Suzanne,

I would very much like to be included in your symposium on feminist
archaeologies and gender roles at the Long Beach SHA meetings.  Here is
an abstract of my proposed paper.  I am currently a post-doc in the
Anthropology Department at Trent University, but will be moving to Simon
Fraser University in September.

Sincerely,

Ross W. Jamieson
32 Barrette St.
Vanier, Ontario
Canada  K1L 8A5
tel. (613) 747-3887
e-mail: [log in to unmask]


Gender Roles in the Spanish Colonial New World: A Re-evaluation
Ross W. Jamieson, Simon Fraser University

Over the past 25 years both archaeologists and social historians who
study the Spanish New World colonies have reshaped our views of gender
roles in the colonial period, and how these relate to domestic material
culture.  There is great interest in the role of women at the
intersection of household, ethnic, and class relations.  Issues of
social conservatism, acculturation, and public vs. private space have
all played a role in our definition of female colonial roles.  Rather
than looking at women as a single, undifferentiated category, I will
instead examine ideas of power relations and historical agency to
suggest that archaeologists look more closely at the significance of
gender to the construction of reality in Spanish colonial society, and
how this changed over the course of the colonial period.