ARCHÆOLOGY: Biological Sex, Human Bones: A few thoughts.
This post summarises a thread I wrote on twitter in response to a tweet from Erik Wade regarding the assignment of biological sex to human remains. Erik’s thread contains a number of incorrect assumptions both about how archaeological assignment of biological sex works, and about how these results are interpreted. Also through use of particular terms it conflates a number of distinct issues. This 8 point summary contains a couple of corrections for minor errors which crept in due to the problems of using speech-to-text software. Speech to text software can’t always negotiate accents very well and in my case it often corrects ‘sex’ to ‘six / cepts / sepsis’ – which means I usually use gender as a placeholder and then correct by hand – occasionally I miss the odd one and it causes unintentional confusion. I’ve also included a brief summary of some additional points made due to a dialogue with one particular individual. All these points are within the boundary of my own experience and my own research work.
1) In around 20 years of studying and working with archaeology data I've never met an archaeologist who automatically presumes sex from grave goods alone – that is not to say grave goods are never a factor – but in my own experience they are rarely a major consideration where there are enough physical remains to make a reasonable judgement on.
2) The argument made is missing a key variable - genetic variation – i.e. each human is a product of an almost always unique combination of genetic variants – meaning that bones vary between individuals of the same sex and race. This is why osteological assignment of sex uses ranges – i.e. between x length and y length.
3) Osteological assignment of sex is usually probabilistic unless DNA is viable to test for the above – this is something generally familiar to anyone with a degree of training in the excavation, preservation, and analysis of human remains. There is rarely space, nor need, to reexplain standard methods in archaeological reports – if this were to happen in every archaeological report in every area which had a generally accepted method – then a high percentage of journal output and monograph output would contain largely the same sentences repeated over and over.
4) In his thread Erik Wade states that English and Norse cultures are 'hardly distinct' which is, again in my opinion, to misunderstand both - and to underestimate the complexities of cultures of the past through using simple typologies.
5) Several individuals responding to this thread conflated sexuality and gender identity – and this largely a problem of the language used – Erik’s use of ‘queer’ was for example read by one respondent as automatically meaning ‘genderqueer’ which was not obvious from context – and is an interpretation which is confusing since given the degree of overlap between ‘trans’ and ‘genderqueer’ Erik would in effect have been introducing a variant boundary which was covered by the previous clause. Since Erik has chosen not to engage with my particular thread I have no idea what was meant. It goes without saying that evidence of sexuality does not come from physical remains. It comes from thoughts – recorded in other ways.
6) Of course there were people who did not fit into the 'male and female' binary genders in the past. Would they have called themselves 'trans'? Unlikely. Was there an equivalent cultural construct? Probably. Do we know for certain? (Not yet...). What is worth noting is that in these arguments both Erik and others continue to speak of binary biological sex, multiple genders and trans identities. The human in the room being ignored is the intersex individual – who, as is sadly standard, is completely ignored despite being a biological reality and not a sociological construct.
7) Occam's razor remains a useful tool when it comes to interpreting evidence. However we are constrained by Bacon's Idols and in some senses much of the new scholarship simply reconstructs the same idols in different forms. The assignment of biological sex is in one sense based largely on this principle – which answer most fits with the evidence presented by the skeletal remains at hand.
8) The problem with the overall argument made by Erik here can be summed up as follows: Osteology has never been viewed as giving exact sex - more a probabilistic likelihood. While reports may seem to speak in relatively absolute terms this is because there is perhaps an understanding that the intended audience has enough knowledge of the process to know that this is the case. Even in older scholarship we will see terms such as ‘appears to be that of a male’. The linguistic coding of earlier studies would show this is a probabilistic conclusion without having to give the exact mathematical process behind it. As remarked above – were we to need to explain every process, rather than every variation on standard process, a large amount of output would become a copy paste of basic instruction material. We must understand evidence within its context and not impose our own assumptions too quickly. Yes it is right to challenge established ideas - a fundamental point of this is that a good hypothesis withstands testing - that is what makes it a good hypothesis. As a rule the process runs: Observe - collate - analyse - conclude. And accept when the balance of the evidence shifts.
9) Old scholarship, whether decades or centuries old, does not equal bad scholarship. New scholarship does not equal good scholarship. Both can be good, both can be bad. It's a questionable assumption that all new scholarship is progress
As a further general point I would say this – when your work touches on a new subject area or one whose material you wish to use it always pays to familiarise yourself with the basic procedures and protocols of how that information was gathered and analysed. Not only is this a matter of respect towards previous scholars work, most importantly it helps progress understanding.
