of divorce liberated many women from the authority of either
father or husband, granting some degree of sexual freedom.
Nevertheless, the essentially passive characteristic of wom-
en’s sexual lives had to be maintained. Homoerotic contact
between women seems to have been extremely rare compared
with such contact between men (or at least it is seldom men-
tioned in surviving writings); nevertheless, it is clear that in
a female homosexual relationship, one of the female partners
assumed an active or aggressive role that was properly seen
as masculine.
THE AMERICAS
BY ARDEN DECKER
Th e study of gender and sexuality is key to the understand-
ing of any culture, particularly with regard to labor practices,
social status, leadership, and religion. Th e role of gender and
sexuality diff ers greatly from culture to culture and across
time, making it nearly impossible to identify any standard
model to which all cultures adhere. Much of what is cur-
rently known about gender and sexuality in ancient America
is based on archaeological evidence, particularly from burial
caches and artworks. Information and evidence gathered
from archaeological sites and material culture have helped
scholars to begin to make deductions about the function of
gender in ancient communities and provide a more complete
picture of daily life.
Th e Paleo-Indians (ca. 13,000–ca. 8000 b.c.e.) are the
earliest-known human inhabitants of the Americas. Th ey are
believed to have been hunter-gatherers. It is diffi cult to defi ne
any labor function or position as being conclusively identifi ed
with one gender in particular. It is generally accepted that
these early societies divided labor responsibilities by sex, but
these roles could shift with changes, for example, in popula-
tion growth, environment, and season. Many archaeologists
and anthropologists have begun to reexamine the commonly
held belief that men were the hunters and women dealt only
with household labor.
Women’s role of childbearing oft en aff ected the amount
and type of work they could perform, and individual societ-
ies would certainly have accommodated this fact. However, it
would be shortsighted to assume that the activities of women
in the ancient Americas were limited to the household. We
must be careful not to superimpose our present-day under-
standing of gender roles onto civilizations that existed hun-
dreds or thousands of years ago. In ancient cultures both men
and women retained their own unique status within their
respective spheres and would not have competed with each
other for power or status as is done in today’s society. Recent
research suggests that men were not solely responsible for
subsistence among the earliest cultures; women also partici-
pated in providing food by hunting small animals and birds
and gathering edible plants. Both women and men would
have been trained to do specialized work, such as prepar-
ing materials for clothing and making those materials into
fi nished products. Hunter-gatherer societies throughout the
ancient Americas were primarily egalitarian, and the sexes
worked together and separately for the survival and improve-
ment of the community.
With the rise of agriculture, societies grew more sed-
entary and more complex, and they left us more informa-
tion regarding the nature of gender and labor. As a society
changed, so did its needs, leading to new types of special-
ized labor and requiring a fl uid defi nition of gender-based
labor division. Similarly, food production and the develop-
ment of economy led to far more complex systems of divid-
ing labor that were no longer based simply on sex but also
on age and social status. Both men and women engaged in
diffi cult physical labor, but craft production grew ever more
important to developing economies. For example, in Me-
soamerica pottery was a specialization practiced by both
sexes, but textiles and weaving became associated primarily
with women.
Although few monumental artworks from ancient Amer-
ica feature images of women, many fi gurines depicting both
males and females (as well as some sexually neutral fi gures)
have been recovered throughout Mesoamerica and North and
South America. Th e greatest range occurs at the site of Tla-Spout and bridge vessel in the shape of a woman, holding what is
thought to be a spindle wrapped in cloth, from the Nasca culture (200
b.c.e. to 600 c.e.) of Peru; such fi gures were associated with various
activities of daily life. (© Th e Trustees of the British Museum)gender structures and roles: The Americas 503