In the Stone Age Americas, a woman's place may have been on the hunt, a new study reports. The study has archaeologists rethinking ideas about gender roles in prehistoric hunter-gatherer cultures. But some scientists are not so sure about the results. The new study appeared this month in the publication Science Advances. Archaeologists involved in the research found the remains of a young woman at a 9,000-year-old burial site in Peru. She is buried with what appears to be a complete set of big-game hunting tools: spear points, scrapers, blades and more. “Big-game hunting” means the hunting of very large animals. Researchers could not tell the individual's sex at the place where the remains were found. “We all just assumed it was a dude” or male, said University of California Davis archaeologist Randy Haas. Around the site, the scientists told each other “he” must have been a great hunter, Haas said. "Maybe he was a big chief or a great warrior or something," the scientists would say. But after studying the remains back at a laboratory, scientist Jim Watson of the University of Arizona said, "I think 'he' is a 'she.'"
