Other critics addressed the material record itself. Martin Rundkvist argued that the bones and grave goods could not establish each other’s identity — that you cannot assume the tested bones came from the body associated with the weapons without independent verification of the chain of custody. Rune Edberg argued that grave goods do not establish social role or occupation. Fedir Androshchuk raised concerns about the disturbed state of some graves at Birka, the effects of stone removal over centuries, and Stolpe’s reliance on nonprofessional helpers in his excavations.
The force of the Rundkvist objection — whether the tested bones were actually the bones associated with the grave — was significant enough that the 2019 follow-up paper addressed it directly and at length.
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## The 2019 Response: Defending the Chain of Custody
The second major study, “Viking Warrior Women? Reassessing Birka Chamber Grave Bj.581,” was published in *Antiquity* on February 19, 2019. It was led by Neil Price of Uppsala University and included most of the original research team.
The paper was designed as a systematic response to the criticisms that had accumulated in the two years since the 2017 publication. It addressed four principal challenges: whether the right bones had been analyzed; whether there was a second body in the grave; whether the individual could reasonably be interpreted as a warrior; and what the finding meant for gender.
On the chain of custody question, the authors provided detailed documentation. They noted that Stolpe had labeled each recovered bone from Bj 581 with “Bj.581” in India ink — a documentation practice that allowed later scholars to verify which bones belonged to which grave. They compared bone measurements against Stolpe’s drawings and records of nearby burials to confirm internal consistency. This is not absolute proof — bones do not speak for themselves — but it represented the strongest available evidence that the tested materials came from the documented grave.