Producción artesanal y trabajo femenino en las comunidades fenicias occidentales: una mirada crítica a la teoría de las esferas separada

Abstract

This chapter offers a reflection on the dominance of the concept of separate spheres in our approach to the study of ancient societies. This has meant the imposi-tion of a western gender perspective on archaeologi-cal and historical studies. In order to demonstrate the problems of this perspective, the paper uses evidence from western Phoenician households. In these con-texts we find evidence of the association between food preparation and craft production. For example, there appears to be a relationship between certain utensils, techniques, and activities used for food preparation and metallurgical production, which suggests that wo-men were implicated in these activities. The author argues that this evidence contradicts the conventional model of sexual division of labour, suggesting the participation of men, women and children in these tasks.