Stone Age ‘gender bender’

[DonnaT]

http://www.ceskapozice.cz/en/news/socie ... ted-prague

Czech archaeologists have discovered what they are calling a “third gender grave” — a unique late Stone Age grave of a transsexual or gay man — dating from between 2500-2800 BC and the era of the so-called Corded Ware culture in the Czech Republic. Speculation about the sexual orientation of the buried man was sparked by the unorthodox positions in which his skeleton was found, in a society which was a real stickler for grave etiquette.

“From history and ethnology, we know that when a culture had strict burial rules they never made mistakes with these sort of things,” the head of the archaeological research team Kamila Remišová told journalists at a press conference about the finds on Tuesday.

The civilization from which the late Stone Age man hailed covered much of northern Europe, from the river Rhine in Germany to the Volga in Russia, and was also known as a single-grave and battle-axe culture due to separate burials and the men’s habit of being buried with — by then largely symbolic — stone axes.

Whereas male skeletons from that culture are usually found buried on their right side with their heads facing the East, this grave in Terronská Street in Prague 6 is interred on its left side with the head facing the West, the traditional position for female burials. An oval, egg-shaped container usually associated with female burials was also found at the feet of the skeleton. None of the telltale objects that usually accompany male burials — such as weapons, stone battle axes and flint knives — were found in the grave.

“We believe this is one of the earliest cases of what could be described as a ‘transsexual’ or ‘third gender grave’ in the Czech Republic,” archaeologist Kateřina Semrádová told Czech Position. She said that archeologists have uncovered similar cases where men were buried as women and women as men dating from the much earlier Mesolithic period, when men hunted mammoths.

Semrádová added that a woman buried as a man — because she was probably a warrior — had been found in the Czech Republic dating from the third century BC. Siberian shamans, or latter-day witch doctors, were also buried in this way but with richer funeral accessories to appropriate to their elevated position in society.

The Prague 6 archeological site, which also features two more conventional male and female burials from the same period, will be opened to the public on Thursday with children given the opportunity to see how excavation work is carried out.

[Susan]

Donna

Very interesting, thank you.

[Joan]

Hi Donna

An interesting discovery.

Any of us do you think are planning on being buried or cremated en-femme? I have told my wife of my wish, but i think maybe she would not do it.

Too morbid for consumption?

Joan

[Paula G]

This report just begs so many questions, that we will quite possibly never get answered, but, yes very interesting. As for my body, I can't say that I care what happens to it after I've finnished using it.

[Ralitsa]

that must have been my great great great great great great great grandfather (or grandmother?)
part of my family is from Czech (why I picked the name Ralitsa).

I've thought a little bit about how I would like to get buried, and if it were up to me I would have a nice dress, heels, etc. But since it's really not about me, and it will be up to my kids, and I will be dead and won't care anyway, I will just let them do as they see fit. Maybe when they are older we wil discuss it, and maybe I'll change my mind by then, who knows.

[DonnaT]

I wonder if the person was Intersex instead?

[Ralitsa]

that's a good question Donna. When it comes down to it, how do they really know if it was a man? I presume only the skeleton is left, so they are likely going by the ratios of various bone dimensions. If the person was intersexed, then that is not necessarily an absolute determination. On the other hand, the people who did the burying had a little more information about it.
Nevertheless, it's an interesting story.

[Susan]

the pelvis of a woman is markedly different to a man's. These are the main differences.

The female pelvis is larger and broader than the male pelvis which is taller, narrower, and more compact.

The female inlet is larger and oval in shape, while the male sacral promontory projects further (i.e. the male inlet is more heart-shaped).

The sides of the male pelvis converge from the inlet to the outlet, whereas the sides of the female pelvis are wider apart.

The angle between the inferior pubic rami is acute (70 degrees) in men, but obtuse (90-100 degrees) in women. Accordingly, the angle is called subpubic angle in men and pubic arch in women. Additionally, the bones forming the angle/arch are more concave in females but straight in males.

The distance between the ischia bones is small in males, making the outlet narrow, but large in females, who have a relatively large outlet. The ischial spines and tuberosities are heavier and project farther into the pelvic cavity in males. The greater sciatic notch is wider in females.

The iliac crests are higher and more pronounced in males, making the male false pelvis deeper and more narrow than in females.

The male sacrum is long, narrow, more straight, and has a pronounced sacral promontory. The female sacrum is shorter, wider, more curved posteriorly, and has a less pronounced promontory.

The acetabula are wider apart in females than in males. In males, the acetabulum faces more laterally, while it faces more anteriorly in females. Consequently, when men walk the leg can move forwards and backwards in a single plane. In women, the leg must swing forward and inward, from where the pivoting head of the femur moves the leg back in another plane. This change in the angle of the femoral head gives the female gait its characteristic (i.e. swinging of hips).

