Warrior Women: An Archaeologist's Search for History's Hidden Heroines

Was Herodotus's account of the Amazons fact or fiction? Archaeologist Jeannine Davis-Kimball, in Warrior Women, an account of her digs at burial sites of Eurasian nomads, finds it an embellishment of the former. But, she posits, women's place in that world was generally more exalted than previously thought.

Nearly one-quarter of the women buried in some late Iron Age sites were either warriors or priestesses. Even the remainder, "hearth women," were important players in the tribes' surprisingly egalitarian societies. Further, southern Kazakhstan's famous "gold man" was in fact, a "gold woman." Davis-Kimball also finds solid evidence of "high status" women in graves as far east as China and as far west as Ireland.

Warrior Women is, thankfully, free of lazy sensationalism. But it is frustratingly organized, with little regard to either chronology or geography. Further, Davis-Kimball never places her finds in any sort of context, be it popular or scholarly. --H. O'Billovitch