Excavation uncovers remains of high-status women at Stonehenge

http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2016/02/04/excavation-uncovers-remains-of-high-status-women-at-stonehenge/

by Amanjeev • 10 years ago

35 12 10 years ago

nytlive.nytimes.com

brudgers• 10 years ago

Cited article at Discovery: http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/powerful-women...

douche2• 10 years ago

Interesting, but not particularly surprising. I think a more interesting finding would be a culture where the remains of wives, mothers and other female relations of leaders and high-status individuals were not treated with some level of pomp and circumstance.

foxhop• 10 years ago

Do they think it was a mass burial or separate burials during that time period?

achamayou• 10 years ago

Jumping to conclusions about one's status based on how many trinkets they were buried with is a dangerous exercise.

Plenty of victims of human sacrifice were buried with a plethora of artefacts. Conversely, many of the world's most powerful lie in very unremarkable graves.

Spooky232• 10 years ago

The trend today is to "discover" that women were warrior princesses and super powerful. The same facts would lead to very different conclusions 100 years ago. The 1916 version of his story would be that the king was very rich and gave nice stuff to his queen or concubines, long live the king.

Prehistorical "history" is more a reflection of what we think than what happened thousands of years ago.

abritinthebay• 10 years ago

This comment does a complete disservice to at least two entire fields of science. It's extremely ignorant.

Yes, there is some variation in opinion in how the findings can be interpreted but most of the differences between 1916 and now would be due to that now we are MASSIVELY more rigorous in our approach to such findings.

The smug is strong here, and it's unfounded.

kafkaesq• 10 years ago

Jumping to conclusions about one's status based on how many trinkets they were buried with

Maybe they've like, already thought about this possibility, before making the determinations that they did? Like it's not just the presence of "stuff" but the kinds of stuff (and a whole range of other factors) which distinguish a high-prestige burial from a sacrificial burial.

Being as, you know, they've thinking about these things for years and years, and you haven't.

Jumping to conclusions about the competence of others (based on a snarky observation or two) isn't very helpful, either.

Excavation uncovers remains of high-status women at Stonehenge

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