For nearly 2,000 years historians assumed Verica,was a man, archaeologist argues it was a woman

Can you imagine history getting the identity of a ruler wrong for centuries? What we often accept as settled historical fact can sometimes be far more complicated than it appears.

Recent archaeological research is now raising questions, arguing that an Iron Age ruler identified as a king in history may actually have been a woman.The ruler in question is Verica, a leader of the Atrebates, a British tribe whose territory covered parts of what are now Hampshire and West Sussex in southern England. Verica has long been associated with the events leading up to the Roman invasion of Britain in AD 43.

However, Dr Miles Russell, Director of Archaeological Fieldwork at Bournemouth University, who is leading the research, argues that the ruler historians have understood to be male was actually a woman.