The graves of ‘woman warriors’ are changing what we know about ancient gender roles
Recent scientific reevaluations of remains have historians rethinking the prevalence of women fighters throughout history.

In the 1980s, a confusing collection of artifacts turned up in a 10th-century grave in Hungary: a bow, an arrowhead… and jewelry. Early studies suggested that the person in the grave was probably male. But a new look at the skeleton has revealed that the person was in fact female.
The revelation gives a fresh perspective on the debate about women as ancient warriors. The researchers are careful not to suggest that the woman carried the bow in war—rather than for hunting, say, or for defense when herding livestock. But they have not ruled out the possibility that her society considered her a "warrior"—while experts point out the idea that only men could be warriors is biased by modern ideas.
"It is tempting to refer to her as a warrior [but] we have chosen to leave the question open," explains bioarchaeologist Balázs Tihanyi of Hungary's University of Szeged, a coauthor of the new study published in PLOS One. He notes mounted archers were crucial for Hungarian warfare at the time, and if the woman was a skilled archer and horse rider then she may have participated in battles. On the other hand, bows were also used for hunting, and many Hungarian women from that time, especially from the semi-nomadic Magyar culture, carried bows for self-defense and to protect livestock, he says.
A flurry of such misidentifications have emerged in the last decade, including the discovery of a young women buried with stone projectile points about 9,000 years ago in Peru; a woman buried with a sword and shield about 2,000 years ago on Britain's Isles of Scilly; a possibly nonbinary person buried with a sword in Finland 1,000 years ago; and the warrior grave of a Viking woman in Sweden.

What was in the Hungarian burial?
Archaeologists first discovered the ancient cemetery in Hungary in the mid-1980s near the village of Sárrétudvari, about 100 miles east of Budapest. Farmers wanted to develop the land, so archaeologists carried out careful excavations to document it while they still could. More than 260 graves were found, dating from the Bronze Age to the time of the Magyar conquest of the Carpathian Basin region in the ninth and 10th centuries.
Like many the graves of many men in the cemetery from the same time, grave number 63 contained evidence of archery—an arrowhead, pieces of an iron quiver, and the middle section from a bow made from antler (the ends of the bow were made from wood and have rotted away.) But it also contained jewelry typical of the graves of women at the site, including buttons, beads and a ring for holding long hair.
The remains from the excavations were eventually stored at the University of Szeged, where Tihanyi and his colleagues have studied them over the last few years. The first step in trying to identify the sex of an ancient skeleton is usually to look at the shape of their bones and the goods they took with them to the grave. DNA sequencing and genomic analysis can also tell researchers whether the individual had X or Y chromosomes.
The researchers examined the pelvis and skull, as well as DNA recovered from a tooth, an inner ear bone, and a fragment of bone from the left upper arm. All of these approaches identified the person as female, Tihanyi says. In addition, evidence of healed injuries, wear on the joints, and indications of the bone-weakening disease osteoporosis suggested the woman had been physically active during her life but was middle-aged or elderly when she died, he says.


The burials of other women in the region often contain traces of weapons, such as single arrow heads. But "these items have typically been interpreted not as weapons but as amulets with symbolic or superstitious significance," Tihanyi says. The weapons, goods, and style of grave 63 match the weapons found in the male graves in the cemetery. Yet "determining whether this individual was a 'warrior' is a more complex question that remains open to debate, due to a lack of definitive evidence," he says.
(The warriors of this West African kingdom were formidable—and female.)
Was her bow used for hunting or warfare?
Hunting weapons have been found in the graves of several prehistoric women, which suggests hunting was an important task for women in many ancient societies. Biological anthropologist Cara Wall-Scheffler of Seattle Pacific University, who has reviewed studies of prehistoric women hunters, says the style and technology of such weapons can be used to distinguish them, as well as earlier injuries and wear from physical activities preserved in skeletons. But "I think people have to be able to move between different kinds of tasks in order to survive," she says; so someone who primarily hunted may also have fought in battles.
British historian Bettany Hughes, an expert on women who may have been warriors, says she's seen evidence in the Caucasus region between the Black and Caspian Seas, including many skeletons of prehistoric women with healed injuries that could only have been received in battle. Some also showed signs of frequent horse riding and of shooting hundreds of arrows — many more than would have been needed for hunting.
Hughes notes that women in the most mountainous parts of the region recall how their great-grandmothers told stories about covering their faces to be mistaken for men during battles in the lowlands. "We might think of these stories as legends, but this is something that is within living memory in some of those villages," Hughes says.

A Viking leader
While the function of weapons remains ambiguous for burials like the one in Hungary, there is now no doubt about the Viking burial at Birka in Sweden: The woman there was buried in the style of a leading warrior, with swords, arrowheads, a spear, and two sacrificed horses. Her grave also contained a bag of gaming pieces and a board game, which suggests the study of strategy by a military leader.
Archaeologist Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson of Sweden's University of Uppsala, who has analyzed the grave, says the elaborate burial shows the woman was an elite member of her community. "I don't think that gender is so important," she says. "We make it important today, but I think the main feature of this individual is that she was a warrior."
Most Viking women were likely not warriors, so this woman may have inherited the role: "I think she came from a family that was expected to have this position [as a war leader] and for some reason she was the one in the family that could uphold that position," Hedenstierna-Jonson says. Still, she notes that the usual custom in Viking burials was cremation, which destroys all DNA, so other Viking warriors assumed to be men may have been women, too.


Testing teeth
Even when DNA is present, it can be too old and degraded to give scientists sex information. One of the reasons why so many misidentified “warrior” graves have turned up in the last few years may be the availability to archaeologists in the last 10 years or so of a sex test based on human tooth enamel, which contains slightly different versions of the amelogenin proteins depending on whether a person is male or female. Instead of relying only on DNA analysis to determine the sex of human remains, archaeologists can now test tooth enamel for the telltale proteins, even when the DNA is too badly degraded to be of any use.
"Amelogenin sex estimation has been a game changer for answering questions about sex and gender in the past," says archaeologist Randy Haas of the University of Wyoming, who used the technique to determine the sex of the person in the Peru burial. Teeth can survive even when other bones have weathered away, he says, and the proteins in tooth enamel can last much longer than DNA; amelogenin analysis is also less expensive than DNA analysis.
Archaeologist Anna Wessman of Norway's University of Bergen, who has studied the female Viking grave at Birka in Sweden, says the technique has revitalized the study of the many human remains now kept in storage at museums. "These kinds of studies also add nuance to the often binary ideas we have about gender roles in prehistoric societies," she says.

A challenge to history
Archaeologist Simon Mays of the U.K.'s University of Southampton, who led the excavations on the Isles of Scilly, argues that it is logical to accept that the woman buried with a bow in the Hungary grave may have been a warrior: "The inclusion of weapons seems to be common here in male burials, and seems to indicate a martial role; so I think we ought to accept it for her too," he says.
Violence was pervasive in prehistoric societies, says Mays, and while women seldom seem to have taken part in raiding parties, "they will defend themselves and their families when attacked, with anything that comes to hand." He suspects several women buried with weapons were later assumed to have been men, and that new techniques for determining sex, such as amelogenin analysis, could reveal many more. "I would not mind betting that, if one did this, a few more female 'warriors' would turn up."
The discoveries of such women have already challenged stereotypes and historical assumptions that only men fought in warfare, and they may even be starting to change the perception of history.
Anthropologist Marin Pilloud of the University of Nevada Reno, who has studied the prehistoric remains of women hunters, sees greater openness to the idea that some women, at least, were in fact warriors. "I think archaeologists are starting to recognize that we cannot interpret the past based on how we may perceive the present," she says.