Remains of so-called ‘Ivory Man’ in ornate Spanish tomb appear to be female

About 5,000 years ago in Spain, there was a woman so important to her people that when she died, they filled her tomb with incredible riches and honored her memory for generations to come, archaeologists say.

She is now known as “The Ivory Lady” because of the lavish ivory contents of her tomb. But when her remains were first exhumed 15 years ago, archaeologists misclassified them as “probably male.”

Now – thanks to an analysis of her teeth – they know she was, in fact, a woman. And her graceful burial challenges assumptions about the kinds of roles women played in that era of human history.

“For the period we call the Copper Age, which actually extends from 3200 to 2300 BC…there is no other tomb comparable to this one.” , told As it happens host Nil Koksal.

García Sanjuán is the co-author of the study that reclassified the figure once known as “The Ivory Man.” The findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

When the tomb was first excavated in 2008 near Seville, Spain, the skeletal remains inside were too fragmented to determine gender. But scientists have since developed a method that examines ancient teeth for a protein containing a sex-specific peptide.

“There is a lot to learn from these methods, and we suspect it will be used immensely in future studies,” said García Sanjuán.

‘A great leader’

Alison Beach, a historian at the University of St Andrews in Scotland who was not involved in the study, says the findings call into question ancient historical narratives.

“[It shows] it’s not just true that men have always been the most respected or had the most authority,” Beach told The Associated Press.

García Sanjuán says archaeologists found a large collection of ivory artifacts in the tomb, including a dagger, a finely crafted vessel and comb, and a full tusk from Africa that was “carefully placed around her head, to protect her from the entrance of the grave’. .”

There was also a ceramic plate, he says, that had traces of wine and cannabis on it.

“As far as we know, this would be the… earliest instance of cannabis use in European history,” said García Sanjuán. “Obviously it’s a very special substance, and the presence of this cannabis has implications for what this lady was and her social personality.”

But she wasn’t just important to those who buried her first, he said.

“Between three or four generations after her death, other people who built an important monument next to her grave … actually deposited another collection, another collection of high-quality, high-quality, very special items on her grave,” he said. . The items included a second dagger made from a rock crystal blade with an ivory hilt.

“So her fame lived through the generations, and later generations remembered her and paid tribute to her, which I think is quite revealing of her social status as a leader, as a memorable person, as a great leader,” said García Sanjuán.

There may be others

Researchers know little about the social or political structure of the society to which she belonged—which was roughly contemporaneous with the rise of the pharaohs in Egypt’s Nile Valley and with the construction of the first planned city on the banks of the Euphrates in Mesopotamia.

“The political complexity of pre-state societies is usually associated with concepts such as ‘big man’ or ‘chiefdoms,’ which explain the emergence of early forms of leadership,” study co-author Miriam Luciañez-Triviño, a researcher at the University of Seville’s Department of Prehistory and Archeology, told Reuters.

“In the ethnographic literature, these leaders are mostly men. However, our study provides data that can help guide interpretations of [Iberian] peninsula and European prehistory, showing that we still know little about the role of women in positions of power during this period.”

Katharina Rebay-Salisbury, a co-author and archaeologist at the University of Vienna in Austria, suspects the same misidentification holds true for other ancient tombs where researchers assumed, “Oh, this is a rich and prominent person. It must be a man. ” .”

“If we go back and test, we’re going to have a few more surprises,” Rebay-Salisbury said.

Gender vs Gender

In 2017, researchers used DNA analysis to determine that a Viking warrior previously believed to be male was actually female.

In that case, some archaeologists suggested the remains – which were buried in traditionally male clothing – may have belonged to a transgender or non-conforming person.

Some researchers say that reclassifying the Ivory Man as the Ivory Lady still allows us to make biased assumptions about the past.

Durham University bioarchaeologist Rebecca Gowland — who helped determine sex by testing tooth enamel — cautioned against making gender claims based on sex findings.

“It could be that they had a special status that was more important than their gender identity or… there was no binary gender system,” she told CNN.

With files from The Associated Press and Reuters. Interview with Leonardo García Sanjuán produced by Katie Geleff.