

Reconstruction of a Viking boat (credit)





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Razib Khan said…
compare mtDNA vs. Y lineage ratios. the two populations are not to far apart, but with better forensic techniques and larger STR databases it'll be feasible in the near future. ancient DNA would be best.
eaplatt said…
Ah, well, I'm at a disadvantage commenting here, since the link to the article directs me to a webpage that wants me to get out my credit card to buy it! Not gonna do that, not when I'm already up past my bedtime. Will have to track down the original later, I guess. But, after sifting through the recaps, a few random thoughts:

--> When I read about burial mounds and grave goods, the word "status" pops into my head. I'd say that the women they found were of a higher status than a typical peasant wife or slave. Should a small number of high-status bodies be used to gauge the gender ratio of a historical population?

--> The Vikings definitely married (or betrothed, or whatever you want to call it) local women, or just raided for women. The Vikings were, after all, big players in the slave trade, and they apparently kept some Irish/Celtic women for wives or concubines back home, since Irish mtDNA has turned up in Iceland and Norway. The Vikings no doubt did the same to women in the British and insular West German areas, too. I'd guess that few, if any, of these women got the full burial-mound treatment when they died!

Food for thought. I'm off to bed!

-- eaplatt
BDNf said…
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BDNf said…
Is there any trace of injury caused by fighting on some of the women's skeletons ?
Razib Khan said…
btw, re: women warriors. in any large numbers of course not. unless you're proposing that the male-female upper body strength difference is an artifact of recent evolution or something.
Drawdet said…
Totally agree with Raznib.

Isn't it far more likely swords, n armour symbolic, such as

husbands if body lost in battle.

And I believe Aztec women who died in childbirth were buried with a warriors honours so may be something similar.
Thanks for the comments, everyone! Of course, the physical dimorphism between males and females - particularly in muscle mass and therefore strength - and the higher testosterone levels in males generally mean that males are the aggressors or warriors in a culture. But it annoys me when we assume about a past population that women were passive, that they were buried with "male" objects because it reflected their status as someone's property. Take ancient Rome, for example. Most gladiators were male, but there were female gladiators. What should we expect to find in their burials? Would we interpret gladiatrix burials correctly, or would we assume they were the spouses of gladiators?

Ancient DNA would be an excellent thing to do on this population. I haven't seen a study to that effect (just the Sr/O to tell homeland) yet, though.

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