I will leave you to Google the terms

[Carolynn]

Skeletal remains tell interesting stories to those in the field of Physical Anthropology that are adept at reading them. Biological sex is easy to identify in the skeleton.

The size of the notch in the pelvis (a woman's has a shallow notch and forms a more bowl shape that helps in carrying a child and makes her hips wider, and is turned more toward the rear -- A man's has a deep V-shaped notch and is more slender and is tilted more forward placing the body mass more over the pivot of the femur/pelvis joints, which makes them better runners),

the size of the mastoid process on each side of the base of the skull,

the skull shape (a woman's is more rounded but must control for genetic population),

the imprint left by the brain on the interior of the skull that gives an indication of the size of the corpus callosium (thicker in women and transsexuals) if well preserved,

the presence of pronounced brow ridges (or absence),

the sharpness of the upper orbital bone,

The shape of the frontal bone (The forhead --men have flat frontal, a woman is rounded)

the width of the jaw across the mandible base,

the sharpness of the chin and thickness of the jaw bone,

the width of the nasal opening, and more.

Stature is indicated by the diameter of the shafts of the long bones, particularly the femur,

and the over-all gracile nature of the remains in a given population is usually associated with females.

The latter can vary from population to population, and with nutrition. One hundred years ago, beds and furniture were constructed for shorter people than today. One career track for Physical Anthropolgy students is in industry identifying populations trends for industry and manufacturing (beds, car seats, furniture, etc.).

Study of the public symphasis on the females pelvis can demonstrate if she has had children and how many times she gave birth.

As far as intersexed goes, people with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome are characterized by a constellation of slightly mismatched skeletal characteristics: significantly longer limbs in comparison to bio female, more narrow pelvis than natal, wider than men, etc.

Other forms of intersex conditions are not that apparent on the skelton (Kleinfelters 47xxy and variants).

Congenital adrenal hyperplasia can cause develpmental issues that result from lack of adrenal secretions and that can form skeletal deficiencies. Caught early enough, the deficiency can be reduced.

Turners Syndrome i(45xo rather than 46xx or xy) result in a sort of semi dwarfism in the long bones and short stature, unless it is caught early enough that exogamous hormones can be administered. This wouldn't have been available 5,000 years ago, of course, and early death would have been the result.

Carolynn

[Martina]

The British execellent tv programme called Time Team execavated an unusual burial of three people who had been unceremoniously and hastily burried around medeivial times. It was unusual because one of the bodies had been decapitated and it's head just thrown into the grave and the other two had been carelessly and disrespectfully thrown in. But one of these bodies was a man dressed in womens clothes. They could tell that by the style of the fasteners and beads that were found with it. The other body was a 15 year old boy. You can only imagine what horrors occured and was it because the man was dressed as a woman. In those days it was a mortal sin to dress in clothes of the other gender. That is the offense that they pinned on Joan of Arc in order to judiciously murder her.

As for me I would love to be burried in a jacket with shirt and tie on top and a short white pleated tennis skirt with frilly tennis panties on the bottom!!

[Absaroka]

Maybe they were enemies and the womens clothing was an attempt to humiliate the corpse. Or maybe they were cross gender from another tribe

[DonnaT]

But one of these bodies was a man dressed in womens clothes. They could tell that by the style of the fasteners and beads that were found with it. ... You can only imagine what horrors occured and was it because the man was dressed as a woman. In those days it was a mortal sin to dress in clothes of the other gender.

Not true, actually.

Archaeologists in North Yorkshire in 2002 discovered the skeleton of a cross-dressing eunuch dating back to the 4th Century AD.

The find was made during excavations of a Roman settlement in Catterick, first started in 1958.

The skeleton - found dressed in women's clothes and jewellery - is believed to have once been a castrated priest who worshipped the eastern goddess Cybele.

Archaeologists say it is the only example ever recovered from a late Roman cemetery in Britain.

The young man was found buried in a grave at Bainesse, a farm near Catterick, and once an outlying settlement of the Roman town.

He wore a jet necklace, a jet bracelet, a shale armlet and a bronze expanding anklet and had two stones placed in his mouth.

Dr Pete Wilson, Senior Archaeologist at English Heritage who has edited a book on the subject, said the man's jewellery was significant.

Jet was regarded in the ancient world as having magical powers and there is a link between the rise in popularity of jet and the increasing interest in eastern mystery religions at the time.

He said: "He is the only man wearing this array of jewellery who has ever been found from a late Roman cemetery in Britain.

"In life he would have been regarded as a transvestite and was probably a gallus, one of the followers of the goddess Cybele who castrated themselves in her honour.

"The find demonstrates how cosmopolitan the north of England was"

Cybele, a goddess imported from the east in the 3rd century BC, had long been a Roman state deity and was worshipped in noisy, public festivals.

