along with the males were participating in these activities, therefore hinting at the high status of women in Wanka II. On the other hand, Wanka III period, brings along a decline in the participation, therefore a decline in the status in the women’s side, in line with the rise of Inka government (1991: 148-152).
The last example this paper is citing is the studies of Gimbutas on Neolithic female figurines. Not as half objective or scientific as the previous examples, her work has always been attacked, mostly correctly in my opinion. There has always been an interest to a “Mother Goddess” whose worship symbolized a cultural continuity from the Paleolithic to modern times all over Europe. Marija Gimbutas was the principle advocate of this theory and her works after a career of field archaeology, focused on this Neolithic Goddess . As can be easily deduced, this area was of great interest to many feminists, especially those who believed that the culture had been matriarchal once. Through the studies of this Mother Goddess, theories of the transformation from the matriarchal to patriarchal systems were supposed to be realized.
According to Gimbutas the Old Europe was matriarchal, peaceful, liberal, culturally homogenous, egalitarian, free of human or animal sacrifice, but it was ultimately destroyed by some warlike Kurgan culture (Gimbutas 1999, 2000 also in Gimbutas, Winn, Shimabuku 1989). There are several weaknesses in her works the most important one being her subjective interpretations besides the fact that her books are full of pictures and out-of-context typologies. A good example to the subjective interpretations can be about the female figurines. She claimed in her works that the fact that we can find these figurines in many contexts shows how a strong and ever-present cult the Mother Goddess was. However, other archaeologists claimed that this frequency of the figurines can also be about the fact that they are neither sacred nor as important as Gimbutas claims them to be (Meskell 1994: 82) . Also there were other interpretations for the figurines such as the one by Talalay (1987, 1991) who thinks that they were tokens. Beside these misleading interpretations, she also ignored other facts that might weaken her claim. She disregarded the male, sexless, or animal figurines and included only the female ones into her study. She also included Minoan, Greek, Etruscan, Basque, Celtic, Germanic and Baltic mythologies, which may be supporting evidence for theories of cultural studies or literary studies but not for the scientific based archaeological studies. Therefore, many critics rightfully assert that Gimbutas is being sexist in her interpretations and studies such as Fagan and Meskell.


Nevertheless, however unanswered its questions are, the feminist critique to science makes us recognize a bias that is chronic in science. Besides, its implications to archaeological studies also led at least some archaeologists to develop a more woman-friendly archaeology.

Gender studies have been on the rise for the last decades in many branches of the humanities. Some of these studies focus on the concept of “gender”, which is more than the sex of the individuals. It includes the social code that determines many of our behaviors and many theorists claim that gender is learnt through the unwritten social instructions . In fact, recent feminist theorists, such as Luce Irigaray, accuse culture and the story it has been telling to each new generation of being the reason of the unequal status of man and woman. Irigaray writes in her very important essay “The Question of Other” that “We are children of the flesh, but also of the word, nature but also culture”. “The Word” is the male bias in every written and unwritten material we have of humans; history, science, moral codes and even behaviors. Even though we know that there wasn’t the Word in the beginning; all we have of the beginning is the Word. Therefore what the feminist critic is supposed to do is to clear this “Word” of its constructed values and biases and to reach what was in the beginning. As in the other sciences, the gender archaeology theorists try to do the same thing. However, as we can see even from the last couple of examples, there are both scientific theories supported by evidence and other theories bordering on fiction and manipulating evidence, all inspired by the feminist theory. So it is suitable neither to applaud nor to reject the studies done by gender archaeologists. Instead they should be judge on how much they rely on the political premises of feminism and on archaeological data. Because, as we see in the work of Gimbutas, when the study begins in an idealized hypothesis of the feminist politics, it ends in idealized results due to shaping the evidence into the desired direction. Feminist politics come to limit gender studies, both its credibility and its scientific approach. Hence, rather than beginning with feminist assumptions, the gender archaeologist should only be hoping to get them in the end of the research, or even let down the pure “feministic” claims and focus on both men and women, and the status of both throughout the history. This should also include more research done by male archaeologists (almost all the citations of this paper come from female archaeologists), and more chance given to the female archaeologists in both the field and the university. In Women in Archaeology edited by Claassen, we can see how the situation of female archaeologist (employment, salary, publications and citations) may affect the results of many studies because of their marginalization. All these show that besides struggling for making women in the past “visible”, archaeologists should also try to bring the status of both gender studies and female archaeologists to a better level.