A mirror and a sword made it a unique tomb in Western Europe. Archaeologists found it in 1999 on the island of Bryher, which is part of the Scilly Isles archipelago in southern England. Since then, a mystery. Who was that warrior with as much appreciation for the martial as for the aesthetic?
An international team led by archaeologists from Historic England, a UK public body, have re-analyzed the prehistoric Iron Age burial to finally reveal a secret that has been closely guarded for 2,000 years.
The grave goods from this burial puzzled researchers because it is so unusual. Generally, in other burials from the same period, swords are found next to the skeletons of men and mirrors with women. However, this single tomb contained both the objects and the remains of a single person.
Attempts to establish sex by traditional methods, such as DNA analysis, failed due to the disintegration of their bones over time. And the debate continued for years until recent scientific advances have revealed that the Scilly warrior was a woman. As the experts explain in an article published in The Journal of Archaeological Science Reports, a sophisticated technique developed at the University of California has been key to this finding.
Tooth enamel is the hardest and most durable substance in the human body. It also contains a protein with links to the X or Y chromosome, which means that it can be used to determine a person’s sex. “This is useful because protein survives well compared to DNA,” admits Professor Glendon Parker, an expert in Environmental Toxicology.
This is how the British researchers concentrated on extracting trace amounts of protein from small pieces of surviving tooth enamel. “This allowed us to calculate, with a probability of 96 percent, that the individual was a female,” he explains in a statement. “Given the degraded state of the bones, it’s remarkable to get such a robust result,” she adds.
In addition to telling new details about this person, the investigation led by Historic England sheds light on the role of women in Iron Age Britain, a time when violence between communities was a daily occurrence. “It is likely that the main form of warfare 2,000 years ago was surprise attacks carried out by a group against enemy settlements,” the study authors say.
Both the mirror and the weapons found in the tomb, for example, are all associated with war. During the Iron Age, mirrors had a variety of practical and symbolic uses. They could be used for signalling, to communicate, and even to coordinate attacks. They also had ritual functions, as a tool to contact the supernatural world to ensure the success of a raid or to ‘cleanse’ warriors upon their return.
“Our findings offer an exciting opportunity to reinterpret this important burial. They provide evidence of a woman’s leading role in warfare in the prehistory of the Scilly Isles,” admits Dr Sarah Stark, a human skeletal biologist at Historic England.
Stara believes that although the symbolism of the objects found in the tombs will never be fully known, the combination of a sword and a mirror suggests that this woman had a high status within her community and may have played a dominant role in the war. locally, organizing or leading attacks against rival groups”.
This suggests that female involvement in raiding and other types of violence was more common in Iron Age society than previously thought, and may have laid the foundations from which later leaders like Boudicca, a Warrior queen who led several British tribes against Roman occupation during the reign of Emperor Nero.
