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We begin with an intentionally provocative question: Compared with other periods, why is there so little gender archaeology for the European Neolithic? A recent encyclopaedic, 1,166-page overview of the Neolithic (Fowler et al. 2015) involving 88 authors from 45 countries mentions gender on only 6 pages! Other recent reviews of gender in European archaeology (Whitehouse 2006) underline the meager harvest from this period. Why should this be so? It cannot be due to theoretical innocence: Neolithic archaeologists have been at the forefront of theoretical explorations, and feminist critiques of "goddess" meta-narratives (e.g., Goodison and Morris 2013) underline Neolithic theorists' acuity and awareness of gender. Is it for lack of material evidence? No: gender is often developed through houses, villages, burials, and monuments, and Neolithic archaeologists have excavated an abundance of these. Even relevant Neolithic imagery is far more commonplace than many archaeologists realize. But this plethora of evidence has not translated into a well-developed archaeology of Neolithic gender. Why not?
The dominant narratives of gender archaeology, particularly in European prehistory, have been conceptually static in recent years. Although work in queer theory and feminist philosophy is developing new approaches to identity (e.g., Geller 2009; Joyce 2000, 2004, 2008; Schmidt 2005; Voss 2000, 2005, 2008), within the European Neolithic, at least, our understanding of gender in past societies has not moved substantially beyond the conceptual basis established in the 1980s-1990s. We need to build upon these new ideas to move beyond a narrow focus on gender attribution (Conkey 2013; Joyce 2004; Schmidt 2005). This is an experimental paper, intended to help jar the study of Neolithic gender from its current impasse. We argue that interpretation has reached the limits of current mainstream conceptualizations of gender. This appears above all with Neolithic gender, which challenges our concepts in ways later gender does not. Through an overview of the evidence for Neolithic gender, we argue that the reason there is very little Neolithic gender archaeology is because we are not recognizing Neolithic gender for what it was, a form of identity qualitatively different than gender throughout later prehistory, and indeed through the last 5,000 years up to the present. The third millennium BC was thus a major turning point in the history of gender in European society,...