"Gay Caveman"... Really?

Reading news articles about the “Gay Caveman” became very annoying within a very short period of time. Not only were the articles very limited in their scope and vocabulary, but most of them were nearly identical – likely due to the nature of getting the story out as quickly as possible which prohibits any actual research (or thinking) from being done. 

Refreshingly, I eventually came across an anthropologist’s blog, Rosemary Joyce, who is currently a professor at UC Berkeley and is an expert in sex and gender in archaeology.  Before reading her thoughts on the subject, I had formed my own opinions about the “Caveman”:

   

       1.) Clearly, an individual from the Corded Ware Culture (2900-2500BC) is not a “caveman” and it is obvious to me that the articles using the terms “gay” and “homosexual” are doing so to grab their audience’s attention.

       2.) The sexing of the skeleton may be incorrect. 

       3.) One cannot make assumptions about an individual’s personal sexual preference based on such little evidence about that individual or the culture.

       4.) It's more likely to be a third gender, significant individual or special circumstance.

However, Rosemary Joyce brought up a very excellent point that I had not considered. She says that in order to recognize third-gender individuals, we need to:

Not simply… look for a reversal, a kind of cross-sex pattern, but for something that really constitutes a third category. The Czech burial, even if we accept the sexing, does not show a third pattern. And in that very lack of other differentiation I find the greatest cause to be cautious about what might otherwise be an interesting example, one we could add to other such examples, of burial patterning that challenges the two sex/two gender model.

She bases this reasoning on studies from more recent cultures. For example, historic California Native American societies which gave third-gender individuals ‘specialized roles’ rather than a simple ‘role reversal’.

I found Joyce’s thoughts on this to be very interesting – especially when dealing with the case of the ‘gay caveman’. Based on her thoughts I would probably rule out the potential of a third-gender and I really don’t believe there is enough evidence to support the ‘homosexual hypothesis’. So maybe it really is an issue of improper sexing? Interesting none the less!

Joyce, Rosemary., 2011. “Gay Caveman”: Wrecking a perfectly good story. Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives Word Press [blog] 7 April. Available at: <http://ancientbodies.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/gay-caveman-wrecking-a-perfectly-good-story/> [Accessed 25 February 2012].

Image: 

Masty, Steven., 2011. TIC Science Update: Gay Caveman Identified. The Imaginative Conservative Science Blog [blog] 15 April. Available at: <http://www.imaginativeconservative.org/2011/04/tic-science-update-gay-caveman.html> [Accessed 28 April 2012].