Excavation uncovers remains of high-status women at Stonehenge

[achamayou]

Jumping to conclusions about one's status based on how many trinkets they were buried with is a dangerous exercise.

Plenty of victims of human sacrifice were buried with a plethora of artefacts. Conversely, many of the world's most powerful lie in very unremarkable graves.

[Spooky23]

The trend today is to "discover" that women were warrior princesses and super powerful. The same facts would lead to very different conclusions 100 years ago. The 1916 version of his story would be that the king was very rich and gave nice stuff to his queen or concubines, long live the king.

Prehistorical "history" is more a reflection of what we think than what happened thousands of years ago.

[kafkaesq]

Jumping to conclusions about one's status based on how many trinkets they were buried with

Maybe they've like, already thought about this possibility, before making the determinations that they did? Like it's not just the presence of "stuff" but the kinds of stuff (and a whole range of other factors) which distinguish a high-prestige burial from a sacrificial burial.

Being as, you know, they've thinking about these things for years and years, and you haven't.

Jumping to conclusions about the competence of others (based on a snarky observation or two) isn't very helpful, either.

[brudgers]

Cited article at Discovery: http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/powerful-women...

[foxhop]

Do they think it was a mass burial or separate burials during that time period?

[douche]

Interesting, but not particularly surprising. I think a more interesting finding would be a culture where the remains of wives, mothers and other female relations of leaders and high-status individuals were not treated with some level of pomp and circumstance.