the ‘inside’ other 91
to the Saltovo-Maiatski archeological culture (end of seventh–ninth
century), is quite appropriate for such a statement. Almost 30 percent
of female burials contained weapons, mostly small axes. It is obvious
that, on the one hand, there existed different notions regarding the
burial ceremonies for young women (aged between 18 and 25) and
for old ones (aged over 50), and on the other, for all those women
who were aged between 25 and 50 years—in almost 70 percent of
the cases weapons were left in the graves that form the first group.
Sometimes young women, most probably warriors, were buried with
a total number of weapons, e.g. axe, bow with arrows, daggers or even
sabres. Such a post mortem armament characteristic for some women
who were buried alone, in graves especially dug for them, and located
away from males’ graves, can not be viewed as a coincidence. A simi-
lar situation can be found in other funeral sites, closely related to the
Dmitrievskii necropolis.^22
During the Early Middle Ages, in some of the Eurasian courts, there
were not only male organizations of the comitatus/Männerbunde-type,
who were personally devoted to the king, but also women who were
especially selected for the ceremonies of communal eating-and-feast-
ing. Such women attended these rituals and sometimes, as it was char-
acteristic for the Toquz-Oghuz tribes, they numbered four hundred.^23
Women’s otherness was in fact activated mostly in extreme situ-
ations.^24 I have already mentioned that the Bulgars and their ruler
Krum, in 811 A.D., “armed also women as if men”^25 in order to repel
Nicephorus’ armies who invaded Bulgaria. The fame of women war-
riors is also confirmed by the women’s statues scattered in the steppe,
a fact which is not attested during the Early Middle Ages among the
sedentary civilizations. Such statues are quite typical for a later period,
too, namely for the eleventh-thirteenth^ century, in the area where the
Cumans lived, i.e. the western part of steppe Eurasia and north of the
Black Sea and Azov Sea. But the Cumans were indeed the same, but
late, nomads who came exactly from Inner Asia thus giving a chance
lutely ‘otherness’ from the point of view of men; needless to say, it was the latter who
established the rules, rites, and ethos in these societies. 22
Pletneva 1983, 14–15; Pletneva 1989; Pletneva 1998, 533. Also see, Flerov 1993,
131, who points out that in almost half of the cases with female single burials in cata-
combs there appeared knives.
(^23) Quoted after Golden 2004, 290, n. 58.
(^24) Pletneva 1998, 537.
(^25) Scriptor Incertus 1961, 13. Also see, Stepanov 2003b, 515–522, esp. p. 520 f.