Links for you. Science:
Alternative medicine is my fault
The long and ugly tradition of treating Africa as a dirty, diseased place (I’ve wondered why ‘wild game’ in Africa is always referred to as ‘bushmeat’)
Better Identification of Viking Corpses Reveals: Half of the Warriors Were Female
Deep sea ‘mushroom’ may be new branch of life
Other:
As California goes, let’s hope the rest follow
World War II: Internment of Japanese Americans
Is America’s health care underperformance a big lie?
The history of the “Keep Calm and Carry On” Poster (video)
How the NSA Helped Turkey Kill Kurdish Rebels
Will the Teaching Class Take the Lead?
Sinatra, Carlin, Inequality, Education, and America
“They are intellectually underpowered and full of themselves, because they’ve been told their whole life how wonderful they are”
On ISIS, Obama can’t win with media or public
Big Money Wants Hard Money—But Why?
Obama Shouldn’t Bomb ISIS in Syria: We have no strategy for intervening there, and no reason to think it will work.
Out-of-control judges’ new craze: Using electroshock and tasers on defendants
Ready, Aim, Fire. Not Fire, Ready, Aim. (Freidman finds a nut!)
Is the Boycott Movement Anti-Semitic? (the fourth paragraph usually goes missing in the whole debate)
How Boston changes in summer — by the numbers
Colleges Don’t Teach Much, but College Students Don’t Know It
mikethemadbiologist
Hi, Mike. Just a quick note on the “Viking women’s warriors” article. There is a slightly better version at http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2011/07/invasion-of-the-viking-women-unearthed/1
I’m glad to see that some effort is being made to re-sex finds based on DNA and actual osteology, but note that this is a tiny sample, 14 burials. If you have a battleground burial or a fortress burial, I would expect to find more women warriors in those contexts than in a burial field near a town or village, and that needs to also be taken into account. Definitely, I’d love to see every Viking Age burial re-sexed to modern standards, because it will help us to see better where the women were, and how they lived.
Of course, it’s not as if the idea that some Viking Age women were warriors is a new one.
See also:
Clover, Carol J. “Maiden Warriors and Other Sons,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 85 (1986). pp. 35-49. https://durhammemsa.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/carol-clover-maiden-warrior.pdf
Clover, Carol J. “Regardless of Sex: Men, Women, and Power in Early Northern Europe,” Studying Medieval Women. ed. Nancy F. Partner. Cambridge: Medieval Academy of America. 1993. pp. 61-85. https://durhammemsa.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/regardless-of-gender.pdf
Dommasnes, Liv Helga. “Late Iron Age in Western Norway. Female Roles and Ranks as Deduced from an Analysis of Burial Customs”. Norwegian Archaeological Review, 15 (1-2). 1982. pp. 70-84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00293652.1982.9965366
Dommasnes, Liv Helga. “Women, Kinship, and the Basis of Power in the Norwegian Viking Age”. Ross Samson (ed.), Social Approaches to Viking Studies. Glasgow: Boydell & Brewer. 1991. pp. 65-74.
Lauritsen, Tina and Ole Thirup Kastholm Hansen. “Transvestite Vikings?” Viking Heritage 1 (2003). http://web.archive.org/web/20040603214908/http://viking.hgo.se/Topic/may-03.html
Norrman, Lena. “Woman or Warrior? The Construction of Gender in Old Norse Myth”. ld Norse Myths, Literature and Society: Proceedings of the 11th International Saga Conference 2-7 July 2000, University of Sydney. eds. Geraldine Barnes and Margaret Clunies Ross. Sydney: Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Sydney. 2000. pp. 375-385. http://sydney.edu.au/arts/medieval/saga/pdf/375-norrman.pdf
Phelpstead, Carl. “The Sexual Ideology of Hrólfs saga kraka”. Scandinavian Studies 75:1 (Spring 2003). pp. 1-24. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40920419
Simniškytė, Andra.”Weapons in Iron Age Women’s Graves”. Archaeologica Baltica 8. 2007. pp. 283-291. http://briai.ku.lt/downloads/AB/08/08_283-291_Simniskyte.pdf
Strand, Birgit. “Women in Gesta Danorum.” Saxo Grammaticus: A Medieval Author Between Norse and Latin Culture. ed. Kirsten Friis-Jensen. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. 1981. pp. 135-167.