00:00.33 archpodnet Welcome to the show. Everyone it's Chris Webster again your usually producer sometimes editor and sometimes co-host of this podcast and today we have another show where it's just Allen and I so alllan what are we talking about today. How are you doing. 00:01.00 alan You got it. Thank you. 00:16.61 alan Good Chris you know I was reflecting on what we should talk about today and the the one one of the topics that we have not brought to bear or really touched upon I think in any of our former podcast. 00:18.30 archpodnet Close. 00:29.73 archpodnet Oh. 00:35.86 alan Of which there's always ah over a hundred now. Um is the issue of sex gender and rock art and it is something that's near and dear to my heart and so I thought that would be ah, an interesting topic and one that is certainly relevant and. 00:46.76 archpodnet Yeah. 00:55.46 alan Hasn't been ah hasn't been extensively discussed How's that so kick. 00:59.97 archpodnet That's awesome. And yeah I can't remember a time when we did discuss that now to set the Baseline Are we talking about um sex and gender as it pertains to the creation of rock art or to the representation in rock art or both. 01:15.91 alan A little bit of both. Um, and yeah, it's a little bit of both ah and and relates to um, the issue of ah the. 01:22.58 archpodnet Um. 01:32.95 alan Femaleness Maleness or genderness of various figures in rock art and also vis-a-vis the Artisans themselves who are who are responsible for the creation of rock art. 01:34.97 archpodnet Okay. 01:49.87 archpodnet Okay, yeah, awesome. All right? Well, where do we start. 01:51.40 alan How's that. Yeah, So ah, let's start with some definitions or some discussions. Um, when we talk about the term Gender. It's become. Ah, a topic you know very relevant to in our own sort of ah you know discussions and in the news and in and books and other things gender has to do with the role roles. 02:23.43 archpodnet Right. 02:29.28 alan And ah references culturally to an individual ah in our society and so when we talk about ah sex typically biologically there's only 2 of them male and female. 02:35.86 archpodnet Oh. 02:46.98 alan But when you talk about gender then we have you know the male and the female but we also have ah individuals that bridge both those roles or ah that transfer or transpose or you know a sort of ah you know change their. Rolls into something a bit different. They may have initially been a man but live as a woman or um are perceived as a woman and feel called to be a female So I Guess we could talk a little bit about all of those and and much much more. 03:11.89 archpodnet No. 03:25.66 alan Um, to kick this off what what became interesting to me, you know what is is ah some of the assertions in the literature. In the Scholarly rock art literature about the Artisans and the representations and the function of rock art. Be it in the great basin or in in other areas of the world. It seems to be a very androcentric. 03:53.90 archpodnet Um. 04:01.60 alan Perspective meaning a very ah ah, very strong perspective from men and the the individuals who are scholars certainly of rock art have been predominantly men. Overwhelmingly. 04:18.33 archpodnet Right. 04:20.44 alan And they seem to have ah a bias a bias inbred in ah defining referencing brock art imagery from a distinctively male perspective have you have you come across that or is that something that you've. 04:37.10 archpodnet Yeah, yeah, absolutely on 1 of my other shows the archeology show. We discuss you know news items and and archeology that's making it in the news and I swear there's been a lot in the past year for sure. Um, but you know leading up to this quite a bit. There's been a lot of articles. 04:38.41 alan You're familiar with or no. 04:53.20 alan Ah. 04:54.24 archpodnet And papers written about essentially you know they they had those fantastic headlines like rewriting history and you know archeological archaeological assumptions challenged and things like that and we shouldn't be surprised by that anymore. You know we're finding out more and more that what we thought was ah either a predominantly male or even predominantly female activity for that matter just because. We look at it and we say oh only women do that you know at some point in history.dotdot. They've done it all the time and then same thing with mail. You know we see factors an article that is going to be out I think in a future episode of the archeology show about a stle found in Spain and. 05:28.99 alan Um, yeah, um. 05:33.51 archpodnet They've long held these assumptions that oh well, if it's got like warrior and and like what is it weaponry and things like that that this must be representing a male but or must be representing a female if it's got you know, long hair and some other attributes and they've always just assumed hey this is a female. This one is one that they would normally count as female but it has clear male Genitalia So Like what do you do with that. You know what? I mean this might be part of that gender Fluidity. You know what? I mean so we can't assume anything is really what the story is there and the male bias that's happened in archeology for the last hundred and fifty years had just got to be. 06:00.46 alan Ah, exactly right right. 