A team of archaeologists excavating in South-West Spain have discovered a Bronze or Iron Age stela. A stela is a funerary slab with cravings representing an important individual. The unique cravings on this slab have delighted as well as puzzled the archaeologists as it challenges the gender and social roles in pre-historic times.

Excavation at the funerary complex of Las Capellanías

The excavation was led by Dr Marta Diaz-Guadamino from Durham University. The fieldwork was a part of the larger project called Maritime Encounters project, in collaboration with the universities of Huelva and Seville.

A team of archaeologists, researchers, and students were excavating the 3000-year-old funerary complex in Las Capellanías, in Cañaveral de León, Spain. This is the third stela that the team unearthed during their fieldwork. The stela depicts a human figure with a face, hands, feet, a headdress, a necklace, two swords, and male genitals.

The funerary complex is also significant as it is believed to be an important natural pathway linking to the main river basins – forming a communications highway of its period. Furthermore, the stelas may have also functioned as territorial markers.

Perception of Gender

The iconography on the stela contradicts the majority of previously discovered examples, implying that experts may need to reevaluate historical gender norms. While headdresses and necklaces are commonly linked with female forms, the presence of weaponry such as a sword denotes a male warrior.

The latest discovery depicts cravings of both male and female elements on the stela. This challenges the previous assumptions of gender norms. As a result, the team was forced to consider that the social norms represented by these carvings were more fluid than previously understood, and were not limited to a certain gender.

Discoveries suggest that Bronze Age societies may have been matriarchal

This is not the first time discoveries in Spain have challenged archaeologists to rethink gender roles in the Bronze Age. A burial site at La Almoloya in Murcia has yielded a grave of an upper-class couple that offers baffling evidence that Bronze-Age women may have held significant political power. La Almoloya is one of the first Bronze-Age palaces in Western Europe and was the home of the El Argar society.

The grave in question contains a woman buried atop a man, both in a large jar beneath the floor of a grand hall. Further, the woman was adorned with valuable silver objects such as hair fasteners, earlobe plugs, a bracelet and a ring.

Cristina Rihuete Herrada, an archaeologist at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and one of the discoverers of the burial, told the New York Times that women in Argaric society may have had greater political power than previously thought, while men may have been in charge of military matters.