Elaborate burial site of ‘The Ivory Lady’ and her descendants contains more than 270,000 shell beads

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.

Archaeologists investigating a roughly 5,000-year-old tomb in southwestern Spain say the women laid to rest there were buried with a staggering number of white beads that would have been threaded together to form elaborate, shimmering outfits.

Beads appear regularly in the archaeological record as a form of adornment, currency and social exchange, but the collection from the Montelirio grave, part of the Valencina archaeological site near Seville, is the largest ever recorded worldwide, according to new research.

The researchers estimated the collection contained 270,769 round beads made predominantly from seashells that would have taken 10 people working eight hours a day for 206 days, or about seven months, to make. That estimate doesn’t include the time it would have taken to collect the scallop-like shells from the seashore.

“We think the beads formed ceremonial clothing that was worn by these women, who were very important socially or religiously, at special occasions or special ceremonies,” said lead study author Leonardo García Sanjuán, a professor of prehistory at the University of Seville. “These things must have been pretty heavy. Not something you wore in your everyday life.”

He added that many of the shells might have appeared iridescent because some of the shells still retained a mother-of-pearl effect.

A comprehensive analysis of the bead collection sheds light on the formidable status of women in the society that once lived at the Valencina site, according to the study published in the journal Science Advances on Wednesday.

Bead-adorned ceremonial dress

The team found the majority of the beads in a large chamber of the Montelirio tomb, which held the remains of 20 people, including 15 women and five individuals whose sex wasn’t determined. A smaller chamber where two women were buried also contained beads.

Excavators have unearthed beads for years at the tomb, but the study is the first time the collection has been analyzed in its entirety. The researchers identified what they believe to be threaded beads that could have formed two full-body beaded tunics, skirts and other clothes or cloths of undetermined shape.

Study coauthor Marta Díaz-Guardamino, an associate professor in archaeology at Durham University in the United Kingdom, said many of the beads appeared aligned in rows that covered large areas of the bodies, suggesting the beads formed some kind of attire. Plant remains within the beads’ perforations also suggested the use of thread, she added.

“I think that the efforts to produce these beaded robes far exceed those required to produce a couture red carpet garment today,” she said via email. “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.”

Some of the circular beads had been kept by the researchers in storage jars, while others were encased in large chunks of sediment excavated from the tomb.

The team cleaned, weighed, quantified, measured and studied the beads, which were fairly uniform in size and shape, to understand how and why they were made, García Sanjuán said.

“They would have been extremely glittery under the sunlight and that would have been a very powerful effect to see these women standing in front of a crowd performing whatever rituals they were in charge of performing,” he added.

Link to ‘The Ivory Lady’

The Montelirio tomb was built around 4,875 years ago and used for 100 to 200 years. The grave is about 100 meters (328 feet) away from that of “The Ivory Lady,” whose skeletal remains were found buried with an elephant’s tusk, an ivory comb, a crystal dagger, an ostrich eggshell, and a flint dagger inlaid with amber and other valuable objects.

Initially, scientists thought the remains belonged to a man, but a July 2023 study that used a new molecular method involving a sex-specific peptide called amelogenin revealed the Ivory Man was in fact a woman. García Sanjuán coauthored the report with colleagues from the University of Seville and the University of Vienna.

Researchers used the same technique to identify the sex of most of the remains at the Montelirio tomb, García Sanjuán said, adding that the tomb was likely built by people who revered and claimed descent from the Ivory Lady. Unfortunately, the team has not been able to get high-quality ancient DNA samples from the remains to understand how the individuals buried there might be related.

“The Ivory Lady” was not initially buried with beads, although a number were later added to her grave, García Sanjuán added.

11 minutes per bead

As part of the study, García Sanjuán’s coauthor Samuel Ramirez-Cruzado, of the University of Seville, attempted to make beads using the same types of shell and tools available during that period. The length of time depended on the type and thickness of the shell.

On average it took him 55 minutes. However, the study authors reasoned that the craftspeople who made the beads during that time would have been more skilled than present-day archaeologists. With practice, the team estimated an individual bead would have taken an artisan 11 minutes to make.

Crafting the hundreds of thousands of beads found in the Montelirio tomb took a considerable amount of time and labor — akin to that needed to build a megalithic monument such as Stonehenge, García Sanjuán said.

“That means that this society had the resources available to it to divert people from the primary production of food to work on this,” he explained.

“These women were very relevant, socially relevant, otherwise no such investment of labor would have been devoted to them. Not only that, but these women were allowed to take these very costly, very expensive costumes with them into the grave.”

Andrew Jones, a professor of archaeology and classical studies at the University of Stockholm who wasn’t involved in the research, said the site was “extremely significant” and agreed that the bead collection was the largest documented cache in prehistory.

“We do see more or less equal treatment of men and women through the Neolithic and Copper Age in Europe, but this burial site is important for the unusual treatment of women,” Jones said via email. “There were clearly differences in the way men and women were honoured in burial, but it is hard to say whether this is reflected in social structure.”

García Sanjuán said he wanted to investigate whether the society at Valencina was a matriarchy during this period, a time when a more hierarchical society was beginning to emerge in Europe.

“Matriarchy has been a very controversial concept in history and anthropology, 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.”

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com