06:10.52 archpodnet Thrown in the toilet and started over. 06:14.85 alan I I would agree now in terms of my own research and and something that's near and dear to my heart I know I've talked about Coso Rock art ad nauseam but ah, a number of people have very, ah. 06:24.74 archpodnet Um. 06:32.90 alan Ardently, ah represented that the rock art of the cosos. Ah represents male shamans who are representing themselves um in in costume and. 06:41.10 archpodnet Yeah. 06:50.45 alan This was an exclusively male activity. So I had a I had a a woman an african-american woman scholar who got her ph d from the University Of Florida name is Marissa Molinar and she and I worked together for several years on Coso Rock Rock art 06:51.83 archpodnet Yeah. 07:05.12 archpodnet Yeah. 07:10.45 alan And discovered quite the opposite. So when we began to examine this corpus of material relating to the iconography of the Kosos Surprisingly what we found was. 07:20.73 archpodnet Oh. 07:30.10 alan And an inordinate a very prevalent expression of the feminine ah gender or sex as it were represented by these individuals who were who appear to be decorated animal human. 07:39.76 archpodnet Yeah. 07:47.88 alan Figures who are always represented as male shamans. Um, and that's rather important I mean it was sort of a revelation on my part and one that also came out in ah, a book by Carolyn Madock who sketched. Hundreds of these animal-human figures and identified them. You know said she was a ah student of the koso genre these decorated animal human these anthropomorphs or pattern-bodied figures and she argued that many of them. Were women so that's that's at 1 level interesting now if we take it a step further. What is even more interesting in some ways is if we look at the cosmology if we look at the. Way in which the worldview of native americans are typically rendered. They aren't exclusively male at all. They they look at this world view as a layered universe and that layered univort. 09:01.34 archpodnet Right. 09:04.88 alan Universe begins with a a feminine ah layer ah of an Earth goddess or Earth mother. You've run across that or no. 09:17.70 archpodnet Ah. 09:19.47 archpodnet Yeah I mean the concept of the you know the earth mother or you know mother earth the whole thing seems to be pretty prevalent throughout lots of cultures. You know going back. You know the popular ones are obviously the greeks and the and the ah and the romans with their you know Hera and ah, what was the. Was the other name of her I can't remember but either way yeah that good this seems to go back to a lot of cultures. So yeah, for sure. 09:45.39 alan So what? what the basis of that was in part is if we look at the sky world right? and see that there are it's it's populated by um, the sun. 09:56.23 archpodnet Um. 10:01.98 alan The moon and the stars but as we view them moving about the heavens and seeing the the transposition of day and night what seems to occur is that canopy that celestial canopy. 10:10.99 archpodnet Oh. 10:20.95 alan Goes turns and goes into an underworld. Okay, and that Underworld is the terrestrial realm that we live on and then it appears again up in the sky. So. 10:28.68 archpodnet 4 10:40.58 alan It would be natural to have the feminine element appear because it is only through women that we procreate and create life anew and so if if. If we sort of take an analog or metaphor of what we see in the natural world. It seems logical that this terrestrial realm this Earth mother would then be of a feminine deity who is Creating. Or birthing on an on a daily basis. The Heavenly bodies does that make any sense. Yeah, and that and and that was a and that would go ahead. Please No No because that was that was a view of. 11:22.27 archpodnet Right? Yeah, it does and it's It's no no continue. 11:35.60 archpodnet Okay. 11:37.58 alan Of native people certainly in in the the indigenous world of California in the great basin but also into the american southwest and in Mexico as well that they saw this realm as ah as a creative realm. And 1 that has a ah feminine inclination. How's that. 11:57.75 archpodnet Right? Okay, Well I've got a comment on that for sure, but let's do that when we continue on the other side of the break in the meantime there are ah lots of other good shows I mentioned one the archeology show and the archeology Podcast Network We've got a couple new ones called and my troll and T break time travel which isn't exactly New. But. The same host as both of those and check them Out. Go to arpudnet.com we'll be back in a minute.