Gender discourses in Archaeology. Conceptual models, stereotypes and asymmetries in the Spanish Iron Age (1st millennium BCE)

This project focuses on the gender roles in the Iron Age societies of Spain, a tradition that epitomises the challenges in gender equality on a global basis.

The Iron Age has been a crucial period that has influenced the construction of national identities across Europe, prioritising activities assumed carried out by men (war, metalwork, cattle raising), relegating women and alternative gender identities to a secondary stance.

This emphasis on male-dominated interpretations have taken women’s agency away and led us to understand that history happens to women while men make it happen.

This project addresses, therefore, an urgent key issue of the contemporary world: gender equality.This research will incorporate traditional archaeological analysis of sources and material culture with cutting-edge Digital Humanities techniques combining Corpus Linguistics and Geographical Information Sciences.

The first part of the research will assess the criteria behind the interpretations of gender, examine how archaeologists have reached these conclusions and evaluate the strength of their argumentation.

A second stage will produce gender-disaggregated data and a novel narrative for the Iron Age that will potentially transform how the discipline understands the role of gender in the past.

In this way, this project will produce a transferable methodology capable of unveiling and visualising the conceptual models that underpin the main argumentative pillars to construct gender-related discourses, interpretations and stereotypes.

At the same time, this research will bring hidden and overlooked data about gender to the forefront, break current harmful gender stereotypes and bridge the gender data gap.

Finally, to ensure that the paradigm shift goes beyond academia, this research has an ambitious dissemination programme for non-academic audiences. Therefore, this field-defining project will make a broad impact on Archaeology and beyond.