Anglo-Saxon Burials Are Challenging Our Understanding of Gender Identity

[Warpy]

(Geez, whis will make quite a few patriarchal heads explode)

There are a significant number of Anglo-Saxon burials where the estimated anatomical sex of the skeleton does not align with the gender implied by the items they were buried with.

Some bodies identified as male have been buried with feminine clothing, and some bodies identified as female have been found in the sorts of "warrior graves" typically associated with men.

In the archaeology of early Anglo-Saxon England, weaponry, horse-riding equipment and tools are thought to signal masculinity, while jewelery, sewing equipment and beads signal femininity. And, for the most part, this pattern fits.

So far though, no convincing explanation has been put forward for the burials which appear to invert the pattern. My PhD research asks whether looking at these atypically gendered burials through the lens of trans theory and the 21st-century language of "transness" has the potential to improve historians' understanding of early Anglo-Saxon gender.



https://www.sciencealert.com/anglo-saxon-burials-are-challenging-our-understanding-of-gender-identity

Extremely interesting article about people who seemingly let their sons and daughters do what they were best at instead of assigning them rokes they were unsuited to. There are great pictures of their bling, mostly excavated at Sutton Hoo.