Where Are Your Daughters, Jerusalem? The Embodiment of Gender and Family Relations in Iron Age Levantine Material Culture

Biermann, Bruno

Abstract

Levantine archaeologists and biblical scholars have not engaged seals comprehensively concerning gender. Hence, this article reevaluates inscribed seals with personal names from the southern Levant (Iron Age II–Persian period) with gender-archaeological enquiries. I address two issues so far lacking in scholarship: First, I establish a corpus of provenanced objects within their archaeological context for documenting women’s seal ownership and, possibly, seal use through impressions. This study will reveal that, depending on the archaeological context, inscribed seals with women’s names are not necessarily as rare compared to male names as scholarship has suggested. On the other hand, seal impressions on sealings and jar handles and their find contexts indicate that their owners were engaged in managing and trading resources. Second, based on archaeological theory on the active role of material culture in constituting bodies, I suggest a theoretical reframing of inscribed stamp seals as technologies extending the body and materialising social concepts, including gender.