A Viking-age grave in Birka, Sweden, contained all the trappings of a warrior:
“The grave goods include a sword, an axe, a spear, armour-piercing arrows, a battle knife, two shields, and two horses, one mare and one stallion; thus, the complete equipment of a professional warrior. Furthermore, a full set of gaming pieces indicates knowledge of tactics and strategy, stressing the buried individual's role as a high-ranking officer.”
Based on the assemblage of grave goods, archeologists initially assumed the body in the grave was that of a man.
It wasn’t.
Genomic studies revealed that the person in the grave did not have a Y-chromosome.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajpa.23308
9,000 years ago in Peru, another young woman was buried with the tools of a big game hunter. Once archeologists realized the grave was not a man’s, they tested other known graves of big game hunters and found that, of the 27 sets of remains that could be biologically sexed, 11 were female and 16 male.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/04/science/ancient-female-hunter.html
We have, for a long time, made a lot of assumptions about the past and the ways in which men and women inhabited those societies.
The past is so much more complex and fantastic than we realize.
@HeavenlyPossum For decades I've viewed that living in a #matriarchy would be such a better reality than a #patriarchy, but that's just me. #LetsDoBetter.