Ancient Armenian Female Warrior Suffered Hatchet Wounds And Arrow Blow Before Death

[Judi Lynn]

Madison Dapcevich
By Madison Dapcevich
29 NOV 2019, 15:51

More than 2,000 years ago, a young Armenian woman found herself at the forefront of a battle. Now, her newly unearthed remains are allowing archaeologists a window into how ancient societies lived and died on the battlefield.

Researchers excavated the poorly preserved remains in 2017 and found the woman buried on her side with flexed arms and legs and her head oriented to the northwest. Her skeleton was “fragmented and incomplete,” with cracks and fractures occurring on her bones in the thousands of years since her burial. An analysis of her dental wear, cranial sutures, and other indicators of trauma allowed for an understanding of the type of injuries she suffered just before her death.

A metal arrowhead was found buried in her femur likely shot by a bow, strongly suggesting that the woman was injured in some type of combat. Healing around the site of the arrowhead indicates that she lived for some time with the injury before dying, possibly from additional sword or hatchet blows to the pelvic bone, femur, and tibia in a “rich array of traumatic lesions.”

“During the combat, the woman had been most likely exposed to direct blows to the defensive shield (the power transmitted from the end of the shield to the ulna), or direct blows when the forearm was used to ward off the blow,” study author Anahit Khudaverdyan told IFLScience.

More:
https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/ancient-armenian-female-warrior-suffered-hatchet-wounds-and-arrow-blow-before-death/