Identifying resilient women through bioarchaeology: Perspectives from two contemporaneous Inner Asian studies dating to the Late Bronze-Early Iron Age transition

Abstract

Bioarchaeological investigations have the potential to identify biological and cultural resilience among those who have been historically underrepresented in dominant narratives, which in turn is intricately tied to both resistance and inequality in past lived experience. In particular, the lived experiences of women in past mobile-pastoral societies are oft-ignored in favor of their male (“nomadic warrior”) counterparts. To that end, this investigation examines forms of resilience based on two targeted studies from mobile-pastoralist contexts located in Inner Asia, focusing on individuals osteologically determined to be biological females. Two discrete areas of inquiry are considered: firstly, the study of traumatic cranial injury among individuals from the Late Bronze Age site of Jinggouzi, Inner Mongolia in northern China and secondly, an individual with bilateral hip dysplasia dating to the Early Iron Age from the north Gobi Desert at Baga Gazaryn Chuluu, Mongolia. Their stories, when told from this perspective, serve as a fulcrum to consider the capacity for and the nature of human resilience as reflected in a biocultural consideration of lived experience among early steppe women.