Archaeologists are unearthing the most powerful women who ever lived

[Judi Lynn]

Astonishing new archaeological finds and ancient DNA analysis leave no doubt that throughout prehistory women were rulers, warriors, hunters and shamans

By Laura Spinney

30 July 2025 Last updated 30 July 2025

The young man, no older than 25, had gone to the afterlife with an opulent assortment of grave goods, including an entire elephant tusk. Archaeologists who excavated his 5000-year-old remains in 2008 from a site near Seville, Spain, dubbed him the “Ivory Man” and suggested that he might have been the most important person on the Iberian peninsula in his lifetime. So it came as a shock when, 13 years later, analysis of proteins in his tooth enamel revealed that he wasn’t male at all. The Ivory Man was, in fact, the “Ivory Lady”. 



Perhaps this re-sexing shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. Of late, the ability to probe ancient biological remains has led to the discovery of prehistoric women in all sorts of unexpected places. It turns out they have occupied roles and positions that would have confounded 20th-century researchers. Whether in the form of Stone Age women spearing bison, Neolithic ones controlling the allocation of land, or the sensational case of a Viking warrior who, like the Ivory Lady, was belatedly identified as female, the new evidence is rocking our understanding of how ancient societies viewed gender roles. 

Nobody is suggesting that women and men were treated as equals in the ancient world, much less that it was a feminist paradise. Indeed, man-centred societies were probably the norm. But enough exceptions have come to light to suggest a breathtaking variety of social organisation. “There’s no one idea of womanhood or masculinity,” says archaeologist Rachel Pope at the University of Liverpool, UK. “Instead, there’s real variation in social norms across time and space.” Finally, we are unearthing prehistory’s powerful women. 

Despite huge leaps in equality over the past century, today’s societies are still largely patriarchal. Archaeologists have long been taught that this status quo got its foothold when farming became widespread, starting around 10,000 years ago. Hunter-gatherer groups are generally seen as egalitarian, albeit with men and women doing different types of work. But, the idea goes, as societies became more sedentary and began generating wealth in the form of surplus food, people started to attach importance to inheritance, and rules were established for transferring wealth from fathers to sons. With wealth came male power and female oppression. Or so argued Karl Marx’s collaborator, the political theorist Friedrich Engels, in the late 1800s. “That model supported a particular political system and was based on no archaeological evidence,” says Penny Bickle, archaeologist at the University of York, UK.  

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https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https://www.newscientist.com/article/2488813-archaeologists-are-unearthing-the-most-powerful-women-who-ever-lived/