Gender archaeology can be a tough nut to crack. Working with various sites within the Virginia City Landmark District in Nevada, we initially thought we were seeing evidence of women with some small, delicate buttons, but then a button expert said that they could have just as easily been from some masculine undergarments. Other buttons were bejeweled in a fashion that could only indicate the presence of women.

One of the more concrete forms of gender analysis came from two artifacts that were tested for DNA. The first came from a private, in-house hospital run by a doctor, ca. 1875-1885. Hypodermic needles - broad mouthed implements designed to work with an open vein to irrigate a drug into the vascular system - was tested for DNA. We found four separate individuals on one of the needles - two women and two men who had used the needle at one time or another (and without cleaning - a true inspiration for those who insist they would like to travel back in time). Another artifact was a pipe stem from the Boston Saloon, an African American establishment that operated at the excavated location between 1866-1875. We hoped to find distinct African American DNA patterns, but that was the not the case. Instead, we found that the smoker was a woman, and her tooth mark on the stem was clearly visible, helping us to create a vivid image of a pipe-smoking woman in the African American bar - even if her ethnicity remained indistinct. That excavation was directed by Kelly Dixon, who wrote a wonderful book called Boomtown Saloons: Archaeology and History in Virginia City (2005).

Gene Hattori, now curator of anthropology at the Nevada State Museum, wrote a masterful article on Native Americans living in Virginia City for my volume, Comstock Women: The Making of a Mining Community (1998). He revisited a site he had looked at in the mid-1970s, before gender archaeology was in vogue. True to that time, he had considered the artifacts largely through a masculine perspective. Revisiting the material, he was able to arrive at a distinctly engendered analysis of the artifacts and of the history of Native Americans in the mining district.

A chapter on gender archaeology appears in my book, Virginia City: Secrets of a Western Past (U of Nebraska 2012). It is intended not only to shed light on the archaeology of the American West, but also to provide a model as to how historical archaeology can be useful anywhere in any period.

Edit: I should have added that women's jewelry - particularly earrings - were some other obvious examples of artifacts indicating the presence of women. Often, that was not a shock - when we found them beneath the floorboards of the Piper's Opera House balcony, for example. But when we found them in a saloon site, they helped demonstrate which saloons served women as well as men. Primary documentation indicates that these were respectable women - in the case of Piper's Old Corner Bar, again, for example, which was a fine establishment that would not have tolerated prostitutes plying their trade there.

Only good example I have for you to read more about is the "Woman of Barum" aka "the woman from Bäckaskog". She was an important archaelogical find in southern Sweden during the late thirties. She was estimated to have lived between 7000-6500 b.c and her grave tells us the story that she was a skilled hunter (she was buried together with arrowheads and a bone chisel) who died at the age of 40-something.

At the time of her discovery she was assumed to be a man because of the tools that followed her into the grave. It was as late as in the seventies that it was discovered that she had given birth to around ten kids!

Gender perspective in archaelogical studies is very important because of her story. It is very simple to apply our own social norms and rules to ancient society (women do not hunt, fish, fight), especially if the finds are old and haven't really been studied for several decades.

If you are in Stockholm, I dearly recommend you to pay her a visit as she is a part of a permanent exhibition at the Museum of Swedish history.

http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A4ckaskogskvinnan

http://www.historiska.se/historia/livsoden/backaskogskvinnan/

Edit: I couldn't find any good printed sources about her at this time. You could run the page from the swedish museum of history through google trabslate for further information!