Anthro Paper

Jason Steinfort

Archeology and Art

May 16th, 2016

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Gender is defined as ” the state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones).”  This definition doesn’t due its justice when it comes to what gender is actually broken down into in past society’s before us. When you think of ones gender you think of  a person biological appearance and whether they are masculine or feminine however it is much more than that such as different social an ethic roles, cultural roles, and habitual meanings to the word.   The conflicts that this idea of gender and the importance in one’s culture or unimportance of it has been a problem that has gone through many generations of society’s before us as well. We can look at certain artworks from the Upper Paleolithic, Etruscans, and Maya to see what gender roles they played and how important the idea of a  man and woman actually was to them.

The Etruscan civilization has shown several signs of the idea of social equality between females and males in society. This can be seen in the famous sculptor called “Sarcophagus of the Married Couple from the Banditaccia Necropolis, in the city of Cerveteri. This has been taken as “emblematic of nuptial bliss (Spivey 1997: 92).  The statue is 1.14 m high by 1.9 m wide, and is made of terracotta which was brightly painted but has since faded away.  It shows a married couple reclining at a banquet together in the afterlife and was found in 19th century excavations at the necropolis of Cerveteri. The portrayal of a married couple sharing a banqueting couch is distinctly an Etruscan style; in contrast, Greek vases depicting banquet scenes reflect the custom that only men attended dinner parties. The husband is holding the woman, almost protecting her but you get the sense that he is not that superior to her.  The fact that they are both shown in this show the equality that the Etruscans had within their society. Not much is known about who is depicted in the “Sarcophagus of the Married Couple”, it is believed that it was once buried with the actual remains of a husband and wife but later on found. However, it was also known the Etruscans had done cremation ceremonies and that a lot of tombs housed these ashes rather than a physical body. Woman definitely were less restricted and held an important place in Etruscan culture. They are both smiling as well in this painting which shows a positive attitude and outlook on both life and Etruscan culture for both genders in this society.  

Mayan artwork shows that woman was also treated similarity to the way Etruscans probably treated them. Stela H located in the great Copan shows that the  of the Maya people did not just think of the man as an absolute ruler because they depict the man in woman’s clothing in this stela. (Thames and Hudson 124)  Stela H is a portrait of the 13th ruler of Copan called 18 Rabbit or Waxaklahun Ubah K'awil, who ruled Copan between AD 695 and 738. Stela H is one of two paired stelaes . H is paired with A, and in H, he appears to be dressed in the traditional royal jaguar skin kilt; and a long skirt typical of the representation of women in stela h where as in stela a  he is in more traditional male costume, and has a small stone chamber in front of it that had pottery and other offerings stored there. I think that the fact that they are mixing the clothing of a male and a female in one very famous ruler shows that they viewed gender somewhat equally. They must have had some kind of respect or at least sense of respect towards woman if they were willing to represent a woman in a famous ruler as well as a male. People in Mayan culture were accepted if they were said to embody both genders and it wasn’t fully frowned upon like even today it might be.  The main point of Stela H is that it shows this story on the back of the monument you can see a highly decorative “backrack” – an archaic Mayan carrying device formed by inserting two sticks into the rear of a thick padded belt  on which 18 Rabbit carries one of the animals. The Maize Gods were responsible for carrying the animals on their backs’ in the creation myth, and so Stela H is another example of 18 Rabbit emulating the Maize God and reliving the events of the Creation. The backrack also represents the sacred tree which the Maize God planted at the centre of the hearth that he formed by planting the three stones. (Thames and Hudson 124)