Between submission and protagonism: ambiguities in female representation at Stonehenge and associated sites in Prehistory, and uses of this past in Antiquarian Modernity (1136 AD; 1666 AD; 1740AD).

Abstract

This proposal addresses the possibilities that material culture, together with the analysis of its receptions, offer to understand the transformation of cultural categories. Today, there is an increasing concern about the role of women in the past, hitherto hidden by the androcentric filter of male-dominated academia. An investigation of Stonehenge as an object in prehistory, but also relating of the constitution of national pasts, paths regarding the understanding of women and their consequent biological fertility are brought to the fore in this study of some misogynistic narratives that still survive. Integrating three primary sources in their respective epochs, the study aims at studying on the representation of females in Stonehenge, which comes from a possible conception as an archetype of Goddess, passing through the ambiguity between courtly love and profanity of Medieval times (MONMOUTH, 1136), witchcraft of early Modernity (AUBREY, 1666), and the scientific/biological erasure of women in its later moments (STUKELEY, 1740). We start from the hypothesis that, over time, the conception of a woman deity, applied to understandings of the monument, corresponds to a transformation of conceptions about women in contemporary society.