Here I go again…about to hurl myself once more into the breach of GD. I don’t have an official OP position to debate, as the only information I have is in the article linked below, but I do have some biases and wishful thinking that I can offer as a psuedo-debate.
This NY Times article reports the finding of a Moche burial site of an apparently powerful woman. National Geographic will be also be carrying the story in their upcoming June issue.
The experts seem a bit baffled by what they’ve found, but one possible explanation was not mentioned.
Could she have been a (powerful and well-respected) lesbian?
I suppose that’s possible but I certainly don’t know enouch about the Moche civilization to say one way or the other. I just did a little reading and it appears as though they have art depicting people in flagrante delecto but I didn’t see any mention of homosexuality. Hardly proof of anything one way or the other since a lot of websites about the Greeks doesn’t mention anything about homosexuality.
Anthropologist have to be very careful to make sure their own bias doesn’t get in the way of whoever they’re studying because it can get in the way of understanding the people you’re studying. We’re all biased so don’t get the impression that I’m picking on you.
Looking at it as someone who has limited knowledge of the Moche we can see from the article that they were a stratified society. When I hear about the young being buried with great amounts of wealth it just screams ascribed status to me though it’s possible she could have achieved it through her actions, marriage, or something else. It would have been nice if they told us how she died. I would exepct a young warrior who died to have been killed by a wound of some sort but people do get sick.
I guess it’s possible that she was a lesbian but is there evidence to back that assertion up? Can we even be sure she was a warrior? There have certainly been plenty of examples of women fighting in armies throughout the world. It is an interesting find though and I might just pick up National Geographic in June.
No, but the article mentions that what’s odd is that she was buried with artifacts that, elsewhere in her community, would be found only with men or only with women. She got both.
Perhaps more likely than lesbianism, though, would be some sort of “two-souls” situation - a bisexual or asexual. In some cultures, considered powerful magicians (but I know nothing of this culture.)
It mentions that a strangled woman was found with her, and that such sacrifices were commonly found in graves. Anyone know if the gender of such sacrifices is patterned? My first thought was “lover”, but that’s based on nothing more than a love of historical fiction and the vague knowledge of wife burnings in India.
That was to enable the use of the Xena joke, mostly. From what I read, there’s not enough yet to determine what societal role she might or might not have played. The weapons could’ve been offerings from male warriors, not necessarily her own belongings, at least that is one WAG presented by the article.
I’m not an anthropologist, and I’m obviously not presenting a calculated argument of any kind, just a “what if” she was a lesbian, or a warrior.
Does anyone know of any gender tendancies for Moche sacrifices?
The assumption is that she was a servant (or slave).
I can’t imagine that we would have any way of knowing if this woman was a lesbian. Did she have short hair and drive a Saturn? Maybe she’s a lipstick lesbian or a LUG. The point being: one needs to be careful about projecting modern, western sexual roles on more primitve societies.
I too will pick up a copy, and follow this thread.
But please excuse a slight hijack; Is the “!=” in your post an acceptable substitute for the “does not equal” sign? I hope so, cause I often need one.
Grazie,
mangeorge
Here are twomore articles about this discovery. She had given birth at least once, and it is theorized that maybe the weapons were given as tribute to her greatness at the time of her burial. The pictures are interesting too.
Wow, it’s amazing how difficult it can be to piece together a few simple details. Your links helped. Maybe I’m not up on age classifications but I wouldn’t classify someone at 30 as being a “young adult” like the New York Times article in the OP said she was. Let’s get back to the OP I guess.
So let’s say she was a lesbian warrior princess, what does that mean?
To John Mace’s point, my use of the term ‘lesbian’ was not an attempt at projecting a contemporary role, but more like the use of the term ‘cannibal’…conveying a general concept. If I discussed the concept of cannibalism in an anthropological context like this, would many people think I was projecting the contemporary behavior of Jeffrey Dahmer? I don’t think so.
Sexuality shared between two women is hardly a contemporary construct, and as Why Not pointed out, there are other labels (for lack of a better word) for such behavior in some Native American cultures. Attempting to draw the subjective line in the sand between the definitions of homosexual and bisexual (even the contemporary varieties, with plenty of directly observable subjects of study available) is not an easy task. I hardly think we’ll make much progress trying to figure out the details of such things for the Moche culture.
I just thought it was interesting that, since the researchers are puzzled and offering so many varying hypotheses to explain what they found, that a possible sexual relationship wasn’t thrown on the table along with the rest. If it had been a man burried in such a way, would the hypothesis that the strangled servant girl might’ve played the role of concubine receive more than passing scrutiny compared to the other possibilities? Purely a rhetorical question.
I’m not a fan of the show, but Xena is for sure attractive in my book. I’ve always been attracted to kick-ass women. That preference has caused me some trouble on occasion. (“Keep moving, breeder”)
I wonder if Lucy Lawless is available?
mangeorge
Let’s remember that we’re reading articles written by journalist not an ethnography written by anthropologist. We’re getting a bare bones (ha ha get it?) account of what they found along with a few ideas of what it might mean not an in depth thesis. It’s possible that the achaeologist have some knowledge about the Moche that makes a sexual relationship unlikely. It seems as though they have found strangled females buried along side men but I don’t know if they believe they might have been concubines.
You might have asked a rhetorical question but I think it’s a perfectly valid one. Androcentrism has been a big problem in anthropology for many years but thanks to the efforts of women like Margaret Mead it isn’t as bad as it once was. I’ll admit my own bias and say that I wouldn’t have ever considered whether or not the woman was a lesbian without some pretty convincing evidence. We all bring our own baggage to these things and there’s nothing wrong with admitting it.
Maybe she’s a lipstick lesbian or a LUG. The point being: one needs to be careful about projecting modern, western sexual roles on more primitve societies.