11-02-2025
Archaeologists Found an Ancient Tomb Filled With the World's Largest Collection of Beads
Researchers found over 270,000 beads in a tomb in Spain, and it could be the largest collection ever recorded.
The beads were made out of shells, stone, and animal bone, and it likely took months to produce such a large quantity.
Experts think beaded textiles could be an indicator of social status.
Beads are for way more than friendship bracelets. Trade, decoration, recording history—you name it, our ancestors probably used beads for it. And a new study in the journal Science Advances suggests that researchers may have found the largest bead collection ever recorded. Researchers recovered a whopping 270,769 of them from the Tholos de Montelirio burial site, which is part of the Valencina archaeological site in south-western Spain.
The majority of the beads were found in a large cavern, worn by mostly female skeletons estimated to be between the ages 18 and 34 at their time of deaths. Researchers also found an additional 2,000 beads scattered in a corridor leading to another chamber, and 90 beads (along with a dagger) in the upper level of a second chamber.
The discovery of the nearly 5,000-year-old tomb, called the 'Ivory Lady' tomb was initially made between 2010 and 2011, and experts have been meticulously studying the hefty collection for the past 5 years. But even preparing the collection for further studying wasn't for the faint of heart—it took a team of seven people and 651 hours to completely clear the Cheerio-shaped disks of all dirt and debris.
In their studies, the researchers concluded that the beads were made from three different materials: marine shell, animal bone, and stone. Those made from shells (mostly from scallops) were the most abundant in the collection. As for the rock beads, the diversity of the samples suggests that they were collected opportunistically, rather than intentionally sought-out. But regardless of the material, the crafting process was elaborate.
'10 persons working 8 hours a day would have taken 206 days (nearly 7 months) to produce the whole assemblage using in the process a little less than a metric ton of marine shell,' the paper reads. 'Evidently, the labor value of the beaded attires was high.'
Another researcher on the study, Marta Díaz-Guardamino, compared the effort needed to craft the garments to modern fashion.
'I think that the efforts to produce these beaded robes far exceed those required to produce a couture red carpet garment today,' she told CNN. 'You would need many more hours and people invested in the production of the beads. Indeed, it would have been, altogether, an enterprise on a whole different scale with no parallels in the world yet.'
Aside from the handful of scattered beads, scientists identified that the objects were arranged in three main fashions: tunics, skirts, and undetermined shapes. The study suggests that the elaborateness of the garment each woman was buried in could indicate her status. For instance, researchers describe individual UE343—a female aged 24 to 32 at her time of death—as 'a very special person,' because she wore a beaded tunic and was placed in a prominent location in the tomb.
'These women probably exercised tasks of religious and probably political leadership in their time,' Samuel Ramírez-Cruzado—one of the researchers who worked on the study—told LiveScience, 'managing a famous sanctuary around which important congregations of great social significance took place.'
Moving forward, Leonardo García Sanjuán, the lead researcher of the study, expressed that he wants to investigate whether the society in Valencina that made all of these beautiful beads was a matriarchy.
'Matriarchy has been a very controversial concept in history and anthropology,' García Sanjuán told CNN, 'but I am quite keen now to tackle it head-on, because I think it's just not chance that we are seeing repeatedly these cases at this time, you know, between 2900 and 2600 (years BC) of all these great, very, very high standing, powerful women.'
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