Female Burials with Weapons: Realities of Life or a Reflections of Social Identity? (Based on Materials of the Sargat Culture)

ABSTRACT

Burials of women with objects of weaponry are a pan-cultural phenomenon for the societies of the steppe and forest-steppe zone of Early Iron Age Eurasia. This article is dedicated to a systematization and interpretation of female burials with weapons of the Sargat culture of Trans-Urals and Western Siberia. The inclusion of Sargat data in the general context of the development of the livestock-breeding societies of Eurasia allows us to expand our knowledge of ancient social structures and of women’s positions in those societies.

KEYWORDS:

• Trans-Urals and Western Siberia
• Early Iron Age
• Sargat culture
• female burials with weapons
• gender archeology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Anthropological determinations for sites of the middle reaches of the Irtysh River were made by V.A. Dremov, A.N. Bagashev, and D.I. Razhev. The rest of the determinations are taken from publications (Polos’mak 1987; Matveev and Matveeva 1991, pp. 104–39; Matveeva 1993, 1994; Kul’tura zaural’skikh skotovodov 1997; Matveeva 2001, pp. 98–113; Kovrigin et al. 2006, pp. 188–204; Sreda, Kul’tura i Obshchestvo 2009; Zakh 2009, pp. 4−21).

² Ensemble (from the French)—an aggregate, a harmonious whole. In architecture—the harmonious unity of a spatial composition. For more detail about “ensembles of artifacts” see Berseneva 2010, pp. 74−83.

³ Unfortunately, the authors do not cite what percentage of all the burials with weapons consisted of female interments.

⁴ The percentage of “weaponized” graves in the overall quantity of female burials, comprises around 20 percent (Berseneva 2009).

⁵ One can see a similar if not analogous situation in Scythian materials: “ … the wealthier the Scythian burial, the more weapons there are in it and the more expensive and the more advanced these weapons are. In particular, chain mail hauberks and defensive coats of armor in general are encountered predominantly in aristocratic burials” (Khazanov 1975, p. 180). Nor are female, and even adolescent, burials an exception in this case (Petrenko, Maslov, and Kantorovich 2004; 2006).

⁶ Burials of men without weapons (accompanied by a “neutral” ensemble of artifacts) are found among Scythian and Sarmatian materials (Buniatian 1985; Berseneva 2009, p. 113). At Celtic and Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, up to 50 percent of the men were buried without weapons (Lucy 1997, pp. 157−62; Woolf 1997, p. 73).

⁷ It is known that the indicators of trauma for Late Sarmatians are much higher, more than 70 percent. Late Sarmatians, for this reason, are deemed by some researchers to have been an aggressive and bellicose group (Balabanova 2004, p. 175; Buzhilova and Kamenetskii 2004, pp. 208−211).

a. For a range of perspectives on early goddesses, see Marija Alseikaitė Gimbutas and Joan Marler Alseikaitė, The Civilization of the Goddess. The World of Old Europe (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1991).

b. Gender bending among Scythians was mentioned in an internationally touring collaborative museum exhibit, exquisitely catalogued in Vladimir A. Basilov, ed., Nomads of Eurasia. Los Angeles Natural History Museum, [Soviet] Academy of Sciences, 1989. See also Jeannine Davis-Kimball, Vladimir A. Basilov, and Leonid T. Yablonsky, eds., Nomads of the Eurasian Steppes in the Early Iron Age (Zinat, 1995).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Natalia A. Berseneva

Natalia Aleksandrovna Berseneva, doctor of historical sciences, is a leading research fellow at the Institute of History and Archeology of the Ural Branch of RAS (Russian Academy of Sciences), South Ural Department (Chelyabinsk) and South-Ural State University (National Research University), Researcher of the Scientific and Educational Center of Eurasian Studies. Email: [email protected]; work telephone + 7 (351) 2636978.