Stone Age women were buried like men in Hungary 7,000 years ago, revealing flexible gender roles

A Stone Age woman buried with male-related artifacts in what is now Hungary reveals that her society embraced complex identities and flexible gender roles 7,000 years ago, a new study has found.

In the study, published February 16 in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology, researchers analyzed 125 human bones from two cemeteries in eastern Hungary that were in use from 5300 BC to 4650 BC. The aim of the study was to compare traces of repetitive activity found on the bones and examine burial locations and grave goods, which together could shed light on the roles of men and women in Neolithic society.

This analysis focused on activity-related skeletal changes to gain insight into people’s overall physical stress, upper extremity overuse, and toe hyperextension (which can be caused by kneeling postures) in the past. Although Stone Age men and women all engaged in kneeling activities with high overall physical demands, the researchers found that the men’s skeletons showed evidence of overuse of the right upper limb, possibly related to throwing motions, indicating differences in the way men and women used their arms.

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Burial methods were also different for men and women. In one cemetery, most female skeletons were placed on the left side and buried with belts of shell beads, while most male skeletons were placed on the right side and buried with polished stone tools. However, the study found that the two male and five female skeletons were buried differently than expected, indicating that the link between biological sex and body position at death is not absolute.

The burial of one elderly woman was particularly unusual. Hers was the only female skeleton researchers had found buried with polished stone tools, and her toes revealed a pattern of kneeling activity much like those of the men in the cemetery. The researchers said the burial suggests that “women may have held roles traditionally associated with men” in society and that gender roles were “fluid and shaped by multiple intersecting factors.”

The study’s lead author, Sébastien Vilot, a researcher at France’s National Center for Scientific Research, told LiveScience in an email that there is no clear evidence that the woman had a unique social role, such as a shaman. Others buried in ways inconsistent with their biological sex may have had “individual trajectories that do not fit into the ‘ideal’ pattern,” Villotte said. “This was a period in Central Europe when people began to express pre-existing gender roles in a new setting.”

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