Masses of 4,500-Year-Old Beads Found in Spain

SEVILLE, SPAIN—ZME Science reports that some 270,000 beads made of scallop and cockle shells, stones, and animal bones have been found in a Copper Age grave at the Montelirio Tholos site in southwestern Spain by a team of researchers led by Leonardo García Sanjuán of the University of Seville. The burial has been radiocarbon dated to between 2900 and 2650 B.C. The remains of about 20 people have been found in the grave, most of whom were women whose bodies had been dusted with cinnabar to color them red. Researchers estimate that it took some 250,000 hours of labor to drill so many beads, indicating that the community where the women lived was a prosperous one. One woman, buried in the so-called “Oranti” pose on her back with her arms overhead, wore a full-body tunic made of tens of thousands of beads. The Oranti pose is thought to be related to prayer or invocation, and may suggest that the woman had been a religious leader. Her body was also placed in the path of a narrow beam of sunlight that would have entered the burial chamber on the summer solstice. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Science Advances. To read about beads recovered from Spanish caves that were made to resemble gemstones, go to "Artifact: Bronze Age Beads."