Distorting the Past: Gender and the Division of Labor in the European Upper Paleolithic, 2005, 240 p., 37 ill., 7 tabl. -

This book breaks new ground and does what a book rarely does in helping us to correct our off-kilter assumptions. The author leaves us with a Paleolithic world that is not populated exclusively by prominent, flint-knapping men who kill mammoths, horses and reindeer. At the same time she does not create a polemically dictated Paleolithic dream-world of across-the-board matriarchal dominance. Instead, while staying rigorously close to her sources, Owen shows that the past was inhabited by diverse kinds of people, who responded to specific settings and problems in manifold ways. In these contexts women were at times hunters, fishers, craftspeople, collectors, shamans, killers, educators, sisters, mothers and grandmothers. In this more balanced view of hunting and gathering societies, men and children are also central actors, and we begin to see Paleolithic life in which the myths that generations of scholars have helped to create are no longer the only illuminated points. This volume analyzes the possibilities of applying the concept of gender, the social construct of sex, to the Upper Paleolithic of Europe. Special emphasis is placed on the division of labor, specifically the procurement of food and raw materials and the manufacture and use of implements, as I believe that these topics can be investigated successfully within the limits of the archeological record.