Nüshu as Subversive Regulation: Feminist Archaeology Beyond the Vernacular Script

This essay examines Nüshu, a script-based practice of Han and Yao women, as a case study for language’s potential and limits in decolonial archaeology. By considering language’s agentic role in co-producing meaning, the essay challenges traditional textual and patriarchal biases that have historically marginalised female discourse. This essay explores the extent to which Nüshu can be understood as subversive practice, delineating its role in fostering social cohesion and creating an alternative discursive space inaccessible through dominant archives. By integrating ethnographic evidence and community knowledge with texts and material culture, and by applying feminist theory, relational ontologies and methodological pluralism, this essay foregrounds the performative and affective dimensions of Nüshu commonly missed by conventional archaeological analysis of the material and historical record. The recentring of female agency, emotional solidarity and collaborative meaningmaking thus interrogates how dominant epistemologies flatten subversive practices, offering insights into how textual biases can be overcome through trans-archival archaeological methodology.