Overcoming Gender Bias in Paleolithic Research: Gender Bias May Have Prevented Paleolithic Basket-Weaving Technology from Being Recognized and Accepted

An early invention of basket-weaving technology was not considered possible until recently. There were two principal reasons. The first was that no evidence of basketry had been found that was older than about 15 kya. And the second reason, which was consistent with the first, was that baskets would only have been made in the Neolithic agricultural time period because this time-consuming craft would not have been practical in the earlier period of the Upper Paleolithic nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes. Making baskets would have required too much time and therefore was incompatible with the constant search for food in mobile nomadic cultures.

However, both of these ideas were seriously flawed. No evidence of basket making or weaving was found because fiber materials would have decayed. And the second reason was an assumption that was not based on fact and was later proven to be wrong.

But there was a third and I believe more important reason which no one articulated and which was an unconscious bias. Around 1900, when these ideas were being formulated, basket-weaving was seen by the men, who were excavating caves, as 'women's work'. And the work of women was not considered important. In addition, few men were familiar with even the most basic basket making skills. For these reasons the importance of basket-weaving was dismissed out of hand until positive proof was found that it existed much earlier -- proof that would be almost impossible to find -- but which now has finally been found.

However, around 1900 there was ample evidence that clearly pointed to the possibility that basket making had occurred very early and needed to be considered. In this article, I discuss Native American Indian basket making skills, skills that were used extensively by pre-Neolithic nomadic and semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes. And I also detail the large number of basket making tools that were found in Paleolithic caves and sites but which were not identified as such.

It might be vitally important to understand when basket-weaving began because the technology, and development of basket-weaving may have affected human evolution and human culture in much the same way as stone tool making. My contention is that gender bias prevented this important line of inquiry from going forward.