Women and Men in Warfare and Migration: Implications of Gender Imbalance in the Grasshopper Region of Arizona

Abstract

This study demonstrates that gender imbalance can explain certain problematic artifact assemblages. Typical warfare refugee populations include more women than men because more men than women are killed in conflicts. This paper proposes that predominantly female warfare refugees altered the material culture of the Grasshopper region of Arizona during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This thesis is supported by the temporal congruity of multiple lines of evidence, including evidence outside of the region for the violent deaths of more men than women and evidence within the region for female- dominated burials, immigration, and gendered continuities and discontinuities in material culture.