A sexual division of labour at the start of agriculture? A multi-proxy comparison through grave good stone tool technological and use-wear analysis

This work demonstrates the importance of integrating sexual division of labour into the research of the transition to the Neolithic and its social implications. During the spread of the Neolithic in Europe, when migration led to the dispersal of domesticated plants and animals, novel tasks and tools, appear in the archaeological record. By examining the use-wear traces from over 400 stone tools from funerary contexts of the earliest Neolithic in central Europe we provide insights into what tasks could have been carried out by women and men. The results of this analysis are then examined for statistically significant correlations with the osteological, isotopic and other grave good data, informing on sexed-based differences in diet, mobility and symbolism. Our data demonstrate males were buried with stone tools used for woodwork, and butchery, hunting or interpersonal violence, while women with those for the working of animal skins, expanding the range of tasks known to have been carried out. The results also show variation along an east-west cline from Slovakia to eastern France, suggesting that the sexual division of labour (or at least its representation in death) changed as farming spread westwards.Funding was provided by the projects: “The Diffusion of Farming Practices: new technologies, craft innovations and symbolic behaviours in Western and Central Europe” (AM) funded by the Fyssen Foundation grant (http://www.fondationfyssen.fr/en/) with the support of the UMR 8215-Trajectoires (CNRS – Université Paris 1), and “The Diffusion of Farming Practices in Central Europe through gender studies” (AM) funded by the DAAD- Short-Term Grant (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst https://www.daad.de/en/). We also acknowledge the funding of a Juan de la Cierva Formación post-doctoral grant (AM) by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (https://www.ciencia.gob.es/portal/site/MICINN/) and the Spanish National Research Council (https://www.csic.es/). We acknowledge support of the publication fee by the CSIC Open Access Publication Support Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewe