Calm down, men: women were hunters too – 8/4/2023 – Science

We often take it for granted: men hunted, women gathered. After all, the anthropological reasoning went, men were naturally more aggressive, while the slower pace of foraging was ideal for women, who were primarily focused on taking care of the family.

“It’s something I didn’t question,” said Sophia Chilczuk, a recent graduate of the University of the Pacific in Seattle, where she studied applied human biology. “And I think the majority of the public has that assumption.”

At times, the theory has proven to be stronger than the available evidence. In 1963, archaeologists in Colorado unearthed the remains of a nearly 10,000-year-old woman who had been buried with a projectile point. They concluded that the tool had not been used to kill animals, but, unconventionally, as a scraping knife.

But the male-centric narrative has been slowly changing. On the first day of a university anthropology course, Chilczuk and his colleagues listened to a podcast about the historic discovery of a female hunter during an excavation in Peru in 2018. Among skull fragments, teeth and leg bones, archaeologists found a hunting kit with more tools than they had ever seen—bullet points, flakes, scrapers, chippers, and polishing stones. This discovery prompted the team to revise findings from other burial sites in the early Americas; in 2020, they concluded that big game hunting between 8,000 and 14,000 years ago was carried out by both genders.

Abigail Anderson, a physiology student who was also in the class, was shocked. “Wait, is that true?” she remembers thinking. Upon reading the study, Anderson was struck by the author’s references to academic reluctance to associate women with hunting materials. “I immediately thought: Is this a bias or is this accurate?” she said.

Chilczuk and Anderson teamed up with Cara Wall-Scheffler, a biological anthropologist who was their professor, and two other researchers to unravel this. Now, the team has published a literature review in PLoS One, concluding that in most modern foraging societies women have played a dominant role in bringing game home. Huntress tales existed, noted Wall-Scheffler, “but to compile and show that it’s not an anecdote, it’s a pattern, is what we tried to do with this article.”

To investigate, the team combed the Places, Languages, Culture and Environment Database, a catalog of ethnographies on human societies in the 19th and 20th centuries, and found 63 foraging societies with first-hand accounts of when, how and what was hunted. Next, the team looked for patterns: whether the women were hunting, whether the activity was intentional or opportunistic, and the size of the hunt pursued.

Wall-Scheffler and her students found evidence of women hunting in 50 of the 63 societies they studied; moreover, 87% of this behavior was deliberate. In cultures where hunting was the most important means of obtaining food, women played an active role 100% of the time.

The researchers also found that women were more flexible in their approach to hunting as they aged. The weapons they chose, the game they pursued, and who accompanied them on hunts changed with the age and number of children or grandchildren of the hunters. “They have different strategies, but they’re always on the hunt,” said Wall-Scheffler. Older women were often the ones who participated the most. (In an archery culture, for example, a grandmother was valued for having the best aim.)

Details about female hunting patterns were not easy to uncover, Chilczuk said; reports often prioritized male hunter discussions. But the findings, when they came, made a certain amount of sense, she added: if hunting was the main means of survival, why would only men participate?

The researchers wondered what other stories were overlooked by ethnographers. “There could be so many things we’re missing,” Chilczuk said. “It’s natural to have assumptions, but it’s our responsibility to challenge them to better understand our world.”

Tammy Buonasera, a biomolecular archaeologist at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks who identified the sex of the huntress found in 2018, welcomed the conclusion of the PLoS paper. “I always assumed that women probably hunted more often than admittedly,” she said. In general, she added, women are seen “only as passive agents in history”. She noted that the study of plant gathering and the innovative ways people process plants — a vital source of food — has been neglected because these activities are traditionally linked to women.

Randy Haas, an archaeologist at Wayne State University in Detroit who led the Peruvian dig, also praised the new paper. “In light of what my study shows, their findings align with the same narrative: we had biased interpretations,” he said. “And the idea that the sexual division of labor is an inherent part of human biology is a theme that manifests itself in today’s structural inequalities.”

The growing appreciation of women as hunters comes as anthropology, like many scientific fields, begins to diversify its ranks, prompting scholars to reexamine how evidence is interpreted. “Who you are shapes the questions you ask,” said Wall-Scheffler. “It shapes expectations of what you see.”

She added that, like anyone else, anthropologists can be drawn to a simple narrative. “Complexity is relegated to anecdote,” she said. “We just have to be willing to dig a little deeper.”

For Anderson, it was like taking the blinders off. “I don’t know when it got into me as a kid,” she said of the hunter myth. “And then it spiraled, like a snowball effect: what else do I think is true that isn’t?”

^{Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves}