Gender in Archaeology and Gender Archaeology

Most archaeologists, by the middle of the twentieth century, have been ignored half of the human groups, meaning women and the various roles they had in the evolution of human societies. Women’s movements in the 1960s and 1970s made way to an altered views of human societies evolution that focused on women’s roles. If in the beginning, the feminists had the dilemma of looking for women in the primary sources, today they could go on much beyond and challenge assumptions of universal notions such as sex, gender, and subjectivity. However, many archaeologists have distanced themselves from the feminist label, arguing that gender research covers a wider range of gender categories. In the Near East, gender research has been pursued seriously since the 1990s, albeit a clarified need for research using systematic theories and methodology. In Iranian archaeology, a handful of studies have been conducted on the subject of gender and women. In this article, the formation of research on women and gender archaeology have been recounted. Despite the wide range of approaches, no single theory or school of thought has risen to a position of preeminence, and the androcentric view still carry the mainstream research in many studies.