A study of graves from a 3000-year-old Persian civilization suggests the people buried there did not hold to the rigid gender binary that is only just starting to break down. Indeed, the author argues, archaeological studies have been influenced by viewing both sex and gender through a western lens.[...]
Cifarelli analyzed their reports and found two clusters, buried with items that were probably considered male and female. However, some 20 percent of graves contained a mixture of male and female objects, implying either the people of Hasanlu believed in a third gender, or saw gender as more of a spectrum than a rigid dichotomy. Her theory is backed up by a golden bowl depicting a bearded person performing what is thought of as female roles. [...]
Cifarelli is not just challenging the idea that other cultures saw gender as a binary, but the way archaeologists categorize the sex of bodies. Incomplete bones have traditionally been identified as male or female based on whether the grave included a weapon or some more domestic item.
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