An archaeological excavation that took place in Spain revealed that the burial graves that were present for a few women there had been in the elite warrior style, suggesting that women may have been rulers in the Bronze Age. This leads us to believe that several women may have been the rulers of a highly stratified society which flourished on the Iberian peninsula until 1550BC.
Research has been going on here since 2013 conducted by a team of archaeologists and this is one of the significant findings on the site. This was published on Thursday in the journal Antiquity documenting one of the site’s most tantalizing finds: a man and a woman buried in a large ceramic jar, both of whom died close together in the mid-17th century BC. In the jar that they were buried in were 29 valuable objects, nearly all of them belonging to the female, believed to be between 25 and 30 years of age. “It’s like everything she touched had silver on it,” said Cristina Rihuete of the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
Among the exquisitely crafted items were bracelets, rings and a rare type of crown, known as a diadem. In total, 230 grams of silver were found at the burial site – an amount that at the time would have been worth the equivalent of 938 daily wages. Similar jewels were found in other neighbouring burial sites, leading researchers to believe that women may have played the role of a ruler or some such significant position.
Men were probably the warriors of society, as suggested by the swords found at several male burial sites, said Roberto Risch of Autonomous University of Barcelona.
Click here to subscribe to The Commune on Telegram and get the best stories of the day delivered to you personally.