The Root of All: Gender, Identity and Difference in the 4th-6th century of Voss and Hardanger

In archaeological study of burial, the gendering of a grave forms the basis for any meaningful analysis – where gender is typically understood through the biunivocal categorisation of male and female identities. The perspective of this dissertation is that this form of identification is a function of modern Western ontology, which not only engages understanding of gender within limited terms, but also imprints gender with specific meaning. To break out of these limitations, gender is interpreted through a framework which places primacy on difference – which enables engagement with the material as coded with socially specific meaning within a given ontological perspective. In leaving aside a bifurcation of the material based on certain artefactual types as set identity signifiers – that, for instance, textile-making tools inherently signify women and weaponry inherently signify male – not only is our understanding of mortuary contexts opened up to new understanding of the differential ways that elements engage with one another – but these new engagements may indicate diversified gender constellations. In this study of mortuary material from Voss and Hardanger in Westland county (formerly Hordaland county), I argue that in the Late Roman and Migration period, three differentiations in the material are salient. It is interpreted that this reflects the social coding of at least three genders – one associated with weaponry, one with textile tools, and one with shamanistic practice – and particularly bear claws. Building on the work of Wiker (2001) and Fredriksen (2006a), who argue that a new focus on embodiment and gender differentiation emerges in the 6th century, I further argue that rather than a structure of binarised identities, the mortuary contexts of early Iron Age Western Norway can be thought of as increasingly forming processes of continually reproduced differentiation within a subset of the material. In this process, the mortuary body is increasingly made into a subject, signified with specific identity within a biunivocal structure. In this same process, polyvocality – the flow of non-signified matter – is increasingly sanctioned (Linstead and Pullen 2006)