A Prehistory of Women

“In recent years, prehistoric women have sparked unprecedented interest from the general public and the media. This interest resonates with contemporary debates about the place of women, the progress made, and the journey still ahead to achieve gender equality. For prehistory, the challenge is to identify when and how patriarchy emerged, to pinpoint potential turning points, and, in doing so, to understand our past in order to better shape the present. Here, political concerns and advances in knowledge converge and enrich each other.
A pressing question arises: Did male domination exist in prehistory? If so, since when and in what forms? Today, data allows us to document various aspects of prehistoric individuals’ lives (unions, motherhood, health, diet, activities, displays of status and power, gender learning, and phenomena of violence…), with varying degrees of precision depending on available populations and world regions.
Drawing on all accessible archaeological resources across a vast area—from the Atlantic Ocean to the Urals and from the Arctic Basin to the Mediterranean—this work illuminates the fundamental dynamics of relations between men and women from the Middle Paleolithic to the Neolithic.
Uniquely at this scale, this book provides a comprehensive overview of our knowledge about the status of prehistoric women, through an approach firmly rooted in gender studies.”