Shocking discovery provides evidence of ancient women going into battle alongside men – and being injured

Archaeologists have uncovered shocking evidence that medieval women fought and died alongside men in battle.

A woman’s remains, dating between the 12th and 15th centuries AD, were discovered buried alongside 22 warrior monks at a castle built in 1852 in Spain, which was used as a fortress to defend the nation from Muslim invaders.

All 23 warriors featured stab wounds and blunt force injuries that were consistent with a violent death, with the woman having lesions on the upper part of her skull, cheeks and her pelvis.

The lead researcher said the woman was about 40 years old and stood just under five feet tall, was of medium build and skilled with a blade.

Spanish women fought as conquistadors alongside the men under Cortés’s expedition in the early 16th century, but the remains of the woman found at the castle predate the records by centuries.

Researchers at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) and the Max Planck Institute studied the remains after they exhumed the Zorita de los Canes castle’s cemetery of 25 skeletons, but only 23 had wounds that suggested they died in battle.

It was while looking at the injuries that the researchers recognized characteristic differences that revealed one was a woman.

‘The morphology of the facial bones and the pelvis are the most obvious examples,’ said Carme Rissech, a researcher at the URV.

The researchers studied analyzed carbon isotopes 14 and nitrogen 15 in the monks’ bones to determine their sex and health of each individual and their cause of death.

These nitrogen isotopes identify carbon atoms which reveal whether the person’s main source of protein was fish or meat while carbon isotopes measure the amount of carbon-14 in the person’s skeletal remains to calculate how long it’s been since their death.

The team initially believed the warriors were all men until they studied the bone proportions she realized one of them was a woman.

‘She may have died in a manner very similar to that of male knights, and it is likely that she was wearing some kind of armor or chain mail,’ Rissech said.

Her shoulder bones and arms showed muscular marks that were consistent with sword training attributes seen among warrior monks.

Knights were generally required to be of higher class or station such as those belonging to higher or lower nobility and urban elite – but in these types of monastic orders, commoner sergeants were equally equipped and trained for battle.

The team found that the woman’s diet was different from the males in the cemetery, and ‘observed a lower level of protein consumption in the case of this woman, which could indicate lower status in the social group.’

The isotope study showed the other individuals had consumed regular meals of fish and poultry, but the woman had consumed less protein than her comrades, which could support the notion that she was from a lower social class.

However, Rissech refuted the theory, saying that the difference in diet might be a reflection of the gender discrepancies during that time.

Some researchers have also speculated that she was a servant in the castle who was called on to join the knights.

However, the team doesn’t think it’s likely because ‘her work as a servant would have left signs on her bones, indicators of certain types of physical activity that we could now identify,’ Rissech said.

‘I believe that these remain to be female warriors, but further analysis is needed to determine to what extent this woman is contemporary with the other knights.’

The castle was built to defend the emirate from Christian attacks in 852 AD but was transferred to the Order of Calatrava in 1124, a Cicterian military and religious order who were given the task of defending the border – the group was later called the Calatrava knights.

The warrior’s wounds may have been inflicted during the battles of Alarcos in 1195 AD or Navas de Tolosa in 1212 AD, shortly after the Order of Calatrava took over the fortress – both battles were between the Christians and Muslims who fought over the territory the castle sat on.