The Present of Queer Pasts

Queer archaeologies seek to question and subvert the discipline’s normative discourses.

Archaeological excavation. Sopron, Hungary, 1983

Archaeological excavation. Sopron, Hungary, 1983 | Fortepan / Kádas Tibor | Public domain

As in any field of knowledge, archaeologists have projected their biases and prejudices onto their research. As a counter measure, queer archaeologies propose revisiting the sex-gender systems of past societies without assuming they possessed the categories of the present day.

In 1964, in the Egyptian necropolis of Saqqara, the team led by archaeologist Ahmed Moussa discovered a tomb decorated in an unusual manner. The walls of the main chamber were covered with bas-reliefs depicting two men embracing, holding hands and even touching noses. A study of the burial site revealed that both men shared the same position at the pharaoh’s court: they were “Overseers of the Royal Manicurists.” Although the evidence pointed to a romantic relationship between the two men, early archaeological interpretations claimed that their gestures of affection were due to them being “close friends” or “twins.” In his articles, Egyptologist Greg Reeder criticises the fact that the hypothesis of their being lovers was not put forward until decades later.

The Saqqara tomb is not an isolated case. In 2019, a new method of estimating biological sex allowed a team from the University of Bologna to affirm that the “lovers of Modena” were, in fact, two men. The press had given this name to the remains of two people found in 2009, buried hand in hand and facing each other. The arrangement of the bodies and the slight difference in size between the two led journalists to assume they were a man and a woman who had been romantically involved in life. The archaeological team that carried out the excavation accepted this narrative, perhaps because it was a good publicity hook to attract funding. However, a decade later, when it was proven that the two skeletons were most likely male, some archaeologists argued that they must have been relatives or soldiers who died together in battle, rather than lovers. They argued that a law enacted by Emperor Justinian had criminalised same-sex relationships, meaning that no one would have buried two men in such a position if they had been romantically involved.

The burials at Saqqara and Modena indicate that in archaeology, there has long been (and still is) a presumption of heterosexuality – everyone is heterosexual until proven otherwise. When a dig unearths the remains of two people of similar ages displaying gestures of affection, it is often assumed that they were a man and a woman who, moreover, had a romantic and sexual relationship. If subsequent analysis proves that the remains belonged to two people of the same biological sex, as in the case of the Modena lovers, then the presumption of heterosexuality acts to negate any romantic relationship between them. In queer theory, this presumption of heterosexuality is called “heteronormativity” or the “heteronorm” and forms part of the biases with which present-day researchers look at the past.

Paul B. Preciado once said, during a talk in Buenos Aires, that “one can end up being, I don’t know, a PhD in archaeology, and never have heard of feminism, or anti-colonial movements, or the history of AIDS […], and be absolutely ignorant of the political histories of resistance.” It is no coincidence that, of all the human and social sciences, Preciado chose archaeology as an example of a discipline alien to the history of contemporary social struggles. Since its beginnings, archaeology has been a highly masculinised field, a reality that persisted for decades, giving rise to stereotypes of toxic (or rather, violent) masculinity epitomised by figures such as Indiana Jones. In fact, a recent study shows that, although the practice of archaeology is increasingly approaching gender parity, the most prestigious journals and publishers are still dominated by white, heterosexual, cisgender men. It is no surprise, then, that heteronormativity has been the standard framework through which these archaeologists have reconstructed past societies, since we archaeologists are not “helium balloons floating in a social vacuum” (to borrow Itziar Ziga’s metaphor). On the contrary, as feminist philosophers have been warning for decades, knowledge is always produced in a situated manner, and the socio-economic position held by scientists in the present has a significant impact on their research.

The history of archaeology reflects this situated production of knowledge very well. For example, in the early twentieth century, when the field was dominated by white aristocratic and bourgeois men, the objects recovered and studied in excavations were the most exceptional and lavish. In this way, early archaeologists produced narratives and images that revolved around other men who had also held positions of power in their societies, thereby legitimising their own socio-economic status in the present. To look beyond class, the same is true of gender and sexuality. The widespread incorporation of women into archaeological research during the 1980s led to the emergence of feminist and gender archaeology, which brought visibility to the women of (pre)history. These pioneering feminists exposed the sexist biases in the narratives put forth by hegemonic archaeology. They pointed out that, consciously or unconsciously, archaeologists projected the sex and gender biases of their own society onto the human groups of the past. By ascribing these biases to such a long time frame, they were naturalised, giving rise to the idea that men have always been strong, aggressive and dominant, while women have always been weak, passive and docile, and, what is more, that both of them were invariably heterosexual (once again, the heteronorm).

Queer archaeologies emerged in the 2000s to further challenge these essentialist ideas about gender, sex and sexuality. This is not, as some have claimed, about “retroactively erasing women.” Nor is it about simply tracing the presence of homosexuals back into the past, however right Paquita Salas may have been in saying that “there have always been queers throughout human history!” On the contrary, queer archaeologies seek to question gender binarism by showing, for example, that there is no single patriarchal system, but rather that in the past there were more egalitarian human groups and patriarchies organised around gender identities and expressions that do not always align with those of our society. Likewise, queer archaeologists argue that sexual desire has not always been ordered around the modern categories of homosexual/straight, meaning that these terms should be used with caution so as to avoid anachronisms and the extrapolation of contemporary ideas onto human groups of the past.

Finally, the intersection between archaeology and queer theory is not limited to the study of sex, gender and sexuality. As Thomas Dowson suggests in one of the first texts on queer archaeology (published, incidentally, in the Catalan journal Cota Zero), the aim of queer archaeology is to challenge the normative nature of any archaeological discourse. For example, some archaeologists have used queer methodologies to de-essentialise social class-based categories such as that of “commoner,” while others have used them to question the universality of the current nuclear family model. Over the twenty-five years since the idea was conceived, the versatility of queer archaeologies has demonstrated their potential to continue to question and subvert the discipline’s normative discourses. In a present day like this one, when we are seeing a resurgence of the far right, a rise in aggression against LGTBIQ+ people and a questioning of trans people even by those who claim to be feminists, queer pasts are more relevant than ever to understanding the diversity of the sex-gender systems of past societies and thus denaturalising the outdated ideas around gender, sex and sexuality with which these reactionary movements are trying to oppress and discriminate against us.

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