The Guardian view on ancient DNA: a female shaman exposes our flawed assumptions about the past | Editorial
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- Ancient DNA analysis at the Francis Crick Institute revealed that the Upton Lovell Shaman, buried in what is now Wiltshire approximately 4,000 years ago, was a woman — overturning a long-held assumption that the figure was male.
- Archaeologists had identified the individual as an important religious leader and metalworker based on artefacts and tools buried with the body, which is held by the Wiltshire Museum.
- Ancient DNA extraction technology has improved exponentially since around 2010, enabling researchers to map migrations, sexual relations, family structures, and diseases — and to reveal how frequently ancient human groups intermixed.
- DNA evidence showed that the Stonehenge-building Neolithic Britons nearly disappeared within a few centuries of the Bell Beaker people's arrival around 2400BC, though the source notes DNA cannot explain why or how the replacement occurred.
- Other DNA-driven discoveries include evidence of frequent liaisons between humans and Neanderthals roughly 50,000 years ago and a reconstruction showing the first modern Britons had "dark to black" skin.
- DNA analysis also helped close longstanding historical mysteries, including identifying malaria rather than murder as the likely cause of death for two members of Italy's Medici family in the 16th century.
- A Pompeii study debunked the assumption that famous plaster casts depicted a mother and child in a final embrace, proving they were two unrelated people and the adult was male — with no published evidence ever supporting the romantic interpretation.
Why it matters: The reassignment exposes how gender bias shaped archaeological interpretation for years — scholars assumed a high-status Bronze Age figure buried with religious and metalworking tools must be male without examining the evidence. It also signals that ancient DNA, now powerful enough to overturn such basic assumptions, will keep forcing revisions across archaeology, with researchers needing to re-examine decades of gender attributions built on similarly thin evidence.
