Body, Sex and Gender in Archeology: Revisiting Some Multidisciplinary Aspects

This article presents the main problems related to the inclusion of the body, gender, sex and its relations with the material culture in the production of modern archaeological knowledge about populations of the past. It outlines an outline of recurring speculations, terms, and concepts that function as paradigmatic umbrella to estimate the state of the art of such approaches from archaeological and ethnographic examples from America, Africa, and the Mediterranean. Convergent perspectives were selected, even in the scope of bioculture and human sociobiology, for the explanation of a sometimes transverse bias of scientific knowledge. Corpo, Sexo e Gênero na Arqueologia: Revisitando Alguns Aspectos Multidisciplinares Este artigo apresenta os principais problemas relacionados à inclusão do corpo, gênero, sexo e suas relações com a cultura material na produção do conhecimento arqueológico moderno sobre populações do passado. Traça um esboço das especulações recorrentes, termos e conceitos que funcionam como guarda-chuva paradigmático para estimar o estado da arte dessas abordagens a partir de exemplos arqueológicos e etnográficos da América, África e Mediterrâneo. Foram selecionadas perspectivas convergentes, mesmo no âmbito da biocultura e da sociobiologia humana para a explanação de um viés por vezes transversal de conhecimento científico.

Low historical rates of cuckoldry in a Western European human population traced by Y-chromosome and genealogical data

Recent evidence suggests that seeking out extra-pair paternity (EPP) can be a viable alternative reproductive strategy for both males and females in many pair-bonded species, including humans. Accurate data on EPP rates in humans, however, are scant and mostly restricted to extant populations. Here, we provide the first large-scale, unbiased genetic study of historical EPP rates in a Western European human population based on combining Y-chromosomal data to infer genetic patrilineages with genealogical and surname data, which reflect known historical presumed paternity. Using two independent methods, we estimate that over the last few centuries, EPP rates in Flanders (Belgium) were only around 1–2% per generation. This figure is substantially lower than the 8–30% per generation reported in some behavioural studies on historical EPP rates, but comparable with the rates reported by other genetic studies of contemporary Western European populations. These results suggest that human EPP rates have not changed substantially during the last 400 years in Flanders and imply that legal genealogies rarely differ from the biological ones. This result has significant implications for a diverse set of fields, including human population genetics, historical demography, forensic science and human sociobiology.