Engendering Social Dynamics: The Archaeology of Maintenance Activities

A collection of papers which aim to promote a better understanding of the importance of maintenance activities within societies and economies, and to demostrate how they might be studied archaeologically. Maintenance activities, tasks which tend to be performed by women, are here defined as "a set of practices that involve the sustenance, welfare and effective reproduction of a social group... the basic tasks of daily life that regulate and stabilize social life. They mainly involve care giving, feeding and food processing, weaving and cloth manufacture, hygiene, public health and healing, socialization of children and the fitting out and organization of related spaces."