February 2006, Dr. Miranda Stockett, Exploring Concepts of Gender and
Sex in Ancient Mesoamerica: Understanding Variability in
Ancient Maya
Gender Ideologies and
Practices
On February 11, 2006, Doctor Miranda Stockett evaluated the two
prevailing models of gender ideology utilized by investigators of
Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica: gender hierarchy and gender complementarity.
The gender hierarchy model proposes that relations between genders are
unequal and ranked; social life is structured around the dominant male
gender and the role of females is defined in relation to that of
men. In the more recent gender complementarity model, males
and females have separate but mutually balanced cultural roles.
Both models are reflected in ancient Mesoamerican life: men are shown
as rulers and warriors, women primarily as wives and mothers. However,
assumptions about gender in both models are based primarily on two
potentially suspect sources. The first source, Spanish colonial
documents, were written by men with sixteenth-century European beliefs
and prejudices about sex and gender, while ethnographic studies of
modern Central American peoples portray cultures which have blended
colonial views with their own, resulting in ideologies and practices
that deviate to some degree from those of their Pre-Columbian ancestors.
The sexual division of labor, which underlies models like gender
hierarchy and complementarity, is predicated upon the existence of two
biological sexes which easily translate into two culturally constructed
genders: male and female. Roles of women as wives and mothers are
determined by their reproductive biology, while males, by virtue of
their larger size and physical freedom, traditionally take on
activities such as hunting, warfare and politics. Although she does not
question this binary division of the sexes, Dr. Stockett and others,
such as Rosemary Joyce and Matthew Looper, feel that for many ancient
Mesoamerican peoples the concept of gender was made malleable through
social context and performance. Ancient depictions of gods with male
and female aspects, androgynous figures, and men-women dressed in
costumes of the opposite gender point towards this malleability. These
depictions may evoke a third gender status embodied by the Maize God
and Moon Goddess. If a man is dressed as a woman during the
performance of a ritual, is he enacting a male role, a female role, or
a role that can be undertaken only by someone of a third or ambiguous
gender? This suggests a strong sense of fluidity in Pre-Columbian
understandings of the relationship between gender and sex, a fluidity
that does not equate with a society based solely upon the sexual
division of labor, or with the models of hierarchy and complimentarity.
There are other exceptions which do not fit into the strict divisions
of either model. Numerous examples indicate that women played important
ruling roles in elite Mesoamerican politics, particularly among the
Maya. Prior to the colonial period, Mesoamerican farmers appeared to
live near their fields, rather than clustered together in the later
appearing villages which became necessary when families chose to live
close to schools and churches. There is archaeological evidence that,
prior to this centralization, men, women, and children all worked in
these fields. Among the Aztec, children were not considered to be
gendered at birth, but were gradually reinforced in their gender roles.
Dr. Stockett proposes that gender and sex can best be seen as parts of
an overall individual social identity. A model of social
identity which integrates attributes of sex, gender, age, status and
class explains more completely the activities which appear to be
exceptions to the two other models, as well as occasions in which both
models seem to be in play. The study of social identity focuses on the
tensions between social norms and individual response to those norms –
essentially on the places where identity is defined and changed through
the manifestation of difference. Social identities such as gender, sex,
and sexuality cannot be usefully understood or explored without
addressing the ways in which they work to connect or separate persons
and groups in lived experience.
The work of Dr. Stockett at Las Canoas, in Honduras, points towards
this more inclusive view of social identity. Las Canoas, a
non-Maya site located not far from Copan, was an area of intensive
pottery production and trade from 850-960 AD. The second phase of
construction at Las Canoas contains a plaza surrounded by stone-faced,
stepped buildings, which, although still in close proximity to areas of
domestic activity and pottery production, shows signs of emerging elite
activity. In this plaza remnants of censing practices were found
on the higher levels of the stepped buildings, indicating that roles of
ritual specialization were beginning to occur. Dr. Stockett notes
that the five types of incensario remains found at Las Canoas can also
be found at nearby Copan. She hypothesizes that ritual censing activity
in Las Canoas would have included males whose attire emphasized their
gender, and females clothed in more gender obscuring garb, just as it
would have in Copan. It is her belief that certain ritual practices may
have been gendered, but that this gender identity would have been
adopted and shed with each of these ritual performances. Further, she
hypothesizes that different variables of social identity, such as
status, age, or gender, may have been fore-grounded in different
activities. Dr. Stockett hopes that her concept of the role of social
identity in determining individual activity and group interactions will
challenge present views and provoke future debate in Mesoamerican
Studies.
Dr. Miranda K. Stockett received her B.A. from Kenyon College in 1997,
her M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2001, and her Ph.D.
from the University of Pennsylvania in 2005. She is
currently a Research Associate with the University of Pennsylvania
Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology and a Penn Writing Fellow with
the Critical Writing Program. Her research focuses on issues of
identity and feminist theory in ancient Mesoamerica. Dr. Stockett has
conducted excavations in the Naco and Cacaulapa regions of Honduras and
is currently co-director of the Proyecto Arqueologico Valle de Jesus de
Otoro in Las Canoas, central Honduras.
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