"It is possible to acknowledge that the particular notion of sex as it is understood in osteoarchaeology is the product of a particular contextual and historical perspective on the basis that the act of creating scientific knowledge is a social act … without suggesting that observable differences between men and woman are some sort of irrelevant mirage, or that osteological determinations do not form a useful axis of analysis. The aim of osteoarchaeology is to find ways of analysing the difference and variation that are already observed in the skeleton; osteoarchaeology is not a form of alchemy that is able to create something from nothing."
Joanna R. Sofaer in The Body as Material Culture (2006; 96).
My sticky note next to this quote reads “OMG YES alchemy BURN”