Saturday, January 18, 2020

Scythian horsewomen and the myth of the Amazons

From The Wild Hunt
In December 2019, the Russian Academy of Sciences reported finding the skeletal remains of four horsewomen. The burial site contained contained weapons and only female skeletons.

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Archaeologists have dated the grave to between 400 and 301 B.C.E. and linked it to Scythian culture. Previously, archaeologists had found the burials of 11 young horsewomen along the Don River valley. This finding marks the first known burial of women of different ages in the same grave.

Tomb robbers had broken into the kurgan in either the 3rd or 2nd Century B.C.E. These ancient grave robbers only damaged the northern half of the kurgan. The disturbed half of the kurgan contained the skeletal remains of a woman aged between 20 and 25 as well as that of a young woman aged 12 or 13. The grave goods in this half of the kurgan included animal bones, iron hooks, iron knives, 30 iron arrowheads, fragments of ceramics, and harnesses for horses.

read more here @The Wild Hunt

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