One of the best ways to understand an ancient culture—especially one that left behind no written records for us to read—is to examine that culture’s funerary practices. This technique has unveiled invaluable treasures from ancient populations around the world, but the ways humans are laid to rest can also hold lessons about the values that their long-lost cultures held dear.
In a new study published in the journal Quaternary, a team of scientists from Portugal analyzed 57 underground tombs from the first half of the Middle Bronze Age (around 1850 to 1500 B.C.E.) in the interior of Baixo Alentejo, a province in southern Portugal. Previous studies have examined various Bronze age funerary arrangements in the area, including cist burials (a stone coffin buried under a mound) and pit burials. But only one similar underground tomb—also known as a hypogeum, originating from the Greek hupógeion, meaning underground or subterranean—has been uncovered in the same area. It wasn’t until the damming of the Guadiana River in the early 2000s that these underground hypogea were uncovered and recognized as a widespread funerary practice in the region.
It is definitely interesting that women were buried with more weapons than men. I miss archaeology.
Read the whole thing at MSN.com