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CAIS ARCHAEOLOGICAL & CULTURAL NEWS

08 October 2005

Studying the artifacts buried with female corpses in Kharand ancient graveyard, archaeologists have come to the conclusion that the more buried items alongside the women, compared to the graves of men, show the women’s privileged status in ancient times.

“The burial ceremonies gifts were a part of death rituals in ancient times. The number of gifts, which are mostly tiles, was higher in the graves of women,” said Abdolmotaleb Sharifian, head of the excavation project in the Kharand archeological site.

The ancient Kharand graveyard is located in a 51 kilometer distance of Semnan. The archaeological site belongs to the Iron Age (3450 to 2550 years ago).

“The big difference in the number of gifts in men’s and women’s graves can imply many things, including that the in the ancient Persia women were considered the privileged,” he indicated.

According to Sharifi, the only signet found in the site belonged to a woman, which shows that women held the key status in the families and were responsible for economic matters.

The difference in number of the gifts in the graves is so huge that the archaeologists can discover the sex of the corpse even before checking out the body.

The fact that gifs in women’s graves are much more than men’s is common in other graveyards of Iron Age. That depicts the privileged status of women in the era which was the result of women’s engagement in economic matters.

Kharand 3000 year-old graveyard is a unique one of its kind because of its untouched remains and skeletons. The similarity between the artifacts found in the graves with the items excavated in Mazandaran, north of Iran, brought experts to the conclusion that the answers to the mystery can be found by exploration of the migration routes of nomads. Therefore, a team of archaeologists of Mazandaran, Gilan, and Semnan provinces are going to begin their studies in the south coast of Caspian Sea soon.

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