Women in Prehistory: North America and Mesoamerica

During the 1960s, in such works as Man the Hunter, scholars constructed a model of cultural evolution in which men were characterized as "cooperative hunters of big game." Women fit neatly into this model, such books as Woman the Gatherer explained, as gatherers of plant food. In spite of evidence of hunting by women, this model—which incorporated the unexamined assumption that women in prehistory were "immobilized" by pregnancy, lactation, and child care and therefore needed to be left at ...