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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.
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.. The researchers identified what they believe to be threaded beads that could have formed two full-body beaded tunics, skirts and other clothes or cloths of undetermined shape."“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.
But, while the beads and the majority of bones withstood the test of time, merely a few scraps of fabric were in evidence and while the beads are thought to have decorated clothing, there are few clues as to how the clothing was really fashioned... or what the beaded garments represented. What we can determine is that they were expensive and time consuming to create. And, by this, we can deduce that the entombed women were highly regarded; they were special in some way.
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...)
"Individual UE343, a female aged 24 to 32 years at the time of death, must have been a very special person. Not only she wore what seemingly was a full-body beaded tunic, but also she was also placed at a prominent location in the tomb... on the path of the narrow projection of sunlight that came from outside on the summer solstice, and with both her arms raised above her shoulders and head, in a gesture frequently described as “oranti” in the literature on European late prehistory."
Notably, of the bodies disinterred, #UE343 had the least amount of mercury poisoning.
Mercury poisoning? Alas, yes. But, no, it's unlikely the women were deliberately poisoned. The mercury that leached into their bones came from the
cinnabar they used as a red pigment everywhere from their skin to the painted walls of the tomb.
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The Lady of Elche (above) was carved in limestone circa 4th century BC. She was discovered in 1897 on a private estate in the vicinity of Elche, Spain. Her identity, however, remains a mystery. Goddess, queen... or merely a dignified aristocrat? She is now exhibited in the National Archaeological Museum of Spain in Madrid.
The statue above has been estimated to be a funerary urn - which can support the idea that she represents a deceased person, but several smaller, similar figures have also been found. (See here.) So, whoever or whatever she represented was important.
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"There were clearly differences in the way men and women were honoured in burial, but it is hard to say whether this is reflected in social structure...
García Sanjuán said he wanted to investigate whether the society at Valencina was a matriarchy during this period, a time when a more hierarchical society was beginning to emerge in Europe.
'Matriarchy has been a very controversial concept in history and anthropology, but I am quite keen now to tackle it head-on, because I think it’s just not chance that we are seeing repeatedly these cases at this time, you know, between 2900 and 2600 (years BC) of all these great, very, very high standing, powerful women.'”
- Leonardo García Sanjuán, a professor of prehistory at the University of Seville and lead study author. When García Sanjuán refers to matriarchy as "a very controversial concept in history and anthropology" he isn't exaggerating, he's understating a fact. In Wiki's entry for
matriarchy we find:
"Most anthropologists hold that there are no known societies that are unambiguously matriarchal, at least no matriarchal society that have completely excluded the opposite gender from roles of authority."
In other words, anthropologists define a matriarchy in terms associated with the patriarchy: dominance and exclusion. In my eyes, this is where the argument fails.
Meanwhile, the Wiki article goes on to list a number of essentially matriarchal societies.
Are we to believe there was no precedent?
Also see: Matrilineal societies exist around the world – it’s time to look beyond the patriarchy
As for articles regarding other recent archaeological discoveries citing ancient women:
Excavation near Jerusalem finds 9,000-year-old six-fingered Neolithic shaman woman
5,000-year-old ‘Ivory Lady’ upends what’s known about sex and gender in prehistoric societies
Here Are 6 Major Archaeological Discoveries That Suggest Ancient Women Were Waaay More Powerful Than You May Believe
Four of the Most Incredible Ancient Female Burials in Archaeology
Ancient DNA from graves reveals "jaw-dropping" discovery about Iron Age women in U.K., scientists say
Ancient Peru: New discoveries highlight women's rule
The Invisibility of Prehistoric Woman_
Tomb Containing Three Generations of Warrior Women Unearthed in Russia
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"There is no such thing as an end. I believe in the spiral that keeps on going."
- Quoted: Beat poet, actress and filmmaker,
ruth weiss (1928-2020), found
here.
"... Elise (Cowen) was Allen Ginsberg’s last female partner before he met his life partner Peter Orlovsky. However, she was more than Ginsberg’s shadow, it was Elise who typed the motherly poem Kaddish, and her transgression was unbearable for her neighbors who burned her writings seen as lewd in order to hide them from the girl’s parents."
- Excerpt from Larissa Oliveira's excellent article,
Introduction to the women of the Beat Generation, in which we discover the existence of a number of Beat women we may have been unaware of previously. Although many were married to Beat writers they were authors, poets, and artists in their own right. To name a few:
Elise Cowen,
Hettie Jones,
Joyce Johnson,
Diane di Prima,
Joan Vollmer,
Edie Parker... and green-haired goddess, ruth weiss (quoted above).
"and so young women
here’s the dilemma
itself the solution:
I have always been at the same time
woman enough to be moved to tears
and man enough
to drive my car in any direction"
- From the poem,
Hard Drive, by Hettie Jones, 2016.
***
This third and last section is not so much a story as it is the theme of a multitude of stories: women go missing from our cultural records and it is generally left to other women to find them again.
In the case of the Beat women, we're discussing mid- 20th century, AD, but the song remains the same. I can't imagine that all those Beat girls who became involved with Beat men realized they were dooming themselves to near obscurity, but when William Burroughs shot Joan Vollmer in the head in 1951, his was (metaphorically) the definitive act of the Beat generation.
"... I found out that many women before me had broken through female roles and made themselves into successful, independent and creative people. Yet the struggles and successes of one generation did not necessarily guarantee greater ease to the women of the next. Instead of the work of one woman attesting to the potential of all women, the work was ripped out of its natural context by male historians. One historical period would allow women more freedom... Then male dominance would assert itself again. The women's achievements would be left out of recorded history, and young women could not model themselves upon the struggles and accomplishments of their mothers."
Above is a quote from artist, Judy Chicago, which I have posted and reposted over the years. It is a quote which every thinking woman should keep in mind. No truer words have ever been written.
Most especially now, in 2025, women are again in danger. All it takes is one misogynistic male in power to begin this process of erasure.
I'll leave you with this recent abomination from the Trump administration:
"NASA is working to comply with President Donald Trump’s crusade targeting diversity and inclusion at federal agencies, reportedly scrapping key terms from its websites related to accessibility, indigenous people, women, and other topics deemed “wasteful” by the current administration."
Translated: Donald Trump's war on woman.
"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."
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