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Beyond Hearth and Home on the Range 61 males in those aspects of Plains Indian culture (warfare, religion, and hunting) that are the subject of this rock art" (Keyser 1977: 23). As argued above, the impact of colonization on gender systems in North America was significant (Etienne and Leacock 1980; Leacock 1983; Weist 1983). Rather than project this scenario onto the past, a more interesting research approach would be to investigate the Writing-an-Stone representations as examples of precontact gender systems that may have been significantly different from historic period systems. In this way, the effects of colonization might be gauged by contrasting documented gender roles and relationships with information extracted from Late Prehistoric rock art localities . Magne and Klassen's (1991) recent multivariate analysis of WritingOn -Stone offers some useful revisions to Keyser's classificatory scheme. Magne and Klassen, after running a cluster analysis of attributes found on 185 anthropomorphs, conclude that neck style (e.g., V neck, horizontal) is not the meaningful division that Keyser suggested (Magne and Klassen 1991). Instead, they identified a Classic Style of anthropomorphic representation (prehistoric) that was related to, and gradually developed into, a Historic Style. Within each of these classes they distinguished subdivisions based on neck form, degree of artistic elaboration, and activity of the figure. If the classic-to-historic transition is temporally controlled, what is the meaning of the other subdivisions? Do categories such as V neck or horizontal neck, elaborate or simple designs, and active or inactive figures represent differing genders, ages, or statuses? An investigation of these possibilities is now viable. The Black Hills rock art sites contain information on gendered activities of considerable antiquity. Sundstrom's (1989: 167) analysis of the technology visible in the representations suggests that many scenes date to Middle Archaic times. She discusses several implications for gender roles and relationships based on the Black Hills data (1989: 162-168). In particular, she interprets complex scenes with animals, people, and straight and looped lines as depictions of enclosures and nets, suggesting hunting drives, netting, and impoundment techniques. Individuals ofboth sexes and several ages were visible in the scenes, indicating community involvement in hunting rather than all-male hunting parties (Sundstrom 1989: 162-168). Other Methods Archaeologists have avoided addressing issues of gender directly, rarely examining instances of technological change, innovation in subsistence strategy, or realignment of settlement patterns from a gendered 62 Whelan perspective (but see Duke [1991], and Kornfeld and Francis [1991]). Yet these very topics may best demonstrate the significance of gender systems in prehistory. Marxist archaeologists in particular have argued for more attention to periods when technological innovation resulted in changes in the relationships of production (Spriggs 1984; Gilman 1984; Bender 1985, 1989). Changes in the forces of production (tools, techniques, labor pool, land, knowledge) are subjects routinely investigated by archaeologists. Culture history is replete with descriptions of changes in technology, settlement pattern, population density, and environmental conditions. If one accepts that changes in the forces of production would necessitate corresponding changes in the relationships of production (people's relationships to each other, to tasks, and to property), then occasions of culture-history change (i.e., changes in the forces of production) would at times be likely to show evidence of changes in gender systems (relationships of production) as well. Having predicted such periods in culture history, analysts might fruitfully apply the methods discussed above to an analysis of changing gender systems. One other method for the analysis of gender warrants attention: the contextual approach advocated by Hodder (1986, 1987b). Contextual archaeology has been applied to gender studies by three researchers: Ian Hodder (1984), Margaret Conkey (1991a), and Liv Gibbs (1987). An understanding of the meaning of patterns visible in the archaeological record is achieved by examining multiple lines of evidence, looking for variations or echoes of a pattern seen in multiple contexts (e.g., habitation structures and mortuary sites). Hodder (1984) utilized this logic successfully in his interpretation of Neolithic burial and house forms. The analysis by Gibbs (1987) was similar in that she used burial material, hoards, rock carvings, and settlement data to document the development of a Neolithic female gender role associated with agriculture and domestic activities. These works are especially persuasive because of the consistency the authors are able to identify among multiple lines of evidence. Conkey (1991a) used a contextual approach in her analysis of Upper Paleolithic aggregation sites and arrived at a number of interesting, gendered conclusions. Her findings are particularly relevant to Plains...

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