I wrote:
> We don't know the specific rationale in any such prehistoric
> culture for putting weapons in graves or not putting weapons
> in graves. There is no way to be "sure" of anything. For all
> we know, weapons were simply valuable and they were meant to be
> something to trade with on the other side - what else was found
> in these and other graves is probably just as or more relevant.
"wtsdv" <liberty@...> replied:
<<At
http://www.archaeology.org/9701/abstracts/sarmatians.html the
counterargument is made:
"Some scholars have argued that weapons found in female burials
served a purely ritual purpose, but the bones tell a different
story. The bowed leg bones of one 13- or 14-year-old girl attest
a life on horseback, and a bent arrowhead found in the body cavity
of another woman suggested that she had been killed in battle.">>
This is not much of a "counter-argument." The Ice Man Oetzi now appears to
have died of an arrow wound. That doesn't make him a warrior. These days,
when a female body is found with bullets in her, the police don't conclude
she was killed in battle. Riding horses does not make a woman a warrior
either. I'm not saying that Sarmatian women didn't fight or hunt. But this
isn't proof. It's just some evidence. And the Herodotus misquote just adds
to feeling that some of these reports are "overenthusiastic."
"wtsdv" <liberty@...> also wrote:
<<The male here is usually described simply as a servant, although in similar
burials where the gender of the occupants is reversed, there's no hesitation
in describing the attendant burial as that of a concubine. >>
Well, maybe there should be some hestitation about describing the other body
in a man's grave as a concubine. Maybe it was a ritual-accompaning member of
his family. Maybe it was supposed to be the household cook in the next life.
There's lots of room for interpretation in all this.
<<There are also Sauromation burials of men with cooking pots and/or a child
on their arms, as well as burials with a combination of both what we would
consider typically male and female equipment in either male or female
burials.>>
Well, maybe, if all you could afford to be buried with was cooking pots,
cooking pots it was. On the other hand, the burial of children with men does
not tell us what mom's occupation was.
S. Long