1. The Emergency of Patriarchy? Material Arts as Evidence

2. Who invented farming? • Observations of plant behavior--recognition of young seedlings/seeds • Over time--connections between rain and growth • Awareness of where certain plants grew • Worked out how to grow and tend crops

3. Why change? • Easier access to tasty grains/reliable food supply (no need to carry food with them) • Cereals only ripen once a year but seeds could be kept and eaten--storage? Accidental planting? • Slow change to sedentism • Increased population (Why?)

4. Evidence • 20,000 BCE women had discovered food value of einkorn • A single good strand could feed a family for a year • Grains had 50% more protein than wheat today • It easily plants itself--ancients could return to same site each year • Eventually the small band might decide to stay longer or not move at all

6. So Women had it easier now? • Hunter/gather men hunted about 4 days a week and women spent 2.5 days gathering to feed family • Rest of time was leisure (visiting, being, rituals, games, informal education/raising kids)

7. Eynan • Three layers of 50 stone houses • Small stone domes • Storage pits • Huts had hearths • Child and infant burials • A settled hunting/gathering band (huh??)

9. And with farming (horticulture initially and then agriculture) • Women’s world -mark fields for planting -used fire hardened pointed digging sticks -harvest time--all including children bring in grain - children watched sheep/goats -but gathering continued--fruits/nuts -women did milking and cheese-making -children’s work increased (age 3 =chase birds away)

10. Horticulture---> agriculture • Men would help to clear fields using slash/burn methods • Women would tend fields, complete household chores and tend children • And build stone/mud brick homes, make tools, containers (1st pottery around 8000)

11. Textile production • Why would it be a women’s task? -domestic spinning and fiber production could be done while children were underfoot (unlike plowing, hunting, sea fishing etc)

12. Evidence of Increased Distinction in Tasks • Liulin site in China’s Yellow River Valley • Males were buried with stone adzes and chisels • Women were buried with spinning whorls In Syria (Abu Harewa) --female skeletons had deformed toe bones and powerful upper arms (not found in males)

14. Why would religion develop? • In some societies, religion may have been an early form of social control--a way of encouraging certain standards of conduct as people learned to live together • Viewed nature as imbued with supernatural powers • Settled agriculturalists tended to emphasize the Female Principal of Life (Fertility) --the earth as the womb out of which their crops grew/life depended on this rite

15. 1. Venus of Willendorf2. Catalhayuk--Great Mother Goddess3. Mother Goddess with Child, Uttar Pradesh, Gupta period, 575-625