Tsungkotepsu: Gendered Artefacts And Continuity Of Gender Hierarchy

Abstract

Artefacts and costumes can symbolize class and social status. It can also help realize an objective or those exclusively for creative purposes. Material culture gives us information about a certain culture, the time, place and people involved in the production. Material culture in addition informs the symbolic change and continuity of the commodity in question. It goes on to construct people and their identity. Gender is usually defined as a socially fashioned and traditionally varied force. Gender cannot be understood plainly in terms of male and female activities because there are no out of sorts cultural findings of what comprises men’s or women’s experiences. Manliness and womanliness, as features of gender are only varied possibilities which appeared in history, symbolically and even situationally. Locating upon the Tsungkotepsu and its demarcation of gender identity, the paper would argue that gender hierarchy among the Ao Naga continues unchallenged and unchanged from the traditional times wherein Ao Naga women are still excluded, bracketed and prohibited from certain male domains.