No Homo...Gay Cavemen

When doing research on the "gay caveman" I can't seem to get away from that singular story of  First Homosexual Caveman Found; in Prague. The title unto itself  is incorrect to begin with. Corded Ware burials are pre-Bronze Age individuals who were farmers. I am pretty sure they were  no where near cavemen. I feel like the gay caveman  is one of those sensationalist news articles that gets a lot of hype and then you never hear about it again. Personally, I am a skeptic of this sort of analysis. I don't think we can ever really know if there were 'gay' prehistoric men or women because we don't really now the life and lifestyles of the individuals. I also find it really interesting that it seems there is a lot of emphasis on 'gay' men but when women are buried in a deviant way( a.k.a like a man) they are never really seen as lesbians. Most often they are seen someone who was ostracized, witches, etc. I call this"sexing with sexism". 

In interpreting the gay cave man we don't know the definitive social patterns of these past people and all we can do is guess at the sexual orientation because I do not think a deviant grave positioning is substantial enough. Like a fellow blogger (Yiran) said in her own blog of the 'Gay' caveman, Yiran's blog  examples of different treatment can be seen across the world. Her example was of  the treatment of weak boys in parts of China where they dress them as girls in order for them to survive. I also find that when defining gender in archaeology there is a distinctive divide between what men and women do/be/are that minimizes the potential scope of what these people could actually have done. A great example of this narrow scope is seen in women as gatherers. Yet there is evidence based on spinal arthritis in young men's skeletons ( women usually had this from stooping to gather) that they were gatherers. On the topic of mis-assigning individuals,  I also think that we have to be careful with sexing an individual. Sometimes there can be men who are smaller like a woman and vise versa. Another issue is that we do not know who buried him. Perhaps the person that buried him had only dealt with female graves before that, or they were not experienced with appropriated burial ritual. I do not think that this conclusively suggests gay "cavemen". However, I do think that controversial hypotheses are important for fueling discussion that might lead archaeologists towards the right direction of more accurately interpreting the "gay" caveman's burial.  I for one will remain a skeptic until there is concrete proof of graves being for homosexual individuals.