Sandra E. Hollimon

Anthropological Studies Center

Sonoma State University

hollimon@mcn.org

The antiquity of third and fourth genders in native North American societies was first addressed by Kroeber in 1940, who postulated that the first immigrants to the New World brought systems of multiple (more than two) genders from their ancestral Asian homelands. This topic is of increasing interest and importance in the examination of systems of multiple genders by archaeologists. In this paper, I discuss several lines of evidence for addressing this issue. These include cross-cultural comparisons between native North American and Eurasian societies, focussing on similarities in religious beliefs, the association of "different" genders with supernatural power, especially involving shamanism, and occupational specialization of third and fourth gender persons. In addition, I discuss evidence of the geographic distribution of societies with systems of multiple genders, and their ideological foundations for these systems as reflected in mythology. Finally, these issues are discussed with regard to archaeological identification and analysis of past gender systems. I will describe possible strategies for the detection of third and fourth genders in the archaeological record