Book Review- Lady Sapiens by Thomas Cirotteau, Jennifer Kerner and Éric Pincas
Lady Sapiens: Breaking Stereotypes About Prehistoric Women by Thomas Cirotteau, Jennifer Kerner and Éric Pincas
Published 12th September 2022 by Hero
Print length 240 pages
Non Fiction. Prehistory. Archeology. Women’s History.
What were the lives of prehistoric women like? The stereotype of the caveman, a violent and brutal hunter, has dominated ideas of prehistoric humans. Prehistoric man as mammoth hunter, warrior, cave painter and figure of authority has often been paired with a barely present prehistoric woman, the silent gatherer, powerless, sometimes even the captive victim forced to become a wife and mother. This understanding of prehistoric life has been coloured by the sensibilities of previous academics, starting with Victorians who enforced their own beliefs about the role of women over the evidence they discovered. Lady Sapiens interrogates these assumptions and assertions about the lives of women in prehistory, and in doing so looks also at the lives of men, of children and the way societies may have functioned together. Lady Sapiens combines the physical evidence of archaeological excavation, cutting edge advances in science and technology and ethnoarchaeology to explore the possibilities and potentials of women’s lives in prehistory.
Lady Sapiens is a book about archaeology and associated fields, with input and insights from many professionals. That said, it is well written and designed to be enjoyed by the curious amateur, rather than being an academic text. Concepts are thoroughly explained, and as someone who definitely falls into the amateur category, I found that archaeological techniques, scientific methods and ethnoarchaeology were very clearly unpacked for my non-professional understanding.
While the authors were not able to point to much definitive physical evidence of what prehistoric women did do, they were able to use the evidence available to them to question many of the assumptions and assertions that people have held about the lives of women in prehistory. There may not be evidence that, for example, women were the artists behind cave paintings, but there is equally no evidence that they weren’t. What Lady Sapiens offers is doubt and ambiguity, pointing out many times that the activities that have been assumed to belong exclusively to men or to women don’t necessarily have any evidence to support them at all, and are rather the legacy of sexist assumptions of earlier scholars.
The book examines many aspects of the lives of women in prehistory. It explores ideas of how women may have dressed and adorned themselves, from clothing, jewellery and body paint. The book considers how sex, sexuality and relationships may have looked in prehistoric times, as well as pregnancy, childbirth and the cycle of women’s fertility. Looking to both physical evidence and ethnography, the book goes on to discuss the possible roles and responsibilities of women and their degree of power and agency within societies. I particularly enjoyed the section about “The Grandmother Revolution”, detailing the roles of women who are menopausal or post-menopausal and just how vital these grandmothers may have been in human social development.
At the end of Lady Sapiens, I didn’t so much as have a clearer, more concrete understanding of life in prehistory for women, but instead was aware of how much we don’t know, and how much of the assumptions about these people are informed purely by contemporary attitudes and biases. I found the new discoveries and dialogues within the field of prehistoric studies fascinating and look forward to seeing what comes next. Lady Sapiens left me questioning and wondering, which was a wonderful experience as a reader.
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