Fight Like A Girl: Iron Age Female Warrior Burial Discovery

Figure 1: Sword and mirror found in the Bryher burial (Source: Historic England)

 

One of the dominant narratives that continues to exist today is that men are aggressive and often act as warriors, meting out violence.  Women are characterized as meek and mild, often becoming the victims of that violence.  There are challenges to this paradigm, supported by evidence that shows women can and do serve outside of these roles (e.g., being hunters or fighting in wars).  Today’s blog post will feature another one of those challenges by way of evidence of a female warrior from the Iron Age.

 

The discovery of this female warrior was the Bryher burial site on the Isle of Scilly in southwest Britain.  The island has a long history of human occupation, dating as far back as the Neolithic (New Stone) Age, but there is substantial evidence of Iron Age and Roman activity throughout the island, as well.  Iron Age people built a cliff castle on the northern part of the island, but they appear to have used the southern part of the island for burials, which is where the Bryher burial is located.  It was discovered by accident by a farmer who was cultivating potatoes.  When his equipment got stuck and immediately sank into a small sink hole, he discovered a stone lined pit.  He entered it and recovered a sword.  This led him to contact local museum staff, who immediately identified the sword as being from the Iron Age.  This discovery was met with much fanfare from the media and the British crown (as then Prince Charles visited the site).  The attention led to the immediate identification and quick excavation of the site to recover and preserve the material and physical remains of the burial.

 

The subsequent analysis of the burial determined that it contained one individual who was badly decomposed.  Only fragmentary remains of the deceased were able to be recovered, which included pieces of long bones and two crowns of mandibular molars.  Several of the burial goods were also severely deteriorated, but metal pieces were recovered, including the sword, remnants of a shield, elements of a belt to affix the sword to the deceased’s body, a brooch, spiral ring, and a mirror with sun motifs (Figure 1).  The burial dated to the first century BC (between 100-50 BC).

 

Despite the poor condition of the human remains several analyses were attempted to learn more about the deceased individual.  DNA analysis was the first to be done, but the results were inconclusive as the bones were in too poor a condition to recover an ample DNA sample to test.  Isotopic analyses were more successful, demonstrating that the deceased’s diet was a combination of terrestrial resources and seafood.  Macroscopic analyses of the remains were also attempted.  There were too few skeletal elements to rely on skeletal sexing methods, but examination of the molars led to a conclusion that the deceased was a young adult (aged between 20 and 25 years of age) at the time of their death.

 

Without DNA the individual’s sex could not be positively identified, leading to researchers to infer gender identification based on the grave goods.  The sword and shield are commonly found among male Iron Age period burials, so they were assumed to represent the deceased was a man.  The presence of the ring and the mirror, however, were commonly found among female burials, demonstrating that the deceased was a woman.  This led to a complication in accurately assessing the sex and possibly the gender of the individual. 

 

A little over two decades later, though, advancements in chemical analyses of sex had advanced, allowing for the testing of the teeth to determine the sex of the Bryher individual.  The analysis relied on sourcing a specific protein that showed the presence of either an X (female) or Y (male) chromosome.  When the investigation was completed it was discovered that the Bryher individual was a biological female!  The researchers returned to the presence of the grave goods and the ethnographic evidence of the roles of men and women in small-scale societies, and they concluded that this individual was most likely a woman who was a warrior.  Not only that but the quality of the mirror probably meant that she was a military leader.  This conclusion is in line with more recent analyses of other past populations (e.g., the Shield Maidens of the Vikings and Scythians), and it has led to a renewed interest in the role of women in the past, particularly when it pertains to warfare.   

 

Bibliography

Davies, C. (2023, July 27). Isles of Scilly remains are iron age female warrior, scientists say. The Guardian.

Johns, C. (2002). An Iron Age sword and mirror cist burial from Bryhers, Isle of Scilly. Cornish Archaeology, 1-79.

Mays, S., Parker, G., Johns, C., Starks, S., Young, A., Reich, D., . . . Hale, K. (2023). Sex identification of a Late Iron Age sword and mirror cist burial from Hillside Farm, Bryher, Isles of Scilly, England. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.