, 32 tweets, 8 min read Read on Twitter
I have been awakened from my slumber here on Twitter to this article circulating YET AGAIN. Numerous scholars have responded in the past - Howard Williams, perhaps, in the most extensive and accessible way - but here we are two years later for some reason.
I want to slowly piece together my own response here, if I may. ‘Slowly’ because... well, among other things, I’m lazy, technologically impaired, and easily distracted. So, here it is, my first twitter thread.
I shall christen it, ‘let’s make this quick: have mercy on me and stop posting that dumb article, a twitter thread made while crying tears of frustration’
If you want to read the original article, you can find it here: doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.2… and if you want to read Williams’ response series, that begins here: howardwilliamsblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/14/vik…
(For those lucky enough not to know, my Phd dissertation is actually on cross-gendered graves, though I study those uncovered in early medieval/Anglo-Saxon England.)
The key points I want to get across here are, for now, three-fold: (1) weapons do not necessarily mean warrior in an archaeological context, (2) female =\= woman, and (3) the frenzy surrounding this is kind of... well, sexist. There, I said it.
Public response to the publishing of this article has involved condemnation of archaeologists and historians and our sexist assumptions about the physical capabilities of women and their roles in what have been traditionally viewed as almost exclusively masculine arenas.
Make no mistake, there is enough racism and sexism to go around in both fields. But the response ‘You wouldn’t say this if the grave belonged to a man!’ isn’t quite right because... we have. In fact, Härke wrote a widely-read article on the subject of AS warrior graves in 1999.
In this article, he pointed out that children (as young as 1 year!), the disabled, and the elderly had also been found buried with weapons. Of those studied sporting violent injury, only 5 were buried with weapons while SEVENTEEN were not. Read more here: academia.edu/468160/Warrior…
Correction: Härke wrote this in 1990!
Judith Jesch points out the absurdity of the warrior assumption when a weapons burial is discovered, writing that we wouldn’t automatically think a child interred with weights was a trader.
Burial is not about the life and the reality of the deceased. It’s about an idealized form - of masculinity, femininity, of the good Christian, of the wealthy Lord. If it was about reality a lot more people would be buried with penises drawn on their faces, believe me.
Ian Hodder wrote in the *1980s* that human burial is ‘frequently utilized by the living to negotiate, display, mask, or transform actual power or social relations… that mortuary rites are often an arena in which status and other social distinctions can be negotiated
appropriated, and reappropriated, thus serving as agents of cultural change.’ People don’t bury themselves!
Part II, female=\=woman: Coming soon.
I want to be considerate of LGBTQ+ people, so this section is going to be written even slower than the first. I hope you'll call me out if you find something insensitive or that you disagree with and I hope you'll add things along the way that I can retweet too.
Anti-trans comments, should they occur (and hopefully they won't), will result in you being blocked from participating in this discussion. I don't respond to hate and I won't expose those people kind enough to read what I have to say to harassment.
Recently, someone on twitter described the modern concept of 'woman' as a 'Frankenstein's monster'. Looking in the mirror, I was like, 'fair'. (LOLLLL, self-deprecating humor.) Boy, though, did people give her hell for it.
But it was a brilliant description, really - at least I thought so. Try to define 'woman', or even 'female', and it's a bit... slippy. And, in the modern West, we largely equate the two, which is even MORE problematic.
Credit to @JuliaFtacek for this apt description
There are also an innumerable number of societies that have third and fourth gender categories, the conception that gender and/or sex is fluid, a view that the binary is non-oppositional, ideas that there is ONE gender, yadda, yadda, yadda.
On that note, Bj 581 was *genetically* and *osteologically* female, but were they a 'woman' in their time? Or, because of our sad tendency to conflate sex and gender, are they simply a 'woman' in ours? I think this is an important question for a number of reasons.
The most basic reason is that an example like this forces us to face terms and ideas related to sex and gender (possibly now defunct), question ourselves, refine or even redefine them, and reorientate ourselves and our world views toward the future.
Face it - when it comes to BJ 581, we just don't have contemporary textual evidence to tell us exactly how people thought about gender and, more importantly, how THIS particular individual conceived of their gender. We have just been ASSUMING.
And you know what they say about what happens when you assume. 😉

Is it possible that we are potentially obscuring, by modern standards, a more ‘complicated’ gender
category – intersex, transgender, third gender – as addressed by Williams (@howardmrw) when we restrict
@howardmrw ourselves to defining an individual as either a 'man' or a 'woman'? This is something we need to think long and hard about. It's not just about inclusivity or being 'politically correct', which I've seen some people will bleat indignantly about - it's about ACCURACY.
@howardmrw OKAY GUYS I'M SORRY I'M NEAR THE END OF MY RANT, I PROMISE. THANK YOU FOR READING AND FOLLOWING ME I'M BOTH HAPPY AND AFRAID.
@howardmrw THIRD AND FINAL PART - Is the intense amount of attention that has been focused on this topic, in scholarship now and in the past, but especially in the media, kinda... sexist? I think so, albeit largely unintentionally.
@howardmrw SO much research has been dedicated to females and women in imitation of the 'masculine' and the greatness of this kind of performance. This is without even including the media frenzy that surrounds every new discovery of a female in anything even resembling a martial setting.
@howardmrw Simultaneously the silence is deafening on the much more numerous osteologically male individuals buried with traditionally 'feminine' items. Is this a coincidence? I honestly can't say. But that's the topic of a whole other thread...
@howardmrw And just how vehemently should we be arguing for and lauding females and women for their historical participation in violence? I don't know, guys, just so many thoughts...
@howardmrw ANYWAYS, my dudes, that's it for the thread. To say I'm a bit social-media-shy is the understatement of the century so thank you for entertaining my views and being so awesome and supportive. @DJMHarland also said I should tag #medievaltwitter, so here we are.

Kat OUT✌️
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