“Nomadic subjects” and Eurasian Iron Age studies of households and feasting
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2021-01-16

The term “nomadic subjects” refers to recent feminist theory that dissolves the subject-object, nature-culture dichotomies so often found in earlier feminist thought. In early feminist archaeology, the task of discovering “the woman” in the archaeological data was the goal. How are women represented in the household, or on the landscape? Eurasian archaeology of the Iron Age lacks attention to most feminist theory, so that the woman is neither recognized as a vital part of pastoral economy, nor are artifacts, households or feasting seen as expressions of gendered labor. In many archaeological studies on pastoral societies, women’s roles are rendered as static subject identities subordinated to male personhood.

In this paper I examine the households and assemblages as found at an Iron Age agro-pastoral settlement in southeastern Kazakhstan (circa 400 BCE to 1 CE) in order to explore gendered domestic labor in feasting and in the formation of households. The ethnographic analogies of contemporary Kazakh and Kirghiz feasts and households serve to better interpret the archaeological record. The ceramic and architectural assemblages are expressions of gendered labor in everyday life and during feasting events. My goal is to provide a fluid notion of gender and sexual difference in pastoral studies.


Claudia Chang, Independent Scholar