"A Realm of Kings and Warriors"? Female burial traditions of the British Early Bronze Age (original) (raw)

Abstract

For the British Early Bronze Age period, 2500 – 1500 cal BC, most of our conceptions of differences between the sexes have been based upon the burial evidence collected by the nineteenth century antiquarians. However, this evidence has its limitations; not least in the fact that many of the human remains within the burials were not anthropologically sexed. Instead sex was often assigned to the burial though artefact associations based upon Victorian sensibilities. This has led to a highly masculine interpretation of the period, the so-called “realm of kings and warriors” (Ashbee 1960:172), where females, and their roles, are hardly considered at all, except in relation to men. My research (Rogers 2013) was designed to answer a call for a reappraisal of the evidence of female burials in the British Early Bronze Age (Brück 2009). In a study of 247 anthropologically sexed female burials from modern excavations, I examined how females were represented in the burial record during this period. This paper will present some of the results obtained, concerning the roles females were represented as having within burial practices, their changes through time and also how age of the individual affected her representation. Finally, I will discuss the complexities of examining sex representation within the archaeological burial record. ASHBEE, P. 1960. The Bronze Age round barrow in Britain. London: Phoenix House. BRÜCK, J. 2009. Women, death and social change in the British Bronze Age. Norwegian Archaeological Review 42(1): 1-23. ROGERS, A. 2013. Female Burial Traditions of the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age: A pilot study based on modern excavations. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports British Series 581.

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