Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0806122234 ISBN 13: 9780806122236

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989

  
ocial attitudes in our culture have led to the assumption that early advances in human knowledge were the achievements of men; the role of women in prehistoric times has been largely overlooked. In this thought-provoking book, however, Margaret Ehrenberg argues that the true contribution of women especially in the discovery and development of agriculture was much greater than has been acknowledged to date. Examining the evidence from archaeological, anthropological, and classical documentary sources, Ehrenberg throws new light on the lives of women and their social status in Europe from the Palaeolithic era to the Iron Age.

The relationship between the role of women and economic production is a central theme of this survey. In Bronze Age and Iron Age societies individual women are seen to be in positions of power.

Although available evidence is fragmentary and often controversial, Ehrenberg shows how information can be gathered from skeletons and grave goods found in burials, from settlement sites, from rock carvings and sculpted figurines, as well as from anthropological parallels, to enable significant inferences to be drawn about the life of prehistoric women.

About the Author:

Margaret Ehrenberg studied in the University of Wales. She has been a lecturer in European Prehistory in the University of Leeds and in the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and has taught archaeology, anthropology, and women?s studies.