Ancient DNA reveals shaman long thought to be male was actually a woman

Archaeologists have long believed that the Upton Lovell Shaman, who lived in what is now Wiltshire 4,000 years ago, was an important religious leader and metalworker based on the artefacts and tools buried with the body. Until recently, it was also assumed – on considerably slimmer evidence – that this shaman was a man. That view was barely questioned over the years. Now, ancient DNA analysis conducted at the Francis Crick Institute has revealed that the remains, held by the Wiltshire Museum, are in fact those of a woman.

This revelation is set to cause a stir in Bronze Age studies, but it also serves as another example of how many assumptions about human history have been overturned by the rise of ancient DNA analysis over the past two decades. Other revelations include evidence of frequent liaisons between humans and Neanderthals just 50,000 years ago, a reconstruction suggesting the first modern Britons had dark to black skin, and the solving of long-standing mysteries such as what really killed two members of Italy’s powerful Medici family in the 16th century (likely malaria, not murder). Every time we widen our keyhole view of the past even slightly, we confront how many seemingly grounded assumptions are in fact wrong.

These insights have emerged because the technology to extract and read DNA from ancient, poorly preserved samples has improved exponentially since around 2010. DNA analysis hardly provides a total picture of the past, but it has been useful for mapping migrations, sexual relations, family structures, and tracking plagues and diseases. For instance, it has shown that groups of ancient humans moved around and intermixed far more often than previously thought, painting a more dynamic and less lonely ancient world.

DNA evidence also suggests that the replacement of one group with another – such as the near-total disappearance of the Stonehenge-building Neolithic Britons just a few centuries after the arrival of the Bell Beaker people around 2400BC – was relatively common. However, it cannot answer why or how that replacement took place. These are big questions that will keep scientists, anthropologists, and archaeologists busy for decades.

Alongside a deeper and richer view of the past, we should take a lesson from the constant stream of debunking and myth-busting emerging from this research. The politics behind assuming a shaman is male are obvious, but last year a study took on more subtle biases by proving that famous plaster casts of citizens of Pompeii long believed to show a mother and child locked in a final embrace were actually two people who were not related, and the adult was male. The authors note that there was no published evidence suggesting the sex or family relations of these bodies, but both scholars and the public found the romantic interpretation irresistible.

We will probably always try to see something of ourselves in our ancestors. But the past is more interesting when we consider it on its own, often bracingly foreign, terms. DNA evidence will not conveniently overturn every biased judgment about the ancient world, but each case makes it easier to recognize how readily such assumptions happen and to be humble about how little we truly understand.