Christophe Darmangeat
Biographical Note
Christophe Darmangeat, Ph. D. (1965), Université Paris Cité, is associate professor in social anthropology. He is working to renew the materialist analysis of stateless societies and has published several books, including Justice and Warfare in Aboriginal Australia (Lexington).
Readership
The book is aimed at anyone interested in Marxist reasoning on the prehistory of gender. Although richly documented, it is written in simple language and without any unnecessary technical vocabulary.
Table of Contents
List of Figures and Tables ix
Introduction 1
1 Raiders of the Lost Matriarch 11
1 True and False Stakes in an Old Debate 11
2 Amazons and Penelopes: Bachofen’s Myths 14
3 Morgan and the Iroquois 18
4 Engels and the Economy 19
5 Our Mother Who Wast in Heaven 22
6 Evolution, a Woman’s Achievement? 26
7 The Blurred Lines of Matriarchy 29
2 The Impossible Quest for Matriarchy 32
1 The Mythical Reliability of Myths 32
2 Elusive Goddess 38
3 Gendered Speculations 43
4 Born of Unknown Father? 45
4.1 Paternity Ignored 47
4.2 Uncertain Paternity 49
5 Succession or Elimination? 55
6 Matrilineality and the Situation of Women 59
7 Deceptive Matriarchies 63
3 Twenty-Four Millennia in the Life of Women 72
1 How Old Is Male Domination? 72
2 Cultivators 75
2.1 Societies with Wealth: New Guinea 75
2.2 Societies without Wealth: Amazonia 81
2.3 Societies without Wealth: New Guinea 87
3 Hunter-Gatherers without Wealth: ‘A Woman Is Less Than the
Dust’? 90
3.1 The Selk’nam 90
3.2 The Inuit: ‘You’re Just a Woman’ 95
3.3 Australia: ‘A Woman Is Less Than the Dust’ 100
3.4 Conclusion 116
4 Other Hunter-Gatherers, Other Gender Relations 117
4.1 The San (Bushmen) 117
4.2 The Andamanese 119
4.3 The Mbuti 122
5 What Is Sex Equality? 123
5.1 Equality or Identity? 125
5.2 The Sexual Division of Primitive Societies 126
5.3 ‘Separate but Equal’? 129
4 The Place of Economy 133
1 Engels: An Outdated Scenario 133
2 Public and Private Spheres 139
3 Kollontai’s Theorem 142
3.1 Hunters, Farmers and Breeders 143
3.2 Producing Is Not Enough 145
3.3 Division of Labor and Commodity Production 146
3.4 The Advent of Abstract Labor 149
4 A Provisional Assessment 152
5 Spears and Digging Sticks: The Sexual Division of Labor 155
1 Measuring the Phenomenon 155
2 The Elusive Origins of the Sexual Division of Labor 163
2.1 The Naturalist Thesis and Its Critique 163
2.2 Cognitive and Behavioural Differences? 168
2.3 The Ideology of Blood 170
2.4 Some Arguments for a Synthetic Approach 173
3 Consequences of the Sexual Division of Labor 179
3.1 Separation and Antagonism of the Sexes 179
3.2 Prestige, Technique and Weapons 183
3.3 Women as Stakes in Men’s Strategies 185
3.4 Sexual Division of Labor and Male Domination: the Cause and
the Consequence 192
6 Evolutions, Powers and Counter-Powers 194
1 From Domination to Exploitation: The Role of Wealth 194
1.1 Bridewealth and Wergeld 195
1.2 Wealth and Private Property 197
1.3 In Societies without Wealth: Exploited Women? 199
1.4 Effects of Wealth 202
1.5 A Worsening of Male Dominance? 206
2 Politics: a Man’s Business 210
2.1 Warriors: Omnipresent Men, Exceptional Women 211
2.2 In Politics as Well 214
2.3 Some Female Trees … 215
2.4 … Which Do Not Hide a Vast Male Forest 222
3 Economy Once Again 224
4 Did Women’s Status Deteriorate with the Emergence of Social
Classes? 230
7 Testimonies from the past 236
1 Some General Considerations 236
2 The Upper Paleolithic 237
3 Fallacies and Dubious Cases 241
3.1 The Minoan ‘Matriarchy’ 241
3.2 San’s Rock Art 243
3.3 Amazons in the Sahara? 246
3.4 A Forgotten Kingdom in Tibet? 248
3.5 Female Hunters in the Plain? 249
4 The Exception That Proves the Rule: Women Warriors of the
Steppes 251
5 Confirmations 254
5.1 Paintings and Engravings 256
5.2 Graves and Grave Goods 259
5.3 The Sâti 263
5.4 What the Myths (Really) Tell Us 266
8 Conclusion 269
Appendix 1: Periodising Prehistory 275
Appendix 2: Atlas of Mentioned People 285
References 292
Index of Names 317
Index of Themes 319
Index of Places and Peoples 322
