Domesticating gender: Neolithic patterns from the southern Levant

Peterson reviews evidence for gendered labour, status and ideology in Neolithic societies of the southern Levant that depended on domesticated plants and animals, using local variation to assess models of gender relations. She applies Lamphere's Balanced and Hierarchical Hegemony models and argues that the data support balanced relations: the evidence does not show one sex controlling production, higher status for men, or women's exclusion from ritual. Increasingly partitioned houses, in her view, do not prove that women's activities became confined to private spaces.

The bioarchaeological discussion compares activity indicators, pathology, trauma, demography and mortuary treatment, drawing on published skeletal studies, her own analysis of musculoskeletal stress markers and reports of burials from residential and non-residential contexts (pp. 252–255).

For architecture and imagery she reviews household plans and spatial interpretations, monumental plaster statues, small figurines and two-dimensional representations. The figurines show varied and sometimes ambiguous sex and gender attributes, with Sha'ar Hagolan as the case study (pp. 255–260).

Peterson finds that mortuary treatment shows no clear evidence of sex-based status differences, and describes ritual participation as inclusive, with Nahal Hemar a possible exception. The evidence suggests that men and women shared strenuous activities, although some tasks may have been sex-differentiated at particular sites, and Peterson cautions that small figurine samples and uncertain activity contexts limit some interpretations. The chronology table follows Aurenche et al. (2001) and gives approximate dates in cal. BC: EPPNB 9200–8300, MPPNB 8400–7500, and LPPNB/PPNC/LN 7500–6000 (p. 251).