ENGENDERED ACTIONS Agency and Ritual in Pre-Roman Veneto Elisa Perego 1 INTRODUCTION 1 This paper explores issues of gender, agency, and ritual in Iron Age Veneto (It- aly). The standpoint of my work is to acknowledge the troubled relation between gender and agency both in mainstream archaeological discourse and in society at large. Although the condition of women in the West has greatly improved in the last decades, some persistent gender prejudices still describe women as passive, powerless, and vain, especially in countries such as Italy, where feminism may have had a minor impact, and a recent backlash against female rights has been taking place. 2 As a consequence, ‘agency’ is often related to male individuals ca- pable of action. 3 In some contexts such as non-egalitarian and ‘traditional’ fami- lies, female passivity is still both praised and patronised. On the one hand, active and enterprising women are blamed for their supposed aggressiveness and lack of femininity, traditional moral values and maternal instinct. On the other, women are held responsible for their weakness, which becomes an excuse to justify fe- male oppression at an ideological level. This partial lack of focus on female prow- ess, competency, and independence in society at large may be partially responsi- ble for the scarcity of archaeological studies on women’s agency. Since agency is generally conceived as a human capability mainly displayed in supposed male contexts such as production, trade, politics, and the public sphere, even when no 1 I want to thank Angelos Chaniotis and all the people who read this paper for their help and advice. 2 In Italy, women’s involvement in politics and high-profile social activities is still scanty. Women’s work conditions are more difficult than men’s, and their salaries are often lower. The structure of family is generally not egalitarian. Men are usually the breadwinners and child-care and housekeeping are still a female duty, even when wives work full-time. Gender- related violence is not rare and repression is often inadeguate. Social pressure against wo- men’s emancipation and old feminist conquests such as abortion has increased in the last years (Ginori 2010; Soffici 2010). Debate has recently gained momentum on the web. R. Zanardo’s documentary film Il Corpo delle Donne (The Body of Women, available online at http://www. ilcorpodelledonne.net/) is a vivid and somewhat dramatic report of the ubiquitous exploitation of women’s bodies as sex objects on Italian television. Perhaps not surprisingly, gender archa- eology never significantly spread in Italy, and I am not aware of any specific Italian study on female agency in archaeology. 3 Kegan Gardiner 1995, 1f.