A cemetery found in Spain – described by archaeologists as one of the most luxurious bronze-age tombs ever discovered in Europe – has sparked speculation that women may have been among the rulers of a highly stratified society that flourished in the Iberian Peninsula until 1550 BC .
Since 2013, a team of more than a dozen researchers has been investigating the La Almoloya site, in the Murcia region, in southern Spain.
Home to El Argar, a society that was one of the first to use bronze, build complex urban centers and transform itself into a state organization, the place is part of a vast territory that, at its peak, extended over 35,000 square kilometers.
Research published on Thursday in the Antiquity newspaper documented one of the site’s most tempting discoveries: a man and a woman buried in a large ceramic jug, who died together in the mid-17th century BC.
With them were buried 29 valuables, almost all belonging to women, believed to be between 25 and 30 years old. “It’s as if everything she touches has silver,” said Cristina Rihuete, from 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 in the cemetery – an amount that at the time would have been worth the equivalent of 938 daily wages.
The prominent role that women may have played in society is echoed by other discoveries in El Argar; Similar diadems have been found in four other female cemeteries, while women’s graves were later used for the burials of elite warriors, suggesting that these sites were seen as places of high status.
What made this most recent discovery unique was its location under what could be the first bronze age palace discovered in the region. Since the building would have been used for political purposes, it may be that the woman’s power came from politics, Rihuete said.
The men were probably the warriors of the society, as suggested by the swords found in several male cemeteries, said Roberto Risch, of the Autonomous University of Barcelona. “It is evident that they control the means of violence and are probably behind the expansion of El Argar.”
The society, which prospered from 2200 BC onwards, was highly organized with a wealthy elite that was probably supported by some type of tax system. “There was nothing like it in Western Europe,” said Risch, pointing to the rest of Spain, where people at the time lived in self-sufficient communities of 50 to 100 people.
By the 16th century BC, all of El Argar’s settlements were abandoned, believed to have been devastated by internal uprisings. “Shortly after the woman’s death, the entire settlement was set on fire,” said Risch. “And it was only after the arrival of the Greeks and Phoenicians on the Iberian Peninsula that we saw something similar, whether in architecture or in the political dimension.”