Women Warriors among Central California Hunter-Gatherers: Egalitarians to the Last Arrow

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Women of Violence: Warriors, Aggressors, and Perpetrators of Violence" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Participation of females in inter-group combat is well-attested in the historic and ethnographic record of central California, but is often overlooked and/or trivialized in contemporary archaeological research. Drawing from the Central California Bioarchaeological Database (CCBD) that includes information on more than 16,820 individuals dating between 3050 B.C. and A.D. 1899, we evaluate the relative involvement of males and females in sharp-force and blunt-force trauma. Specifically, we analyzed ante and peri-mortem trauma in relation to location, trajectory, and number of instances per individual. We then summarize the temporal and spatial distribution of evidence for female participation in violence during times of trouble and demonstrate that, while female combatants were fewer in number relative to males, they clearly were involved during all periods.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Women of Violence: Warriors, Aggressors, and Perpetrators of Violence

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23860