WOMEN AS HUNTERS
(ETHNOGRAPHIC ANALOGY)

It was difficult to find ANY reproductions of women as Paleolithic hunters - this was the closest I could come.

Typical manly-man portrayal of men as the only hunters in prehistory.
 The theory of “man the hunter” is biased and skewed in that it assumes all men are designed to hunt and kill and all women to nurture. Because the limited hominid evidence representing “culture” rarely conclusively assigns gender roles, many assumptions have been made, especially in taking a leap from neoteny, bipedalism and large brain size to the concept of a “man supporting `his’ females by hunting while the women sit around making babies (Slocum 1974). But by taking a feminist revisionist approach to the data at hand, one can deduce other models as having as much validity as those suggested by andricentric biases. One such idea is discussed by Sally Slocum, who suggests that the close bonds of mother/child led adult males and siblings to hunt to help support those who had cared for them in infancy. She also posits that an already strong mother/infant bond, coupled with encephalization and increased infant dependency, probably had greater influence than hunting on human evolution because they demanded more social skills and ability to communicate. (1974).

The extreme exclusivity of how the “man the hunter” and “female the gatherer” models cause archaeologists to make basic assumptions in their interpretations of “the economic roles of men and women” (Brumbach and Jarvenpa 1997:25). By looking at Chipewyan women in the historical record, Brumbach and Jarvenpa offer an example that goes against the generally accepted gender divisions of labor, suggesting that purely male or female models do not allow for cultural variations. This study goes a long way towards supporting the idea that perhaps prehistoric women were as capable and prolific hunters as men. Estioko-Griffin and Bion Griffin also work with modern foraging groups in order to better understand women’s roles in subsistence and the economy, focusing primarily on why the Agta women are not just gatherers, but also hunters (1997:253). Their findings show that women of the Agta are equal to men in the society because they perform similar roles with no more importance given to one over the other, although a modest sexual division of labor does exist. This further cements the idea that since modern women hunt, they probably did so in the past as well.


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