A question came up the other night with a group of associate. They seemed to indicate that Celtic women where are par in numbers to men in combat. I have my doubts. What I want to know is this: Since warrior women are a minority in most cultures what evidence do we have that they are more than a minority in Celtic cultures. I’m not arguing that there were no Celtic female warriors, there were. I’m also not arguing that there were not females in roles of military leadership, there were. What I want to know is there any evidence that they were more than a small minority?
Could this be a mistake in seeing male warriors in kilts?
The kilt’s a pretty hotly contested piece of clothing when it comes to historical veracity. See here for a good history of what we know as the kilt today – the pleated skirt with badass belt and sporran. Prior to that, the kilt (actually the plaid, which means blanket) was a big length of fabric that was pleated and wrapped around the body, sort of like a Scottish sari, but for guys. Even then, the earliest known reference to something resembling a belted plaid didn’t come until the mid-sixteenth century, which seems to rule out ancient Celts wearing kilt-like garments at all.
In the time period I think irongeek is talking about the Irish and the Highland Scots didn’t wear kilts. (For those that are curious, Irish “immigrants” displaced Picts in the highlands in the late fourth century.) They wore a tunic called a léine (Irish gaelic for shirt) and a wrap called a brat. Both men women wore this get-up, though men’s tunics went to their knees and women’s were longer. Men’s are sometimes shown belted very short, so that they are mistaken for short kilts. Kass McGann, as always, has an excellent rundown of early Irish dress.
I suppose it’s conceivable that women’s léinte could have been tucked/belted up when they went into battle, adding to the confusion between the sexes, but men are generally depicted wearing beards or some type of facial hair.
Sources seem to imply that Celtic women were wearing some form of the chiton on the continent during the late iron age. This is pretty intuitive garment to make, considering the shape of fabric off the loom.
I’m not too sure of what the ancient Britons or Welsh were wearing at this time. One would assume something of rectangular construction, like every other European culture in the period.
(Kass McGann’s site is positively wonderful. If you ever want to know anything about Celtic, Irish, Scottish, Japanese, or Polish historical dress, start there. She will not fail you, if only in helping to find a source.)
Another thing. The Romans, whom I’m assuming are the invading forces, were pretty accustomed to seeing guys in skirts. Your run-of-the-mill Roman foot soldier wore a short tunic with armor over it. The confusion could be understandable if women wore kilt-like garments, but there’s no evidence that they did.
Of course, all bets were off when members of conqered peoples joined the army. They tended to wear their native dress. I have a foggy recollection that pants were introduced to the Romans by the Goths, but I could entirely wrong on that.
If there were that many celtic women warriors, I would expect their bodies to have been found in large numbers in graves (either buried with weapons, or at least with evidences of lethal wounds). Though of course I don’t know much about archeology, I don’t remember a single article about a woman body found with such wounds in a celtic tomb, so I assume that at least it isn’t commonplace.