Researchers in Murcia find exquisite objects at women’s graves later used as sites for elite warrior burials
A burial site found in Spain – described by archaeologists as one of the most lavish bronze age graves discovered to date in Europe – has sparked speculation that women may have been among the rulers of a highly stratified society that flourished on the Iberian peninsula until 1550BC.
Since 2013, a team of more than a dozen researchers have been investigating the site of La Almoloya in the southern Spanish region of Murcia.
Home to the El Argar, a society that was among the first to utilise bronze, build complex urban centres and develop into a state organisation, the site is part of a vast territory that at its peak stretched across 35,000 sq km.
Research published on Thursday in the journal Antiquity has documented one of the site’s most tantalising finds: a man and a woman buried in a large ceramic jar, both of whom died close together in the mid-17th century BC.
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theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/11/bronze-age-burial-site-in-spain-suggests-women-were-among-rulers