And as a final note – when you decide to get into an academic debate on Twitter consider the impact your rage-typing might have on someone else. You have no idea what was going on in their life. You have no idea the negative impact you could have. As I have said many times – we need to be more kind.
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| Variation between pelvic bones - note these are general ranges rather than exact indicators |
1) In around 20 years of studying and working with archaeology data I've never met an archaeologist who automatically presumes sex from grave goods alone – that is not to say grave goods are never a factor – but in my own experience they are rarely a major consideration where there are enough physical remains to make a reasonable judgement on.
2) The argument made is missing a key variable - genetic variation – i.e. each human is a product of an almost always unique combination of genetic variants – meaning that bones vary between individuals of the same sex and race. This is why osteological assignment of sex uses ranges – i.e. between x length and y length.
3) Osteological assignment of sex is usually probabilistic unless DNA is viable to test for the above – this is something generally familiar to anyone with a degree of training in the excavation, preservation, and analysis of human remains. There is rarely space, nor need, to reexplain standard methods in archaeological reports – if this were to happen in every archaeological report in every area which had a generally accepted method – then a high percentage of journal output and monograph output would contain largely the same sentences repeated over and over.
4) In his thread Erik Wade states that English and Norse cultures are 'hardly distinct' which is, again in my opinion, to misunderstand both - and to underestimate the complexities of cultures of the past through using simple typologies.
5) Several individuals responding to this thread conflated sexuality and gender identity – and this largely a problem of the language used – Erik’s use of ‘queer’ was for example read by one respondent as automatically meaning ‘genderqueer’ which was not obvious from context – and is an interpretation which is confusing since given the degree of overlap between ‘trans’ and ‘genderqueer’ Erik would in effect have been introducing a variant boundary which was covered by the previous clause. Since Erik has chosen not to engage with my particular thread I have no idea what was meant. It goes without saying that evidence of sexuality does not come from physical remains. It comes from thoughts – recorded in other ways.
6) Of course there were people who did not fit into the 'male and female' binary genders in the past. Would they have called themselves 'trans'? Unlikely. Was there an equivalent cultural construct? Probably. Do we know for certain? (Not yet...). What is worth noting is that in these arguments both Erik and others continue to speak of binary biological sex, multiple genders and trans identities. The human in the room being ignored is the intersex individual – who, as is sadly standard, is completely ignored despite being a biological reality and not a sociological construct.
7) Occam's razor remains a useful tool when it comes to interpreting evidence. However we are constrained by Bacon's Idols and in some senses much of the new scholarship simply reconstructs the same idols in different forms. The assignment of biological sex is in one sense based largely on this principle – which answer most fits with the evidence presented by the skeletal remains at hand.
8) The problem with the overall argument made by Erik here can be summed up as follows: Osteology has never been viewed as giving exact sex - more a probabilistic likelihood. While reports may seem to speak in relatively absolute terms this is because there is perhaps an understanding that the intended audience has enough knowledge of the process to know that this is the case. Even in older scholarship we will see terms such as ‘appears to be that of a male’. The linguistic coding of earlier studies would show this is a probabilistic conclusion without having to give the exact mathematical process behind it. As remarked above – were we to need to explain every process, rather than every variation on standard process, a large amount of output would become a copy paste of basic instruction material. We must understand evidence within its context and not impose our own assumptions too quickly. Yes it is right to challenge established ideas - a fundamental point of this is that a good hypothesis withstands testing - that is what makes it a good hypothesis. As a rule the process runs: Observe - collate - analyse - conclude. And accept when the balance of the evidence shifts.
9) Old scholarship, whether decades or centuries old, does not equal bad scholarship. New scholarship does not equal good scholarship. Both can be good, both can be bad. It's a questionable assumption that all new scholarship is progress
As a further general point I would say this – when your work touches on a new subject area or one whose material you wish to use it always pays to familiarise yourself with the basic procedures and protocols of how that information was gathered and analysed. Not only is this a matter of respect towards previous scholars work, most importantly it helps progress understanding.
And as a final note – when you decide to get into an academic debate on Twitter consider the impact your rage-typing might have on someone else. You have no idea what was going on in their life. You have no idea the negative impact you could have. As I have said many times – we need to be more kind.
