Author: Marylène Patou Mathis
Publisher: Giunti Editore
Year edition: 2021
Format: Paperback
Pages of the printed version: 300 p.
EAN: 9788809949935
€ 20,00
From their caves, prehistoric men and women may have much to teach us about gender equality.
“No, prehistoric women didn't spend all their time sweeping the cave and babysitting the children until the men returned from hunting. To imagine them reduced to a domestic role and to the status of mothers is a prejudice. They, too, chased large mammals, made tools and ornaments, built habitats, and explored forms of symbolic expression.
There is no archaeological evidence that, in the most ancient societies, certain activities were forbidden to them, that they were considered inferior and subordinate to men. This vision of prehistory derives from the preconceptions of the founders of this discipline born in the XNUMXth century. It's time to take a look at the history of evolution and deconstruct the processes that have made women invisible over the centuries."
Until the mid-twentieth century, paintings, sculptures, books and illustrations created a collective imagination by transmitting a single message: prehistory is a matter of men. But there is no evidence that primitive men were hunters, creators of weapons and tools, as well as artists of cave paintings while women only took care of their children and kept the cave in order. Archeology is a young science, which dates back to the XNUMXth century, and was developed by male gender scholars who were inclined to project the stereotypes of that time onto their subject of study, constructing a model of the prehistoric family that mimics that of the western nineteenth century: nuclear, monogamous and patriarchal, with the idea that women have had no role in the technical and cultural evolution of humanity. Excluding half the population, the view of behavior in prehistoric societies has been distorted for more than a century and a half. In the last decade, however, the development of gender archaeology, new techniques for analyzing finds and the recent discoveries of human fossils have allowed us to challenge the many prejudices about prehistoric women, who were actually less submissive and more inventive. than has been believed up to now. With Prehistory is female, Marylène Patou-Mathis deconstructs the paradigms at the origin of this ostracism and allows us to open new perspectives in the scientific approach towards the study of prehistoric societies. She also lays the foundations for a different history of women, free from stereotypes, no longer dominated and written only by men.
