The line about Celtic matrilineal communities (women managing and inheriting land, men marrying into their kinship group) is s real triumph for women. Inheritance law reveals what a society actually believes about who counts as a durable legal person, and being centered in an inheritance system is no small feat. Roman and English law went in the opposite direction, through coverture and primogeniture, manufacturing a "natural order" rather than reflecting something more organic and reflective of practice. The erasure this piece traces in archaeology is of a piece with the erasure of women in legal systems that spent centuries writing women out of inheritance (along with the ability to be remembered through conventional legacies).
One of the saddest persistent casual erasures is the loss of a woman’s name after marriage. Until the late 20th century, even customary to refer to a wife as Mrs. John Smith! (Still formal custom today, I suppose.)
Will never forget the surge of anger I felt looking around the old cemetery in my hometown, where even the gravestones were marked “John Smith and Wife”
In my family’s church directory couples were listed as “Mr and Mrs Husband’s Name (Wife).” I was 10 when I decided I refused to be someone’s parenthesis. The church school called all unmarried female teachers “Miss First Name,” bc without a husband they had a blank space for their identity. My parents gave up and sent me to public school.
"History has a funny way of becoming decidedly less male-dominated the moment we stop assuming it always was."
"History: a set of lies agreed upon." —Napoleon
History is whatever "The Narrative" needs it to be in the moment. It's lies all the way down that morph into other lies as much as needed along the way.
This last line about 'history' is I think the one that's most pertinent. It's the narrative that needs to be heard/said by those in power at a specific moment in time.
I remember the day I learned in a college art history class about Marija Gimbutas, and how before humans worshiped a male God they worshiped the Goddess. I remember looking up at the blue sky that day leaving class and thinking well, if there’s not an old white man in the sky controlling everything, maybe I actually have a chance at life.
I have had the privilege of knowing a woman who grew up in a matrilineal indigenous community that still exists and wow is she awesome. Her whole way of interacting with the world is so different.
Yes! She was very confident in her presence and her words. If someone questioned her she didn't question herself, she defended herself. I remember once during a forum when a man spoke disparagingly of a program she developed (which was award-winning and evidence based) and she went up to him during the break and took the issue up with him personally and directly in an area where other people could hear it. I was shocked and impressed. She never apologized unless she truly felt she had done something wrong, she didn't apologize to make other people feel better. She was also a very kind and insightful person, very giving with her knowledge. She talked about her village and how women are the keepers of knowledge and the leaders, and how she was honored as an elder when she went back to visit. I remember thinking that I would love to go with her and meet these women who lead without apology.
The book Before War: On Marriage, Hierarchy and our Matriarchal Origins details the ways women continued to hold power as patriarchy took hold over millennia, and the ways that information was suppressed.
Thank you for your thorough and well written research study. I'm going to share it with my extended family, which includes six females and four males. Demented misogynists today misunderstand their own inept and foolish governance as domination. I am fairly certain they frequently visit leather-clad women with whips.
What strikes me is how often the evidence wasn’t actually missing. It was overlooked because it didn’t fit the story people already believed. We tend to think history changes when new discoveries are made, but sometimes history changes because we’re finally willing to ask different questions of the evidence that was there all along.
Growing up in India, we learned about Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi, who led armies during the 1857 rebellion. She was remembered as exceptional, but reading this makes me wonder how many other women like her were simply written out of the story. History doesn’t just preserve the past. It also preserves the assumptions of the people recording it.
Fantastic and fascinating article, Katie. Both heartening and infuriating. At 70, I have lost all respect for men except for the occasional individual case of an exceptional man. In suppressing and erasing women, men have created exactly what they fear - women remain smarter, wiser, and are braver, tougher, have a higher pain threshold, are stronger in every way - and who now see men for what they are - frightened little boys who will kill you if they feel they've been exposed.
“This is what classical scholar Froma Zeitlin described as the ‘Amazon Complex’ — the fear that women rejecting their ‘natural’ subordinate roles will result in a total female domination and male enslavement or extinction”
Isn’t it funny when an accusation truly is a projection of one’s own actions and motives?? Like, that’s what YOU would do Kevin. Not everyone wants to subjugate people!!
