Containers full of jewelry, weapons and tools found in a 2,800-year-old necropolis in central France

Posted:

26 2021 20:25 GMT ago

The objects include bracelets, pendants, scissors, sickles, swords and axes of bronze, apparently buried as an offering to ask for divine help.

Archaeologists from the University of Toulouse (France) have discovered several large ceramic vessels containing numerous jewels and weapons dating from around 2,800 years, reports the Pour la Science site.

The discovery took place during excavation work near the town of Gannat, in a ravine of the Sioule Valley in the department of Allier, in the center of the Gallic country.

At the place there was a settlement of the ballot box culture, an archaeological horizon that extended across much of Europe between the 13th and 8th centuries BC. C. and which was characterized by funeral rites based on the burial in the earth of ceramic urns with cremated remains, forming vast necropolises.

Experts have recovered hundreds of artifacts placed in the layered vessels. At the bottom of the containers, they found wrist and ankle bracelets for adults and children, as well as pendants.

Above them, they found agricultural tools, crafts and weapons, such as sickles, scissors, spear points, swords and blades, as well as equestrian equipment and ornaments for cars.

Finally at the top they found bronze axes, whose intact condition suggests that they were not used as weapons, but rather served as “currency” of exchange.

Experts have pointed out the good state of conservation of all these elements and conjectured that they would have been buried as an offering for divine help during the establishment of a colony or before migrating to another.

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