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| A 20th century Antique beaded purse found in an Etsy shop. |
Huge Collection of 270,000 Beads Unearthed in Copper Age Tomb in Spain
“Beads are a widespread and pervasive element of material culture produced by Homo sapiens, ”the study authors noted. “As excellent indicators of technology, social organization, exchange patterns, and even beliefs, beads are a topic of research in their own right.”
"Each was made by shaping a single seashell and boring a hole through its center. The huge number represents the largest single-burial assemblage of beads ever found in any grave site."
Buried in more than 270,000 beads, grave reveals women’s power 5,000 years ago
"The team found the majority of the beads in a large chamber of the Montelirio tomb, which held the remains of 20 people, including 15p women and five individuals whose sex wasn’t determined. A smaller chamber where two women were buried also contained beads.
“They would have been extremely glittery under the sunlight and that would have been a very powerful effect to see these women standing in front of a crowd performing whatever rituals they were in charge of performing.”
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Before the advent of the photographic image, artists and artisans provided visual documentation of their times. Regarding very ancient times such as the Copper Age, artifacts (and bones) are generally all that remain.
The featured artifact in this archaeological story is the humble bead; not one, but over 2 hundred thousand of them! Many of them were found draped over and around a group of 15 female skeletons in a prehistoric Spanish tomb - Tholos de Montelirio - near to that of the so-called Ivory Lady (who was originally determined to be male). Apparently, there are 5 additional bodies whose genders have yet to be determined because their bones were crushed.
Many of the beads were created from scallop shells... which may have been devotionals for a marine goddess such as Aphrodite, Astarte, Ishtar, or the moon goddess Innana to whom the hymn excerpt (below) was addressed.
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"The day is auspicious,
The priestess is clothed
in beautiful robes,
In womanly beauty,
As in the light of the rising moon."
- Via Enheduanna's Hymn to Innana (c. 2300 BC), reposted from an earlier Woman's Day article.
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And, there are some reasons to believe that the women were priestesses. For one, it would explain why they were all interred in one tomb, sporadically, over a period of years.
Then, too, we are given an interesting description of one of the bodies...
(Continued below the jump...)