The international ignoring or dismissing evidence has been going on forever. It’s how Patriarchy works. There is a wealth of evidence that in Eurasia, until 5000 years ago, women were seen as the foundation of life. They held positions of power. They were revered. And Matrilineal cultures were the norm. War was uncommon. What changed was about 5000 years ago, a very warlike and explicitly male dominated culture arose, somewhere in Central Asia. And that caused enormous changes. Patriarchy and patrilineal cultures became the norm. Ancient Greece started near the tail end of this shift from Matriarchy to Patriarchy. And they had contact with Scythians, but also the Minoans. A wealth of archaeological evidence points to Matriarchy there. In any case, the Patriarchs won. Which led to the world we live in now. But there has always been lots of archeological evidence that some women had power, in Greece and Rome, in Viking and Celtic cultures. But they were erased. This is how Patriarchy works. It imposes its filters, unseen and unannounced, to ignore the evidence. But that filter is being undone. For lots of reasons. One of which is there are now women doing field work. So we are “discovering” the truth. Thank you for articles like this. And thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
I feel like the British Empire was the most deliberate about rewriting history—and White men stealing other peoples’ things and pretending they invented them.
It irks me SO much to read about, say, the Harappan Civilization so many millennia ago, and then think “but no, it was my ancestors who chose brutality over engineering and conquered 1/4 of the planet to steal for themselves, not make it better.”
This piece is not about trans people, and most women are not concerned about the existence of trans people, so I'm not surprised nobody's said it here. There have been a number of women who lived as men in order to succeed in roles or professions forbidden to them in patriarchal societies. Some of them would consider themselves trans men, but that doesn't denigrate their achievement whatever one's personal beliefs about trans people may be.
Thank you for this terrific essay. It's nice to know that we have evidence of powerful women AND evidence that men continue to ignore that evidence. Not surprising, completely predictable---but good to have proof. One thing that always strikes me when reading about Amazons is how angry it makes me that a man-owned modern company stole our thunder. I hate that. Thanks again.
The line about Celtic matrilineal communities (women managing and inheriting land, men marrying into their kinship group) is s real triumph for women. Inheritance law reveals what a society actually believes about who counts as a durable legal person, and being centered in an inheritance system is no small feat. Roman and English law went in the opposite direction, through coverture and primogeniture, manufacturing a "natural order" rather than reflecting something more organic and reflective of practice. The erasure this piece traces in archaeology is of a piece with the erasure of women in legal systems that spent centuries writing women out of inheritance (along with the ability to be remembered through conventional legacies).
One of the saddest persistent casual erasures is the loss of a woman’s name after marriage. Until the late 20th century, even customary to refer to a wife as Mrs. John Smith! (Still formal custom today, I suppose.)
Will never forget the surge of anger I felt looking around the old cemetery in my hometown, where even the gravestones were marked “John Smith and Wife”
In my family’s church directory couples were listed as “Mr and Mrs Husband’s Name (Wife).” I was 10 when I decided I refused to be someone’s parenthesis. The church school called all unmarried female teachers “Miss First Name,” bc without a husband they had a blank space for their identity. My parents gave up and sent me to public school.
In Iceland, you are your mother's daughter! I would be called Josie Hildasdotter. I mat not be spelling it correctly.
That’s cool!
"History has a funny way of becoming decidedly less male-dominated the moment we stop assuming it always was."
"History: a set of lies agreed upon." —Napoleon
History is whatever "The Narrative" needs it to be in the moment. It's lies all the way down that morph into other lies as much as needed along the way.
This last line about 'history' is I think the one that's most pertinent. It's the narrative that needs to be heard/said by those in power at a specific moment in time.
I remember the day I learned in a college art history class about Marija Gimbutas, and how before humans worshiped a male God they worshiped the Goddess. I remember looking up at the blue sky that day leaving class and thinking well, if there’s not an old white man in the sky controlling everything, maybe I actually have a chance at life.
And everything changed after that.
I have had the privilege of knowing a woman who grew up in a matrilineal indigenous community that still exists and wow is she awesome. Her whole way of interacting with the world is so different.
Do any specific examples come to mind? Would love to know more about this
Yes! She was very confident in her presence and her words. If someone questioned her she didn't question herself, she defended herself. I remember once during a forum when a man spoke disparagingly of a program she developed (which was award-winning and evidence based) and she went up to him during the break and took the issue up with him personally and directly in an area where other people could hear it. I was shocked and impressed. She never apologized unless she truly felt she had done something wrong, she didn't apologize to make other people feel better. She was also a very kind and insightful person, very giving with her knowledge. She talked about her village and how women are the keepers of knowledge and the leaders, and how she was honored as an elder when she went back to visit. I remember thinking that I would love to go with her and meet these women who lead without apology.
