What was it like to be a woman in prehistoric times? Did the sexual identities and gender roles found in modern society exist hundreds of thousands of years ago? Were age and other social distinctions as important then as now? And how can we ever hope to know, when little evidence survives except for fragments of bone, pottery, and jewelry?

Rosemary Joyce draws on a wealth of recent studies that reveal the history of sexual identities to be a diverse and compelling one, offering profound challenges to modern stereotypes and assumptions. Maya Queens and Old European matriarchs, African-American midwives and Central Asian “Amazons”: through these and other examples, Dr. Joyce demonstrates that the distinction between men and women was by no means the only way in which ancient people defined themselves, nor even the most important one. She also suggests that same-sex desire, far from being regarded as unnatural, could occupy an important and accepted place in some cultures.

Rosemary Joyce, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, is a field archaeologist who has conducted research in northern Honduras for over twenty-five years. She is the author, coauthor, or coeditor of ten books and has written extensively about gender relations in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica.

ISBN 978-0-500-05153-5 · 6" x 9" · 35 illustrations · 136 pages · WOMEN'S STUDIES / GENDER STUDIES / ARCHAEOLOGY

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