some comments on: A female Viking warrior confirmed by genomics

After a long break of not publishing new content I think I should return to share my thoughts about the recent results of DNA analysis of the skeleton form the grave 581 from Birka. I am disregarding the part of the discussion related to fact that there seem to be a bit of the mess with the bones bags, as I am quite sure that no one would publish an article if they would not have been 100% sure that they have the right bones.

I am quite thrilled by the results and I am hopeful that they will have a positive impact on the field of viking age mortuary studies but I am quite far from reaching the conclusions presented in the paper A female Viking warrior confirmed by genomics. 

To quickly present my views about it I have to say that its hard scientific part seems to be ok, with the description of methods and good presentation of the results with assorted graphs and tables as well as comprehensive additional materials that provide even more detail. 

The part that is in my opinion surprisingly weak, taking in to account that Neil Price, Torun Zachrisson and Charlotte Hedenstierna - Jonson are the co-authors, is the social archaeological part. Prof. Hedenstierna - Jonson is an expert on Birka and on weapon graves and for some people prof. Price might be considered a leading authority on viking age burial customs, what is a source of my confusion regarding following:

1. WHY ON EARTH EVERYONE ASSUMES THAT BURIAL GOODS ARE THE PROPERTY OF THE DECEASED? In 2017?? :D To elaborate a bit, what is found in the grave is always a selection of items that organisers of the funeral seem fit for some reason to be included in the burial and also sometimes tools required for the success of the ritual. They might not be related to the occupation of the dead Person. For example, in eastern Denmark there is not many graves with weapons, but as archaeologist we don’t assume that there were not many warriors there. There seem to be quite a lot of weapons in burials around Birka, and they seem to play important part of local burial ritual, it is still really impossible to say that all of that people were warriors. I am not employing a double standard here, I am against connecting straightforwardly weapon graves to warrior graves in cases of every sex. There is a lot of research about weapon graves in Anglo Saxon England and sometimes individuals to young to fight are buried with weapons. I think that possibly taken the whole early medieval Europe into perspective weapons should be viewed more as a status symbol - they were after all quite expensive.
2. Why gaming pieces mean proficiency in strategy and point to being a high ranking officer, if again, they might not belong to the poor buried person and also really what is the connection to playing games and being an officer and how it is visible in archaeological record, because this is really far beyond my reasoning?
3. Why there is no plan of the burial, just reconstructions, when the same plan is used as the argument to claim that there was only one skeleton in the grave? This is simply not fair :) I don’t know if I am a researcher anymore at this point, but probably people who are would appreciate a plan on which the position of the burial goods is visible, because maybe, the of the items meaning is in some way connected to where they were found in the grave. In the case of Kilnta grave or graves from Kaupang described on this blog the position of weapons might point to conclusion that they are not directly associated with the deceased individuals. In Birka some spears were found plunged into the burial chamber walls, suggesting their performative use during funerals. Some horses skulls were smashed, also pointing towards a dynamic ceremony that involves a sacrifice making a horse more of a ritual tool than an item. How without a description where what was found can we reach any interpretation on our own?
4. If there would be no weapons in the grave would the isotope analysis end up interpreted as a result of marriage with a non local man? I mean that how people usually look at female mobility in the Viking age :)
5. No information how is the burial dated, what happened at that time in the general area and how that events might have played a role in the burial and the choice of burial furnishings.
6. Two horses seems like a big deal, but horses are found in female burials in central Sweden (please don’t force me to go and search my bookshelf for references)

Probably the things that I am now making a bit fun of will be rectified in another article in a journal devoted more to archaeology. Both science and archaeological interpretation are equally important and require space and time to reach a good outcome, here archaeology got too neglected. I think that when the space is to little to discus in detail a controversial idea, it might be smarter to stick to publishing the Genomic and Osteological results, without going to far in to their social consequences. 

Maybe the conclusion should be that two hypothesis are possible: a) This is a female warrior buried with weapons or b) because it is a woman buried with weapons, possibly having a sword in a grave does not signify a warrior (ekhem - lack of physical trauma in weapon graves around the site mentioned in the article - ekhem).

However the positive side of the article is that it challenges the popular believe of very mainstream and modern division of labour between sexes and maybe will force people to think about the sex in the past in more constructivist terms. I would like to point out the fact that in some cultures it is ok for example for only daughter to perform social duties of a son. Maybe if we like to think about “vikings” (whatever they are) as forefathers of at least a part of european population, it is not necessary to think that their ideas of sex and kinship had to be exactly same as ours. Generally I believe that the article provides valuable data that can be used to reach much better conclusions in the future, if more factors are taken into account. I am quite sure that there will be a much bigger positive outcome from this publication, than just a media hype that it was causing couple of weeks ago.

Literature:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.23308/full