'Women Armed With Favorite Weapons'

On the sexing of armaments

Tools are virtually indistinguishable from weapons in the fossil record and cross-cultural anthropology. The one pure weapon listed in the meme below is handguns, and they are only in the middle of the pack.

The very first tool that had exclusive use for interpersonal violence was the sword. When swords show up in Chalcolithic figurines, only men hold them. Female figurines have them later in the Bronze Age, by which point they were general symbols of authority. So whenever you read about the “gender” of an ancient skeleton being disputed over a sword in the grave, remember that unless the skeleton can be dated to the third millennium BC, it is clickbait.

Nevertheless, I have no doubt whatsoever that women carried pokey-stabby objects in Ubaid Mesopotamia, for example. Indeed, I am 100 percent sure of it. Like all the sciences, archaeology has historically been a male-dominated activity. Men who have never experienced male sexual aggression will be mystified that a hair comb is so pointy.