Warrior buried in women's clothes, DMA test

[Igneococcus]

That Finnish warrior buried in women's clothes is a "non-binary person with an extra X chromosome". This is reaching new heights in idiocy:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/633f6690-f2f9-11eb-8f01-2c678acbb979?shareToken=1a9ca6deaed6c83e06e4207040280633

[Igneococcus]

DNA test, of course, arrggh, I'm a fecking biologist too.

[RhodesianRidgeback]

Fuck me.

If the TRAs are so up in arms about misgendering, where do they get off labelling the gender of people who’ve been dead for centuries anyway? How on earth would they know how that person identified?

Total bollocks as usual.

[EmbarrassingAdmissions]

I also wish they hadn't used androgynous to describe the complexity of Klinefelter

They now believe that the spot, unearthed in 1968, is the final resting place of one of history’s first known androgynous fighters.
…
The warrior was wearing typical feminine clothes of the period and a hiltless sword was placed on their left hip.

Elina Salmela, a postdoctoral researcher from the University of Helsinki, said: “According to current data, it is likely that the individual found in Suontaka had the chromosomes XXY, although the DNA results are based on a very small set of data.”
.
I interpret Salmela's comments as a warning that it might be unwise to place too much confidence in these results. I don't know if there's any wariness about mosaicism? It's interesting that the usual (even mild) manifestations of Klinefelter would seem to run counter to being an active warrior.

archived Times in case it's useful in the future or the share token lapses: archive.is/jfpKI

[Igneococcus]

It's interesting data, I wonder how many intact cells they found, I'm just annoyed that every time something like that gets reported it has to have a gender spin put upon it.
And yes, how do we know this warrior was "androgynous"?

[Igneococcus]

And it's not only the Times that does it either. I just came across this headline while looking for the original publication: "Medieval Finnish Warrior Was Non-Gender Specific, Study Finds"

[MoreRainThanAnyYet]

Barring the unnecessary stuff about self identifying, that’s an interesting snippet about how others would have identified and treated someone with sex differences at that time - someone difficult to categorise as male or female on outer appearance.

[Igneococcus]

Publication here:

www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-journal-of-archaeology/article/woman-with-a-sword-weapon-grave-at-suontaka-vesitorninmaki-finland/33A89DB1D7E4900F017833D87C997D3D

From the introduction:

"The binary division of sexes is arguably rooted in a modern, western mindset, and gendered norms and expectations have varied culturally, geographically, and temporally"

[Vanishun]

I mean, even assuming it is a bloke buried in women's clothes - why are they assuming that was his choice and not (say) some kind of weird insult or act of vengeance?

And yes of course it's fair to say that throughout history people will have struggled with "gender roles". We KNOW they did. That's why society has to be so rigidly prescriptive about gender rules over and over after all - if they were innate, like breathing and eating, there'd be no need to mention rules or enforce them.

But that doesn't mean that people from millennia ago thought of themselves as "non binary".

[ClumpingBambooIsALie]

Could be interesting if we can try to get past our preconceptions and current ways thinking about things… to work out what we can actually deduce from the evidence about how this person who may have had an obvious difference of sexual development was integrated within that specific society. It didn't seem to have a lot of detail about exactly what the person was buried with and how they know what the connotations of those items were in that society. I think it's a problem to use retroactive labels like androgynous and non-binary that have culture-specific meanings for us; it would be better to be more specific and name biological conditions plus the details of the body and the burial and then clearly state what's extrapolation or surmise.

[334bu]

Good post Clumping.

[ClumpingBambooIsALie]

Thanks for the link to the actual paper, which is a lot better.

[Igneococcus]

In the publication there is a detailed list of what was found in the grave.
The DNA analysis was done with some complicated genetic modelling because the quality of the extracted DNA was low.

[ClumpingBambooIsALie]

It's always interesting how societies deal with those who can't or won't slot neatly into gendered sex-based roles… every society has to deal with it at some point, some more than others, and the solutions rarely map neatly from one society onto another. I think it's misguided for the paper authors to use the descriptor "non-binary" for this person, as while you could argue that in the literal sense of the word that does appear to be the case, the way we use the word generally is in reference to a culturally-specific phenomenon.

[ClumpingBambooIsALie]

Ya because at no point in human history have manly males ever cared about grooming and appearance

[Vanishun]

Alice Roberts bought the TRA agenda a long time ago didn't she?

[Vanishun]

But yes, why assume vanity? Mirrors could be used for lots of things including reflecting light, communicating using flashes, keeping an eye out behind you, etc. etc. They're in most prepper packs and I don't think it's to check your makeup.

[ClumpingBambooIsALie]

Chopping lines…

[ClumpingBambooIsALie]

Anglo-Saxons were very keen on their combs.

I'm now imagining metrosexual Æthelfriths and Ecgberhts.

[Ereshkigalangcleg]

Alice Roberts has a massive blind spot on this issue. Her arguments are really weak, and when this is pointed out she just blocks everyone and flounces from Twitter accusing people of bullying her.

[SerendipityJane]

@Vanishun

But yes, why assume vanity? Mirrors could be used for lots of things including reflecting light, communicating using flashes, keeping an eye out behind you, etc. etc. They're in most prepper packs and I don't think it's to check your makeup.

Mirrors were valuable - and that's all the "symbolism" you need. Anyone who gets to be buried with a mirror in those days was clearly someone special.

Nothing - absolutely nothing - we discover in the future will change that fact.

Swords were also fucking valuable - so once again being buried with one had very little to do with the fact they were weapons.

Todays equivalent would be being buried with a barrel of printer ink - even if you aren't a writer.

[Abhannmor]

Vanishun ...don't kings and Queens get to break gender norms anyway? Maybe the exception that proves the rule but it still would have happened.

[Abhannmor]

@ClumpingBambooIsALie

Ya because at no point in human history have manly males ever cared about grooming and appearance

The non binary Spartans at Thermopylae , combing their hair before the battle

[AskingQuestionsAllTheTime]

Going by the literature, shiny was prized by Nordic (Finns are not Nordic, but I'll use that shorthand, ok?) peoples. Mirrors would definitely not have been only for women.