Rings of life: the role of early metalwork in mediating the gendered life course

This paper explores the changing role of early metalwork in mediating age-gender dimensions of social identity in the Copper Age of the Carpathian Basin. Taking a life course approach, it suggests that metal was used to convey difference within exceptionally complex and contrasting constructions of male and female life. Variation in the use of metal throughout the Copper Age was linked to shifts in the pattern of age-gender life course constructions. The expansion of metalworking in the early Copper Age may be regarded as a socio-cultural development of the categorization of the person originating in the late Neolithic, enabling those categories to be maintained and refined. The decline in metal production at the end of the Copper Age can be related to a reconfiguration of age and gender relations. The design of metal objects played an important role in expressing the performed relationship between biological and social life change. In mediating the life course, metal objects acted as foci of time, powerful symbols of life stages and events