Turbans and tiaras

Her would-be priests, or galli, castrated themselves following the example of Cybele's lover Atys, who had made himself a eunuch in her service out of remorse for his infidelity.

In the castration ceremony the galli used special ornamented clamps, one of which was found in the Thames by London Bridge and is now in the British Museum.

Thereafter Cybele's priests wore jewellery, highly coloured female robes and turbans or tiaras and had female hair-styles.

Inscriptions and statues show that the cult was well established in the north of England - there is an altar dedicated to Cybele at Corbridge on Hadrian's Wall.

David Miles, chief archaeologist at English Heritage told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Catterick [at the time]... had a very mixed population with people coming from all over the Roman Empire.

"Although this man may well have been local... the jewellery is not normal behaviour for the average Roman or average Yorkshireman of the 4th Century."

Most of the finds from the excavations are held by the Yorkshire Museum.

[Carolynn]

Makes as much sense to claim that the decapitated one was thought to be a vampire and was beheaded in accord with the superstitions of the time, and the two other individuals were witches or victims. The haste of the multiple burial makes it more likely they were murdered and hidden rather than buired as part of a funeral.

In the late 1970s, we were called to a farm in NW Oklahoma. When in the process of making a foundation for a new house, a skull was encountered by construction equipment. We opened the area around the mandible that was still in place, and soon revealed the remains of a 19th century Plains Native American. He was buired with beaded skin clothing, a parasol, weapons, a strike-a-light, extra flints for his rifle, vermillion, and other items he would need in the afterlife, all wrapped in a buffalo skin funerary robe with German Silver conchos attached, and several of these had also been worked into his clothing. Due to the presence of the bead patterns and a pending winter snow storm, we excavated around the limits of the grave and slid a sheet of steel beneath the remains and hoisted the entire burial out and took it to the lab for detailed analysis of the bead patterns. Individual tribes of Native Americans used their own patterns of beads and preferred different colors in different combination in decorating clothing, most of which have remained the same when making dance and ceremonial clothing to this day.

Our analysis of the bead patterns and colors revealed that the individual was likely either Cheyenne or Arapaho tribe, and burial would have been about the 1830s. Skeletal characteristics suggested a mixed Euro-American and Native American heritage in that he was taller than the average Cheyenne/Arapaho/Comanche of the time (nutrition can affect height and build, but so can heritage and a population factor known as hybrid vigor). Facial characteristics of the skull also suggested a population mixture.

When we published, the Cheyenne and Arapaho were very interested, since according to their oral traditions, a war party had attacked a large village of Comanche and Kiowa in that vicinity in the 1830s in retaliation for a massacre of some 15-20 Cheyenne and Arapahos (who actually were trying to steal horses -a popular pastime- from the Comanche). The battle lasted for the better part of a day, and among the events preserved in oral tradition, a Cheyenne man (a mixed heritage son of the trader named Bent who cemented relations with the tribes by having a wife from each tribe they traded with) had performed numerous acts of bravery, including rescuing an Arapaho ally who's horse had been killed from under him. In the process, he had been shot, and it proved fatal a few hours later.

The war party had withdrawn and he and other dead and wounded were returned to a base camp some 20 miles away. They buried their dead over the next few days, not in the same place as is our fashion, but by the inclinations of the surviving family. Because he was Bent's son, he was counted as having high status and was very wealthy, and was buried with the "burial furniture" or status goods he had brought with him. Since much of the entire tribal group had moved to the location to punish the Comanche with war, he had access to more of his possessions than he would have had if it was just a fast raiding party. He was also considered a "dandy" in that he displayed his status or ceremonial wealth, and was buried with most of it. According to the survivors of his family, he was buried in the area where we had recovered this person.

At their request, a physical anthropologist used standard techniques to identify murder victims, reconstructed the probable face from the skull using tissue depth markers, indications of age in the sutures of the skull and the closing of symphases on the long bones, and the result was compared to a younger brother who had been photgraphed in the 1880s. The family resemblance was clear, and the tribe had a bronze cast made of the reconstruction and this likeness is on display with the story of the person and the historical event at the Cheyenne/Arapaho tribal center.

The point of this long story is that the combination of archaeological and physical anthropological techniques can give a lot of information about an individual. And in combination with records or even oral tradition, can help expose some of the past history of a group of people.

Carolynn

[Vivian]

That was fun.

Hugs Vivian

[Absaroka]

Carolynn that is a really interesting story.

What is hybrid vigor?

Lots of cultures have eunuchs, and they often seem to have a somewhat different status in society than non eunuchs. It is perhaps interesting that I can't think of a female equivalent, perhaps simply because the body parts are more difficult to remove. But I think probably the real female equivalent to the male eunuch is the prostitute. Both are removed from the traditional family role by dint of sexual identity as expressed by actions. Of course the female is the more vilified.......