A medieval woman was buried with archery equipment and had healed fractures of her upper arms like many men did. Is it fair to call her a warrior, or was it more complex? 🏺🧪
Comments
Log in with your Bluesky account to leave a comment
If we need a simple answer, did they call the male burials with the same injuries and grave goods 'warriors'? If so, she meets the criteria. As someone else said above, define warrior.
Why else would she have been buried with the tools of the trade and station? Geez, women are being told that they're "unqualified" to their very graves.
This highlights the problem of failing to acknowledge how our cultural biases impact our ability to use archeological evidence to reconstruct past cultures. We still use our own culture as a template
I'm no expert, but my understanding is that war bows were much heavier than hunting bows. You might not expect to see the same arm damage(caused by the stress of the high draw weights) on someone who was just a hunter and not a warrior. This varies across time and location though, so don't quote me
Agreeing with @clareking.bsky.social, but just want to throw in one more thing: chromosome configurations were never limited to XX/XY, and sex/gender was never as simple as chromosome configuration.
Comments
Define warrior.