Maria Mina 140 NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 79:3 (2016) Cyprus and the eastern Mediterranean satellite image. Source: NASA, The Visible Earth, http:// http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/. Was It a Man's World? Gender Relationships at the Transition to the Bronze Age in Cyprus T he hypothesis that the transition to the Bronze Age in Europe and the Levant marked the introduction of patriarchy has a long tradition in archaeology. Its origins can be traced back to ideas developed in the 19 th century c.e. by Morgan (1877) and Engels (1884) among others. Evolutionary models of that period connected simple forms of social organization with women, and social complexity with men. In archaeology, a similar argument was advocated especially by Marija Gimbutas, who pro- posed that the matriarchal Neolithic society came to an abrupt end with the advent of the patriarchal Bronze Age. Despite developments in gender archaeology, the general model which equates the introduction of metal technology with the transition to social complexity and a subsequent demise of women’s roles is still widely employed. Due to the lack of sufficient archaeological evidence, support for the hypothesis of women’s universal subordination has been drawn largely from ethnographic studies (Nelson 1997: 319). Models that consider cultural progress through a series of predefined stages credit men with the active roles of warriors, hunters, or inventors, whereas women are portrayed as passive wives, mothers, or caretakers (Gilchrist 1999: 32). THE CASE OF CYPRUS Te island of Cyprus lies in the north-east Mediterranean, be- tween Anatolia and the Levant. Te chronological range of the Chalcolithic period, which marks the transition between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, and the Early Bronze Age spans the periods 3900–2500 and 2500–1900 b.c.e. respectively. Two contradictory lines of argument have been expressed about gender relations and the transition to the Bronze Age in Cyprus, which can be summarized as follows: (a) women’s status diminished inversely to a rise in male status, or (b) the evidence is insufcient to indicate such an introduction of patriarchy. Te main proponent of the frst hypothesis is Diane Bolger whose ar- gument draws on human representations and their emblematic use in ideology and rituals, as in the case of Chalcolithic cruci- form fgurines and pendants, carved in a sof local green stone known as picrolite, that are considered to depict parturition in a squatting position (fg. 1). Teir birthing symbolism, as well as their funerary associations, indicate a close connection with women and children. Chalcolithic ceramic female fgurines are also represented in a variety of pregnancy (fg. 2) and parturi- tion (fg. 3) postures. For Bolger (1996: 369, 371), these fgurines symbolize women’s elevated status as birth-givers. Birthing sym- bolism was replaced in the Bronze Age by large freestanding clay This journal was published by the American Schools of Oriental Research and is available on JSTOR at http://www.jstor.org/journal/neareastarch. You may receive the journal through an ASOR membership or subscription. See http://www.asor.org/membership/individual.html for more information.