Before, During, and After Gender

What would a nonessentialist history of gender look like? In this paper, we suggest that mainstream gender history, archaeology, and related disciplines have inadvertently black boxed some of the most interesting questions about what past gender may have been like. Traditional Eurocentric approaches treat gender as variable but only within certain predefined limits; they do not radically question what happens if we shift the term definitionally. This constrains both the stories we can tell about gender and the questions we can ask about it. In contrast, we draw upon feminist conceptions of difference to offer alternative histories ranging from where and how gender may have first emerged to its transitions in Europe over the last 7,000 years. Assumptions about gender in Europe have played an outsized role in mainstream and hegemonic accounts. By problematizing how gender emerged and changed in Europe, we can help decenter this narrative. Drawing on notions of protean difference, this reconceptualizes gender as a form of identity that is not automatically applicable to all human societies and has a specific history and, potentially, a shelf life.