Hide production is one of the oldest crafts known to humans. Yet this is the first volume to critically explore the gendered nature of this universal activity amongst hunters-gatherers for its meaning in craft production, status, identity and cultural change. Using ethnoarchaeological and archaeological examples from North America and Africa, the authors provide new insights of the gendered nature of human behavior.

The pursuit of gender in the archaeological record is explored in this exciting new collection of essays by renowned archaeologists and gender theorists. These essays place gender in the context of the past, by approaching the data in light of the previous decades of gender research. Issues such as tool-making, hunting, and evolution take on new meaning as the contributors examine the impact of gender worldwide. They do so in terms of the theories, methods, and ways of teaching and learning amassed through archaeological data. These essays provide insight into the study of gender in archaeology and will prove valuable to the scholarship of gender-based theory.

Part One of Nelson's 'Handbook of Gender in Archaeology.'

North American Aboriginal Hide Tanning examines the methodology, tools and spiritual aspects of what was once almost a lost art. Over the course of research that has spanned some 30 years, the author has interviewed more than 40 tanners from the Northwest Territories to Oklahoma. The result is a volume that includes chapters on 15 different tanners and their recipes, practical information on tools and techniques, as well as helpful tips for those interested in trying this traditional process for themselves. Although not intended as a complete how-to manual, this book is certain to whet the reader’s appetite for further investigation.

The years AD 1500–1700 were a time of dramatic change for the indigenous inhabitants of southeastern North America, yet Native histories during this era have been difficult to reconstruct due to a scarcity of written records before the eighteenth century. Using archaeology to enhance our knowledge of the period, Contact, Colonialism, and Native Communities in the Southeastern United States presents new research on the ways Native societies responded to early contact with Europeans. Featuring sites from Kentucky to Mississippi to Florida, these case studies investigate how indigenous groups were affected by the expeditions of explorers such as Hernando de Soto, Pánfilo de Narváez, and Juan Pardo. Contributors re-create the social geography of the Southeast during this time, trace the ways Native institutions changed as a result of colonial encounters, and emphasize the agency of indigenous populations in situations of contact. They demonstrate the importance of understanding the economic, political, and social variability that existed between Native and European groups. Bridging the gap between historical records and material artifacts, this volume answers many questions and opens up further avenues for exploring these transformative centuries, pushing the field of early contact studies in new theoretical and methodological directions. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series

'Gender in Archaeology' provides a feminist theoretical synthesis of the flood of archaeological work on gender. The author examines the roles of women & men in areas as human origins, the sexual division of labour, kinship & other social formations.

This new edition of Women in Ancient America draws on recent advances in the archaeology of gender to reexamine the activities, roles, and relationships of women in the prehistoric Native societies of North, Central, and South America. Women—and women’s work—have been crucial to the survival and success of American peoples since ancient times. And as hunting and foraging societies developed farming techniques and eventually created permanent settlements, women’s roles changed. Karen Olsen Bruhns and Karen E. Stothert consider the various economic adaptations that followed, as well as the ways in which women participated in food production and the specialized industries of their societies. They also look at women’s access to power, both political and religious, paying particular attention to the place of priestesses and goddesses in the spiritual life of ancient peoples. The narrative that unfolds in Women in Ancient America is based on the most recent research, using evidence and examples from a wide range of cultures dating from the Paleoindian period to European invasion. This book, unlike others, treats many different types of societies, as the authors develop arguments sure to provoke thinking about the lives of women who inhabited the Americas in the distant past.