• Frank [he/him, he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Non-shithead archeologists won't assign gender. They'll try to determine sex while recognizing that that cannot be reliably done for a significant percentage of any population and that even features that correlate with sex aren't conclusive about what soft tissue anatomy a person had, and then they'll use that qualified determination of sex to make inferences about gender roles in that culture based on other available evidence like grave goods, written works, depictions of day to day life, etc. And if they're not grant writing they might even admit that a lot of it is just unknowable because the people who could have told us died long ago and there's only so much you can infer from bones and artifacts before you start speculating.