this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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I'm confused by your comment. The new technique better identifies skeletons without a Y chromosome, which correlates largely (not 100%, very little is 100%) with AGAB.
As far as I can glean (given the dire nature of internet search these days and the amount of noise because of this discovery), the initial identification of the skeleton as male was little more than sexist presumptions about status: the grave was superlatively high status, ergo it had to be a man.
Is your comment simply that mistakes have been made by archaeologists in identifying sex? This isn't the first, won't be the last. They come from researchers reading their own society-based assumptions about gender roles & presentation back onto other times. I don't see how the new findings are a slam against transphobes; this new technique appears to give a far more reliable way to identify a skeleton's chromosomes and thus (in the majority of cases) its likely AGAB.
My comment isn’t about the techniques they were using. It’s a social comment on an absurd argument some transphobes like to use against transfolk saying people digging up our skeletons won’t ever see us as our gender identity, but as our AGAB (assigned gender at birth). As if anyone gives a flying fuck what someone thousands of years in the future thinks about our remains.
It was funny to me seeing this scenario pop up in the news, and the skeleton had been misgendered from the folks who initially examined the pelvis to determine the skeleton’s sex (reinforced afterwards with certain gendered assumptions around the objects found near it). It flips the table on the transphobe’s argument, showing how it isn’t quite as cut and dry as they’d like to believe.
Yes, I understand you weren't talking about the techniques and it was social commentary.
So identification WAS from examination of the pelvic bones? Where did you see that? Might you have a link you could kindly share or any information to help me find it? I love archaeology and search is turning up the now usual mass of sensationalist articles. Thanks :)