The Role of Women in Ancient Civilizations Review

April 15, 2022 Post a Comment

Journal of World History 12.one (2001) 203-205

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Volume Review

Women in Aboriginal Societies

Women's Roles in Aboriginal Civilizations: A Reference Guide. Edited by BELLA VIVANTE. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1999. Pp. xvii + 389. $59.95 (cloth).

Many histories of women in ancient societies take appeared over the past thirty years, reflecting revisionary forces in historical studies and the growing refusal to run across women as merely peripheral to "effect based" history. Editions featuring titles such as Women in Ancient Societies and Women in Antiquity have appeared, merely these accept, for the main, concentrated on women in ancient Europe, occasionally venturing as far as Egypt and Jerusalem. Information technology has been left to specialized works on particular cultures to cover areas such as the Americas and Africa. Fifty-fifty the 1992 History of Women of Duby and Perrot commences with the disclaimer, "[w]hat we have written is a history of white women" (Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot, "Writing the History of Women," in A History of Women, vol. 1, ed. Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot [Cambridge 1992], p. xviii.). Bella Vivante's collection of women'south histories is therefore particularly welcome.

In the introduction to the volume a comparative function for the collection is given: "[t]he range and similarity of the roles presented here provide a solid foundation for comparison women'south roles across several cultures" (p. xi). Indeed, this proves to be one of the most useful and stimulating elements of this volume, partly because all of the contributors address topics such equally status, religion, goddesses, work, political power, and the family. For those who teach or have an interest in the history of women in specific cultures, this is a convenient text from which to glean information virtually diverse cultures, and it is humbling in the stereotypes that it unravels. Interpretations of aboriginal cultures which represent women as inactive or powerless condition gimmicky roles, and the political significance of women'due south history is emphasized here. Gruber, writing on the Levant, draws attention to the fact that "various peoples and societies withal invoke Hebrew Scripture as an potency both for suppressing women inside the home and for curtailing their activities outside the home" (p. 148)--a reading of the Biblical sources that he exposes as fallacious. For those of united states of america who [End Page 203] assume that Chinese footbinding is an ancient tradition, Chapter 1 is a salutary lesson: This practise did not begin until the tenth century C.East., while in the twelfth century B.C.Due east. elite women performed roles as political and military leaders. This chapter in item is careful to stress that modern Western ideas of emancipation cannot be applied inflexibly to other cultural forms. Instead, specific, historically situated assessments are necessary: Kinney points out that yielding and accepting are positive qualities in Taoism, and vital to a wise leader, rather than automated signs of passivity.

Although many of the capacity cover comparable topics and include similar subheadings, such every bit "literary images" and "family life," there is little about the book that warrants calling it A Reference Guide. Each chapter by and large follows chronological society, and is all-time read equally a single entity, rather than dipped into. The timelines which precede every chapter are invaluable for situating the reader, and the maps provide a like role as a guide to the reader who is unfamiliar with the surface area under give-and-take. Inexplicably, all the same, in that location is no map of India, while Map 2 ("China: The Warring States Period," p. 5) does non seem to have much relevance to the historical events discussed in the affiliate. This trouble seems to be a event of culling maps from other books.

Sources are problematic for most of the cultures under investigation here: For many, nosotros accept lost large amounts of written and other materials, while most of the contributors are right to indicate out that the texts that survive must exist treated with caution. Oft they are largely male-authored (Egypt, Greece, Rome); they may have accumulated from a long tradition (the Levant) and and so be unrepresentative of a...

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