Now I could be wrong, but given the patriarchal nature of human societies it's unlikely for someone capable of birthing ti be acknowledged as a man, so it does make sense to treat the remains as a woman as that would likely be how they were treated and and grave goods or treatment of the body after death would follow the ones for women. But yeah, it ultimately is impossible to know someone's gender identity unless they say it themselves.
It does happen. There are a bunch of cultures where your sex organs aren't determinative of your gender role. And there are cultures where they are, and people say fuck that and live a different gender role anyway. A fair number of European soldiers, sailors, doctors, and so forth were found to have an unexpected set of sex organs during autopsy. There have always and everywhere been people we would consider trans, and some cultures have and have had accepted social roles and gender roles for those people. And in cultures that haven't people transgressed against cultural norms when they could to try to live a more authentic life.
Which is kinda my point, that even if you can make assumptions like that, and for the most part be right, you can't then take those assumptions and claim to understand the identity of the person.
One think we do know for sure is that people are very capable of having conflicting assigned and realized genders. And that there is some form of this that exists in many societies dating back through all recorded history.
So looking at old bones and being able to say "this person gave birth, therefore this society had traditional Western gender norms and was patriarchal" is dumb. And while I'm sure most archaeologists wouldn't make assumptions like that, many uninformed traditionalists do.
Your last paragraph I disagree with, because basically every non hunter gatherer human society has some gender roles, and birthing people are generally assigned to what we'd call a woman. So they're not saying "this person have birth, therefore gender" "this society had gender and this person have birth, therefore they had a feminine gender role in their society" which is safe bet and does describe part of someone's social identity.
And it's only recently archeologists have started considering describing someone's assigned versus personal gender. Obviously archeologists that work with groups like the Filipino aboriginal people that had multiple gender identities are more aware of this, but most archeologists work on long dead groups they can assert their gender ideas over, or groups with a similar binary of gender. Lots of archeologists are not queer or too attuned to queer theory, although some definitely are and it's changing. Just getting some of them to acknowledge that there's a history of plucking history away from different peoples was an uphill battle.
There are some very good archeologists, and it's a field that breaks some brainworms about history, economics, and race, but at the end of the day it's still a reflection of the culture it comes from. Plus, taxing outdoor work for low pay with a high academic requirement means most of the people who get into it come from privilege, although not all.
Now I could be wrong, but given the patriarchal nature of human societies it's unlikely for someone capable of birthing ti be acknowledged as a man, so it does make sense to treat the remains as a woman as that would likely be how they were treated and and grave goods or treatment of the body after death would follow the ones for women. But yeah, it ultimately is impossible to know someone's gender identity unless they say it themselves.
It does happen. There are a bunch of cultures where your sex organs aren't determinative of your gender role. And there are cultures where they are, and people say fuck that and live a different gender role anyway. A fair number of European soldiers, sailors, doctors, and so forth were found to have an unexpected set of sex organs during autopsy. There have always and everywhere been people we would consider trans, and some cultures have and have had accepted social roles and gender roles for those people. And in cultures that haven't people transgressed against cultural norms when they could to try to live a more authentic life.
Which is kinda my point, that even if you can make assumptions like that, and for the most part be right, you can't then take those assumptions and claim to understand the identity of the person.
One think we do know for sure is that people are very capable of having conflicting assigned and realized genders. And that there is some form of this that exists in many societies dating back through all recorded history.
So looking at old bones and being able to say "this person gave birth, therefore this society had traditional Western gender norms and was patriarchal" is dumb. And while I'm sure most archaeologists wouldn't make assumptions like that, many uninformed traditionalists do.
Your last paragraph I disagree with, because basically every non hunter gatherer human society has some gender roles, and birthing people are generally assigned to what we'd call a woman. So they're not saying "this person have birth, therefore gender" "this society had gender and this person have birth, therefore they had a feminine gender role in their society" which is safe bet and does describe part of someone's social identity.
And it's only recently archeologists have started considering describing someone's assigned versus personal gender. Obviously archeologists that work with groups like the Filipino aboriginal people that had multiple gender identities are more aware of this, but most archeologists work on long dead groups they can assert their gender ideas over, or groups with a similar binary of gender. Lots of archeologists are not queer or too attuned to queer theory, although some definitely are and it's changing. Just getting some of them to acknowledge that there's a history of plucking history away from different peoples was an uphill battle.
I guess I was too generous to archaeologists, good that they're at least starting to consider this stuff now.
There are some very good archeologists, and it's a field that breaks some brainworms about history, economics, and race, but at the end of the day it's still a reflection of the culture it comes from. Plus, taxing outdoor work for low pay with a high academic requirement means most of the people who get into it come from privilege, although not all.