Archaeologists have uncovered a 4,500-year-old skeleton wearing jewelry from an early Bronze Age village in Turkey. The site has also revealed female skeletons were buried with weapons.
The discovery was made in the northern Turkish province of Corum, at the excavation site of the Ugurludag village of Resuloglu. The village is believed to have continued to be inhabited up to the Ottoman period.
The burial site revealed the inhabitants followed fashion trends, based on the jewellery found on their skeletons. They were found to have anklets, bracelets and necklaces.
“They followed the outside fashion in an indirect way and they tried to apply the art of the outdoors here themselves, especially in the ladies' dresses and ornaments,” Yenikonya reports Ankara University Professor and director of excavation Tayfun Yildirim as saying.
“The ornamental items we find in the cemetery are not only used by women but by men as well.”
"The burials gave us important information about the beliefs of the people living 4,500 years ago,” Yildirim said. “We have valuable information about the death gifts and beliefs of the locals here.”
Yildirim also explained that some of the women’s tombs contained a variety of weapons.
“If you find a weapon when we open the tomb today, you can imagine that it belongs directly to men, but we discovered in some women's graves there are weapons as status symbols on women's graves aged between 50 and 55 years old,” he said. “If a dagger is in the woman's grave, they also show that they love the weapon at the same time.”
Archaeologists have determined the village’s residents were skilled at mining and agriculture, based on the clay and metal artefacts found there. The people are believed to have been Caucasian and of Mesopotamian origin.