Archaeologies of Sexuality

Tracking back to the eighteenth century, antiquarians cultivated an interest in the materiality of sexuality, though one that bordered on fetishization, a focus on objects, images, and spaces presumed erotic or pornographic in function. Finds at Pompeii and Herculaneum (Italy)—mosaics, frescoes, vases, sculptures, bronze artifacts—hinted at culturally distinctive takes on pleasure, procreation, power, and same-sex and inter-species relations. But, come the nineteenth century, religious moralizing deemed such material culture decadent, repugnant, and shocking. Pots from Peru (Chimu, Moche, and Recuay cultures) with sexually explicit depictions garnered similar reactions. “Erotica” were then relegated to secret cabinets or rooms with restricted access. The silences generated around sexuality meant that a universalizing heteronormativity—one that reduced it to compulsory reproduction and penetrative heterosex—implicitly informed archaeologists’ reconstructions of past cultures for much of the twentieth century. To counter this deterministic, dichotomous, and ultimately fallacious framing of sexuality, thoughtful statements from archaeologists who drew on and adapted feminist theorizing occurred at the turning of the twenty-first century. These conversations have since benefitted from engagement with queer theory and an attention to intersectionality. In their discussions, archaeologists of sexuality now emphasize that the concept is related to but not interchangeable with sex and gender. (See the separate Oxford Bibliographies article Gender and Archaeology.) The consolidation of an archaeological interest in sexuality also attended to its historicity. A taxonomic distinction between homo- and heterosexuality consolidated in the late nineteenth century. Medico-scientific fields, as writers like Michel Foucault, Jonathan Katz, and David Halperin have explained, stigmatized the former and naturalized the latter in the service of universal and hoary Truths about family and labor, anatomical difference, and psychological constitution. This point about recent invention should not be lost on archaeologists who study the more distant past; that is, there is a history to our understanding of human nature. Instead, and with attention to culture-historical context, archaeologies of sexuality demonstrate that anatomy and acts do not necessarily determine sexual identities, though patterned behaviors can solidify into them with time. Reproductive concerns have long garnered investigation, but archaeologies of sexuality now also consider desire and celibacy, as well as labor and commerce. Sexual violence in past cultures and contemporary archaeological practice are also areas of interest. Ultimately, the archaeological study of sexuality makes for a more holistic and contextualized understanding of past cultures while offering valuable lessons about the different ways to be human.