Santa Cruz
THE ancient Greek myth of the Amazons, the fierce female warriors depicted on
the Parthenon in Athens, may have some basis in fact. Burial mounds left by
nomadic tribes that inhabited the steppes of central Asia contain what appear to
be the graves of warrior women, says an American archaeologist.
Most of the women鈥檚 graves, which date from the Sauromatian and Sarmatian
cultures of around 600 to 200 BC, contain domestic objects such as spindles and
glass beads, says Jeannine Davis-Kimball, who directs the Center for the Study
of Eurasian Nomads, a private research centre in Berkeley, California. However,
7 of 40 female graves excavated by Davis-Kimball and her Russian colleagues near
the Russian town of Pokrovka, looked more like the graves of warriors, they
report in the current issue of Archaeology.
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These graves contained weapons, including bronze arrowheads, short daggers
and long swords. All the weapons were full-sized and had clearly been used, so
they are unlikely to have served a merely ritual purpose, says Davis-Kimball.
Moreover, the swords and daggers had smaller hand grips than men鈥檚 weapons
usually have. 鈥淭hey were probably made specifically for these women,鈥� she
says.
The weapons are unlikely to have been used for hunting. In sites occupied by
Sauromatian and Sarmatian cultures, archaeologists have found plenty of sheep,
horse and camel bones, but none from wild game. This suggests the people were
nomadic herders, not hunters, says Davis-Kimball.
In the 1950s, Russian archaeologists dug up examples of women鈥檚 graves that
contained weapons. However, they attached little significance to what they
found鈥攁 sign, Davis-Kimball says, of male refusal to admit that women
could wield such power. 鈥淚鈥檓 no feminist,鈥� she says, 鈥渂ut I think people need to
be objective. What鈥檚 there is there, and you should really look at it.鈥�
These new discoveries appear to confirm often doubted reports by the Greek
historian Herodotus, who wrote of encountering a tribe of female warriors, which
he dubbed the Amazons, in his travels north of the Black Sea around 450 BC.
Philip Kohl, an archaeologist at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, who
specialises in central Asian cultures agrees with Davis-Kimball and her
colleagues. When weapons turn up in male graves, he says, archaeologists assume
as a matter of course that the men were warriors. The Russian find should be
interpreted in the same light, he says. 鈥淚t does mean that women were fighting
back then,鈥� says Kohl. 鈥淚 guess we鈥檝e come full circle now, with women in our
armed services.鈥