Could you be a Viking warrior?
These types of assumptions hurt the scientific endeavour of archaeology. Assumptions regarding gender roles do not just render women invisible in the archaeological record, assumptions regarding gender roles dilute our understanding of past societies and the enormous complexity of human achievements and activities. Not only are women invisible, but men are deterministic, and all of human history is nasty, brutish, and short. This is not a new problem in archaeology and anthropology. Men are therefore rendered as invisible as women, and the past becomes boring. Already the identifcation of Bj is being bogged down in pedantic arguments questioning whether this individual could have been a warrior.
The genomics is fairly certain- these are the remains of a woman who genetically was part of the Viking world, and who was interred in a Viking tomb with Viking material culture, specifically material culture associated with combat and warfare. It continues to be a challenge for some people to reconcile those variables. But those same people are missing the larger implications of the genomics study.
- DNA Proves Viking Women Were Powerful Warriors - HISTORY.
- How the female Viking warrior was written out of history | Science | The Guardian.
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The real questions, the interesting questions: What does this tell us about how Viking society was structured? Was Bj unique, or did she represent a category of women that has been largely relegated to mythology? And what can this tell us about how violent conflict was viewed and experienced? American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
Birka female Viking warrior - Wikipedia
Gero, Joan Genderlithics: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress. DNA confirms Viking remains belonged to a female military leader. The grave known as Bj was first discovered in the s but only recently tested for DNA. The body was found with a sword, an axe, a spear, armor-piercing arrows, a bottle knife, two shields, and two horses.
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All those components suggest that the body belonged to a professional warrior, according to the authors of the study. Social media was abuzz with people praising the diversity of Viking's society, while media outlets including Mashable published countless articles with the same catchy headlines.
- Trading town.
- And the Dead Will Follow?
- Timmy and the Knick Knocker Ring;
- How the female Viking warrior was written out of history.
It's a fascinating story, that attracts the people's imagination. Judith Jesch, an expert on Vikings and Norse history has written a long and comprehensive blog post questioning the veracity of the conclusions of the 'Viking female warrior' article, which by the way is entitled A female Viking warrior confirmed by genomics'.
Let's try to sum up her main points in a list which she'll probably hate, and we beg for forgiveness:. Jesch criticises the authors for not involving any specialist in language of texts, despite the fact that the article has several references to Viking literature. She also accuses the authors of referencing only experts and books that confirm their narrative of a 'female Viking warrior' story:.
This is to elide the nature of two very different types of evidence and does, in my view, a disservice to what they call 'historical records' which may or may not be the same as the 'narratives' or 'mythological phenomena' referred to earlier. Jesch followed up on the article in question and "can find nothing in it which explains why this osteological and contextual analysis suggests the deceased was a female.
However, he also admits that there's no certainty those were "the correct bones for this grave". This is because since the graves were found in s, there's been confusion regarding the origins of the bones. But in the article, that's only mentioned in the 'Supporting Information'.