Introduction: Amazons and Dianas? Female Burials in Perspective

Abstract

Were classical Greek legends of Eurasian steppe heroine-warriors and female hunters mythic fantasies or based on reality? Was Herodotus, who wrote about them in the fifth century BCE, more accurate in his historical descriptions and wiser in his analysis than previously thought, despite being interpreted for many centuries as sensational? What can lavish graves of goldbedecked females buried with weapons reveal about our own projections and assumptions regarding status and gender? Using the lens of gender-sensitive archeology, our stereotypes of male warrior-leaders have rarely been as challenged, as when a Scythian period grave found in Tuva, initially viewed as that of a male youth, proved to be female after DNA analysis. My fascination with female hunters was sparked in the 1970s when I first learned about them in Ob-Ugrian Khanty villages, where they were anomalies who had gone extra milesto feed their families in times of trouble. At the same time, I learned that a secret “traditional Khanty burial” in the early 1970s, against all Soviet prohibitions and practices, had been conducted for a revered male elder, complete with a horse sacrifice. Could any woman ever have been buried with such honor? The logic of female role flexibility was palpable and confirmed many years later in Turkic Sakha (Yakut) villages of the Far North, where other female hunters flourished and were admired. Harder to confirm were historical traces of women buried with horse sacrifices, although this too has been documented beyond doubt in the case of the famed royal Pazyryk “Altai princess,” discovered in 1993 and discussed ahead. Questions of a range of female roles and statuses existing in numerous nomadic societies over the huge swath of territory from the Black Sea to Mongolia are broached in this issue, which also ranges widely in time. Besides potential hunters and warriors, female claims to respect or fame appear more often to have come from priestess-like roles, as evident in some female burials with altar-like stone stands. ANTHROPOLOGY & ARCHEOLOGY OF EURASIA 2020, VOL. 59, NO. 2, 79–83 https://doi.org/10.1080/10611959.2020.1950467