On Studies of Task Bifferentiation between Men and Women in the Scandinavian Iron Age

Abstract

Reiterated and cursorily criticised generalisations of attributes for male and female in grave goods, have since the first half of the nineteenth century created an oversimplified yet politically intricate image of a specific task differentiation between men and women in prehistory. Ideals of male and female roles and tasks in the interpreter’s contemporary society have been described as universals in terms of binary oppositional pairs, or spheres, such as private/domestic-public. The dichotomies used for analysing and attributing male and female tasks have given preference to stereotypes, and the very formulation of the oppositional concepts for activity areas expresses ideological valuations ofmale and female. This article stresses the need for analysing the origin of concepts, and it seeks new and alternative ways of perceiving task differentiation.