Think men were always the hunters? Stone Age women took down mammoths too – and that's not all

Across the wide plains of central Europe some 20,000 years ago, small bands of people began their days preparing for work. Men and women alike readied their tools: some for hunting, some for gathering up roots and seeds, and others for crafting hides into winter clothing.

But the material evidence on which we base our knowledge of the Stone Age is fragmentary. “If we think about the Stone Age, we think about stone tools. Stone tools are what we can find in archaeological digs: they have survived, but so much of our past is perishable,” says Dr Victoria Bateman, author of Economica: A Global History of Women, Wealth and Power, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast.

That fragility matters. If many activities, especially those often carried out by women, left no lasting trace, the archaeological evidence for life in prehistory is bound to be skewed. Yet, Bateman stresses, a patchy record doesn’t mean we know nothing – and what we do now know paints a picture of a nuanced, varied and active life for women of the Stone Age.

Life on the Palaeolithic steppe

In Ice Age Europe, bands of hunter-gatherers followed herds across a cold steppe dotted with patches of woodland. Their camps were often temporary: circles of hide tents, or hearths dug into the ground.

Excavations at sites such as Dolní Věstonice in the Czech Republic or Mezhirich in Ukraine reveal the ingenuity of these communities. At Mezhirich, dwellings were built from mammoth bones, their interiors scattered with flint tools, ochre pigments and fragments of woven fibres.

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Life was harsh, and women were certainly not confined to passive roles. They crafted clothing from hides and sinew, stitched with bone needles, and their handiwork was essential to life in freezing conditions. They gathered plants, berries, roots and nuts – knowledge that required expert ecological awareness. And, as recent research shows, many also took part in the hunt.

The invisible work of women

“In early societies, so much of what was produced – whether it was baskets or fishing nets, or some of the earliest forms of clothing – has disintegrated with time. Women were heavily involved in manufacturing those perishable goods, but because they haven’t survived, I think we have, to an extent, really sidelined women’s contribution to these societies,” says Bateman.

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Occasionally, the past does leave a clue. At Pavlov in the Czech Republic, the imprint of a woven net survives on clay more than 25,000 years old. In waterlogged Mesolithic sites in Denmark, fragments of cord, fishing gear and wooden paddles provide glimpses of the vanished toolkit. Such finds emphasise how communities depended as much on fibres, textiles and nets as they did on stone spearheads.

Much of this labour was collaborative. Women likely taught daughters and sons how to spin fibres, twist cords or weave simple bags. The knowledge was generational and communal. Without it, the great hunts would have been impossible, because nets and ropes were as vital to trapping animals as spears.

The hunter–gatherer dichotomy

But who precisely were these hunters?

“When it comes to hunters, what does survive from the past are skeletons and the types of hunting equipment that they had with them. The long-standing assumption in archaeology was that if someone was buried with hunting tools then they must have been male,” Bateman explains.

This assumption reflected the mid-20th century world in which many archaeologists worked. The model of men as hunters by default neatly mirrored the roles seen across western societies at the time. In effect, modern gender norms were being projected back into deep history, creating a story of universal gender division that was simple to understand.

Recent decades of research have changed this thinking.

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“It’s only in the last couple of decades or so that archaeologists have begun using the latest DNA technology – more recently examining teeth – to find out that some hunters originally presumed male were actually female,” says Bateman.

The results have been striking. In the Andes, a 9,000-year-old burial at Wilamaya Patjxa, Peru – long assumed to be male because it contained a big-game hunting kit – was revealed by DNA to be female. Similar reassessments across North and South America suggest that up to 40 per cent of hunters were women, “all of whom had just been assumed to be men because the default assumption was: men were the hunters,” Bateman notes.

Together, these discoveries show that even with incomplete evidence, new tools can overturn old certainties. The ‘gatherer’ label obscures a more dynamic picture in which women shifted between roles, with labour shaped as much by immediate needs, environments and group size as by gender.

What life was really like for prehistoric women

So – what might a day in the life of a prehistoric woman have looked like?

Imagine a Mesolithic camp on the shores of a Scandinavian lake some 8,000 years ago. At dawn, women might have checked fish traps woven from willow, while others gathered berries in plaited baskets. By mid-morning, a group might have set out with bows and arrows to stalk red deer, children in tow. Later, hides might have been scraped clean with flint and sinew twisted into threads.

Archaeological evidence is what creates this picture. Preserved fish traps from Denmark’s Ertebølle culture show women’s weaving skills at work. Bone needles and tailored garments from Ice Age burials prove that clothing was carefully crafted, not crudely thrown together. Charred remnants in hearths show that plant foods were a crucial part of the diet, often gathered by women. Flint tools worn smooth from scraping hides speak of the endless labour of preparing clothing.

The archaeological record will always be partial, but science is bringing back long lost voices. Prehistoric life was diverse and improvised – with roles dictated by much more than gender.

Victoria Bateman was speaking to Danny Bird on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.