Gender and Material Culture

Reveals, through a close comparison of monasteries for men and women, stark contrasts in the social and economic status of these religious foundations. The book provides the first complete case study in the applied archaeology of gender. Gender and Material Culture is the first complete study in the archaeology of gender, exploring the differences between the religious life of men and women. Gender in medieval monasticism influenced landscape contexts and strategies of economic management, the form and development of buildings and their symbolic and iconographic content. Women's religious experience was often poorly documented, but their archaeology indicates a shared tradition which was closely linked with, and valued by local communities. The distinctive patterns observed suggest that gender is essential to archaeological analysis.