Mystery of Iron Age 'Warrior' Buried with Mirror and Sword Finally Solved

The mystery of a 2000 year-old burial containing a mirror and a sword has now been solved, with archaeologists discovering that the person buried with the grave goods was very likely a woman.

The confusion regarding the grave occupant's sex came from the items that they were buried with: swords are usually found buried alongside men, and are indicative of warrior status, while women were buried with mirrors. This individual was buried with both, as well as a brooch.

The burial site, situated on the Isles of Scilly in the U.K., was first uncovered in 1999. The human remains within were thought to be from the Iron Age, which dates to between roughly 750 BC and 43 AD, when the Romans arrived in Britain.

Now, according to a new paper published in The Journal of Archaeological Science Reports, the skeleton has been found to almost certainly be that of a female.

Previous attempts to use DNA analysis to discern the sex had failed because of the disintegration of the bones: only around 0.3 pounds of bone and teeth remained in the grave. In the paper, the authors describe how they instead used tooth enamel to determine that the person was in fact a woman.

"Tooth enamel is the hardest and most durable substance in the human body," Glendon Parker, a professor of environmental toxicology at the University of California, Davis, said in a statement.

"It contains a protein with links to either the X or Y chromosome, which means it can be used to determine sex. This is useful because this protein survives well compared to DNA," Parker said. "Our analysis involved extracting traces of proteins from tiny pieces of the surviving tooth enamel. This allowed us to calculate a 96 percent probability that the individual was female. Given the degraded state of the bones, it's remarkable to get such a strong result. It makes you wonder what could be discovered by re-visiting other badly degraded burials."

The Isles of Scilly, where the grave was found, are a small archipelago around 30 miles off the southwest-most tip of the British mainland, thought to have been part of one large island before rising sea levels broke them up into around 50 islands and islets in roughly 500 AD. Only five of the islands are inhabited, and they are home to around 2,000 people.

The woman is thought to have died sometime in the 1st century BC, aged approximately 25.

This research is thought to shed more light on the roles of women in Iron Age society, as the presence of the sword indicates that she may have been a warrior involved in raids on enemy settlements.

"Our findings offer an exciting opportunity to re-interpret this important burial. They provide evidence of a leading role for a woman in warfare on Iron Age Scilly," Sarah Stark a human skeletal biologist at Historic England, said in the statement. "Although we can never know completely about the symbolism of objects found in graves, the combination of a sword and a mirror suggests this woman had high status within her community and may have played a commanding role in local warfare, organising or leading raids on rival groups.

"This could suggest that female involvement in raiding and other types of violence was more common in Iron Age society than we've previously thought, and it could have laid the foundations from which leaders like Boudicca would later emerge."

The mirror found in the grave may also have been related to warfare, perhaps used for signaling between attack parties, or for a ritual function in communicating with the supernatural for success in attacks.

The researchers hope that this discovery may lead to the identification of more women buried in graves previously thought to be males because of the war-related artifacts within them.

"It would be interesting to re-analyze other degraded burials to see if there are more 'hidden' female warriors out there," Stark said.

The sword and mirror are now on display at the Isles of Scilly Museum.

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