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Anthropology is a science that studies different aspects of people’s lives in the past and present societies. It includes different types, in particular, social, cultural, linguistic, biological, and physical anthropology. However, feminist anthropology belongs to an approach including four fields: biological, linguistic, archeological and cultural, and it directs to the lowering of the male bias concerning the knowledge scholarly production, research findings, and practices of anthropological hiring. Thus, feminist archaeologists have reinterpreted various evidence from the ancient times to create new accounts of the gender role origins.

Feminist anthropologists state that researches help to change and correct the existing bias in feminist theory. These scientists are mainly concerned with the gender frame in societies. Hence, feminist theory is accepted in scientific circles that continue to find new and intriguing interpretations of cultural mindscapes, gender ideologies, and societal norms. In spite of the common and even combative prejudice of the modern American society that it is increasingly superfluous, feminist scientists prove that this theory has vital importance for anthropological theory, especially to their donation into the archaeological subfield. Women, who use such feminist perspective to archaeological interpretation and excavation, have many difficulties to discern the actions and lives of females who lived many years ago due to the fact that their lifeway was overlooked or lost by possibly androcentric and academic environment. Moreover, it was caused by humiliation and ignoring of women, especially through their absence in academies , due to male-centered society, which existed for many years (till 19^th century) (Adovasio, Soffer & Page, 2007). Thus, feminist theorists belonged to the archaeological community, in particular, gender archaeologists or specifically feminists, fought with such gender stereotypes and made their contribution into the growing consciousness of gendered history through additional and new ways of archaeological excavation. They also used new approaches of interpreting artifacts or data that were previously ungendered. Furthermore, they contribute to understanding of the new means of past sexuality and gender concept through the ideology reconstruction in archaeological data.

 

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Feminist archaeologists pay more and more attention to the importance of women’s role in the distant past trying to support the modern position of females in the society that is still oriented on men (Adovasio et al., 2007). Moreover, their goals are generally based on feminist ideas because these women have the intentions to legitimate and advance the women’s presence in the modern world. In addition, feminists try to interpret different archaeological findings as the promotion of past gender-inclusive models, as denial of the universality of a severe sexual divide of labor, and as a challenge of the methods used by men to separate activities, which, according to males, are intended only for men, but not for women. Another group of feminist archeologists has its goal to determine the role of females and their social activities in the prehistoric period in terms of their activities expressing societal activeness and female agency. However, the search of such prehistorical females requires reflexivity in case of reexamination of the previous thinking models imposed by males, who emphasized prehistoric men as the advancement and change agents. According to Orthner (1974), “The actual treatment of women and their relative power and contribution vary enormously from culture to culture, and over different periods in the history of particular cultural traditions” (p.67). Thus, the objective aspects of feminist archaeology belongs to the theoretical aspect directing to the changes in the previous conceptions showing how theory was usually used to promote male-gendered ideas.

The main part of the ideologies behind the women exclusion from the area were the same ones with the female academic conceptions within all time; in particular, gender conceptions. Moreover, the theoretical interpretations related to the role of females, who lived at the ancient times, were focused only around the men, who were the excellent hunters, doers, leaders in addition to actors, and other roles. In contrast to males, women had the role of passive participants, gatherers, victims, and so on. Thus, a historically composed ideology about the secondary role of women made its impact on interpretation of historical finds; in particular, if archeologists have found something supporting the contrary approach, it was ignored or even unnoticed. Hence, it means that the Western education has had privileged males for many centuries causing the negative attitude to women, who tried to change such established models.

Nowadays, many archaeologists want to change the humans’ imagination about females’ role from the prehistorical times. James M. Adovasio, who is an excellent expert at studying of the perishable prehistoric artifacts, and Olga Soffer, who is a professional on the Old World people and Paleolithic Period, argue that prehistoric females were not only baby-machines caring about children, collecting berries and nuts, rustling up roots and hoping only on strong men-hunters, who brought meat (Adovasio et al., 2007). Contrarily, they were major persons at that society; in particular, they had the important place in human sociability, they created the most important and useful tools named the String Revolution, had the same obligation to stock up on food, made their influence on the language intervention, and they were ones of the first who created agriculture (Adovasio et al., 2007). Moreover, such stereotypical image about the earliest women was created by modern men, who dominated in archaeological and anthropological fields and did not want to recognize the equality of the women. In addition, due to the emergence of the new archaeological technologies and techniques, the study of new “womanly” details and perishable artifacts became more accessible. However, the hard work of female archeologists in this field during the last years made its positive results. The modern researches supporting the woman’s grand role in the evolution process were based on the fossil record, in particular, Eco facts and artifacts, the behavior and other facts related to primates, especially apes, existing these days, molecular and genetic biology in addition to behavior of living nowadays gatherers and hunters like !Kung and the San from Australia and the Kalahari Desert in Africa (Adovasio et al., 2007). Moreover, there are many other factors, such as immense nets made by women for mammoth hunting, which confirm the common and equal work of males and females. Additionally, the numerous archaeological findings like figurine fragments and nearly 200 “Venus” figurines in addition to fiber artifacts pointing to the master weaving that date back to the Gravettian period, in particular 27,000 - 22,000 BC, were found in Europe (Adovasio et al., 2007). These were extremely important and valuable findings not having any analogues in the world.

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In conclusion, feminist theory interpreted by archeologists has created the new approach to the role of women in a prehistorical period as well as all historical periods in addition to the modern world. It has significantly changed the previous male-based bias, especially about dominant position of men in a society and secondary role of women. The knowledge obtained from the Western society only deepened this model causing understanding of gender evolutionary trajectory as a societal progression, but not like individual agency element. Feminist archeologists reimagined such past gender conceptions and gave them back with a new approach and understanding of women’s role in a society. The feminist theorists’ contribution into archaeology and anthropology points to the need to reexamine the existing social norms and to form the new anthropological theories directing to the new views on the role of females and gender in general. Hence, different evidence from the ancient times are used by feminist archaeologists to create new accounts of the origins of gender roles.