The Guardian view on ancient DNA: a female shaman exposes our flawed assumptions about the past |
Archaeologists believe the Upton Lovell Shaman, who lived in what is now Wiltshire 4,000 years ago, was an important religious leader and metalworker because of the artefacts and tools buried with the body. Until very recently it was also believed, on considerably slimmer evidence, that this shaman was a man: it was simply assumed that someone of such status must be male, and the view was barely questioned over the years. Now ancient DNA analysis performed at the Francis Crick Institute has revealed that the body, held by the Wiltshire Museum, is in fact a woman.
That should cause a stir in bronze-age studies. But it is also yet another example of how many of our assumptions about human history have been upended by the rise of ancient DNA analysis over the past two decades. Others include the revelation that there were (frequent)........