Womb Politics: The pregnant body and archaeologies of absence

<p dir="ltr">Pregnancy encompasses core socio-political issues: kinship, demography, religion, gender and<br>more. In any society, the ontology of the pregnant body and the embryo-fetus holds core<br>existential concerns. Is a pregnant body one or two beings? When does personhood begin?<br>Yet, pregnancy is still a marginal topic in archaeology, and its onto-political consequences have<br>scarcely been raised. It would be ludicrous to claim that pregnancy or childbirth is part of the<br>grand narratives of prehistory. Also in scholarship centring theoretical perspectives on the body<br>and personhood is the pregnant body absent.<br>This article poses fundamental questions of the body-politics of pregnancy. We develop<br>concepts from material feminism, medical ethics and philosophy to interrogate pregnancy, and<br>provide a case study to demonstrate how these concepts can work in practice from the Viking<br>Age. The questions posed, however, are not limited to the Viking period. Our overall objective is<br>to centre pregnancy as a philosophical and political concern in archaeology writ large. We<br>develop new thinking and language to this end, which can be used to examine the politics of<br>pregnancy in other periods and regions. Ultimately, we discuss the absence-making of pregnant<br>bodies from our sources as well as from archaeological discourse.</p>