Is it gold that matters? The role of sumptuous burials of women in Bronze and Iron Age Europe
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2017-02-13

Ostentatious burials are often exclusively seen within a close typo-chronological framework in time-space related cultural units. Thus archaeologists often analyze sumptuous graves in relation to burials of seemingly lesser importance from the same cultural unit either in order to reconstruct social hierarchies or in order to distinguish specific cultural traits.
In these traditional analyses of ostentatious burials female graves have played little or no role. Analyses which have dealt with female graves dating between the 2nd and first half of the 1st millennium BC have mainly concentrated on gender specific topics such as the importance of costume in relationship to age-groups, regional identities and social standing. Sumptuous female graves are however rarely themetized systematically.
In this paper I will examine ostentatious graves of women in a wide chronological as well as geographical scope in order to ask under which conditions sumptuous female burials occur, how they relate to contemporary male burials in quantitative as well as qualitative aspects and why in some cases they seem to be absent in the archaeological record? I will focus on case studies ranging from the Early Bronze Age in western and Central Europe, the late Bronze Age in Central Europe to the early Iron Age between the so-called western Hallstatt Culture and the Scythians princely graves of the east European steppes.

Author - Prof. Dr. Metzner-Nebelsick, Carola, LMU Munich, Munich, Germany (Presenting author)