The book Before War: On Marriage, Hierarchy and our Matriarchal Origins details the ways women continued to hold power as patriarchy took hold over millennia, and the ways that information was suppressed.
Oh thank you for this. One I love is Battle Cries and Lullabies: Women in War from Prehistory to the Present (1998 book by Linda Grant De Pauw)
Thank you for your thorough and well written research study. I'm going to share it with my extended family, which includes six females and four males. Demented misogynists today misunderstand their own inept and foolish governance as domination. I am fairly certain they frequently visit leather-clad women with whips.
What strikes me is how often the evidence wasn’t actually missing. It was overlooked because it didn’t fit the story people already believed. We tend to think history changes when new discoveries are made, but sometimes history changes because we’re finally willing to ask different questions of the evidence that was there all along.
Growing up in India, we learned about Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi, who led armies during the 1857 rebellion. She was remembered as exceptional, but reading this makes me wonder how many other women like her were simply written out of the story. History doesn’t just preserve the past. It also preserves the assumptions of the people recording it.
A fascinating reminder that our assumptions often survive much longer than the evidence. Thank you for this thoughtful article.
Fantastic and fascinating article, Katie. Both heartening and infuriating. At 70, I have lost all respect for men except for the occasional individual case of an exceptional man. In suppressing and erasing women, men have created exactly what they fear - women remain smarter, wiser, and are braver, tougher, have a higher pain threshold, are stronger in every way - and who now see men for what they are - frightened little boys who will kill you if they feel they've been exposed.
Margaret Atwood‘s profound 13 words summarise a significant aspect underlying the interaction between men and women.
Men are afraid of being laughed at.
Women are afraid of being killed.
“This is what classical scholar Froma Zeitlin described as the ‘Amazon Complex’ — the fear that women rejecting their ‘natural’ subordinate roles will result in a total female domination and male enslavement or extinction”
Isn’t it funny when an accusation truly is a projection of one’s own actions and motives?? Like, that’s what YOU would do Kevin. Not everyone wants to subjugate people!!
The international ignoring or dismissing evidence has been going on forever. It’s how Patriarchy works. There is a wealth of evidence that in Eurasia, until 5000 years ago, women were seen as the foundation of life. They held positions of power. They were revered. And Matrilineal cultures were the norm. War was uncommon. What changed was about 5000 years ago, a very warlike and explicitly male dominated culture arose, somewhere in Central Asia. And that caused enormous changes. Patriarchy and patrilineal cultures became the norm. Ancient Greece started near the tail end of this shift from Matriarchy to Patriarchy. And they had contact with Scythians, but also the Minoans. A wealth of archaeological evidence points to Matriarchy there. In any case, the Patriarchs won. Which led to the world we live in now. But there has always been lots of archeological evidence that some women had power, in Greece and Rome, in Viking and Celtic cultures. But they were erased. This is how Patriarchy works. It imposes its filters, unseen and unannounced, to ignore the evidence. But that filter is being undone. For lots of reasons. One of which is there are now women doing field work. So we are “discovering” the truth. Thank you for articles like this. And thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
I feel like the British Empire was the most deliberate about rewriting history—and White men stealing other peoples’ things and pretending they invented them.
It irks me SO much to read about, say, the Harappan Civilization so many millennia ago, and then think “but no, it was my ancestors who chose brutality over engineering and conquered 1/4 of the planet to steal for themselves, not make it better.”
I’m surprised nobody’s said these women were actually trans men. That seems to be the response anytime a woman or girl shows any agency or competence.
They said they were men. The early archaeologists could not even imagine women were warriors so they decided they were men dressed as women.
This piece is not about trans people, and most women are not concerned about the existence of trans people, so I'm not surprised nobody's said it here. There have been a number of women who lived as men in order to succeed in roles or professions forbidden to them in patriarchal societies. Some of them would consider themselves trans men, but that doesn't denigrate their achievement whatever one's personal beliefs about trans people may be.
Cambridge is building an atlas of women's history. https://www.lcfi.ac.uk/research/project/mappa-mundi I can't wait to see what they uncover.
Thank you for this terrific essay. It's nice to know that we have evidence of powerful women AND evidence that men continue to ignore that evidence. Not surprising, completely predictable---but good to have proof. One thing that always strikes me when reading about Amazons is how angry it makes me that a man-owned modern company stole our thunder. I hate that. Thanks again.
They've always been there- it's just that those men didn't know how to find them...