While carrying out excavations near the city of Biharia, Romania, archaeologists working for the Tarii Crisurilor Museum in Oradea unearthed a prehistoric tomb dating back to ancient times, officials said. museum statement. The burial is that of a woman from the ancient Bronze Age Tiszapolgár culture, which occupied Romania and southeastern Europe between 4,500 and 4,000 BC.
The discovery of the Tiszapolgár woman’s tomb is remarkable enough. But what makes this extraordinary find unprecedented is the incredible collection of gold rings buried with her. A total of 169 gold rings were retrieved from the woman’s grave, discovered during excavations taking place along the planned route connecting Oradea with the A3 superhighway.
This elite Tiszapolgar tomb has the most gold ever!
Never before has so much gold been found in one burial since this era. Not only in Romania but also anywhere in Europe.
“It is an extraordinary discovery,” Gabriel Moisa, director of the Tarii Crisurilor Museum, told Romanian news agency Agerpres. Such a treasure no longer exists in Central and Eastern Europe.” [Bronze Age].”
Moisa notes that the woman in the tomb was clearly wealthy and that her desire for gold shows how long and how widely this precious metal has been valued in human society. Her impressive height and good dental condition provided further evidence that she had elite status.
The gold rings are small and light (all the rings weigh about 200 grams in total) and are designed to be worn in a woman’s hair. In addition to the rings, archaeologists also found two gold beads, a copper bracelet bent into a spiral shape, and about 800 polished beads made from bone (called mother-of-pearl beads).
The woman’s Tiszapolgár cultural burial revealed numerous small gold rings around her head. (Tarii Crisurilor Museum)
But the rings are certainly valuable finds. These extremely rare gold antiques were displayed via video screen during the museum’s press conference announcing the exciting find. The treasure will be put on public display at the museum once radiocarbon dating tests are carried out and DNA analysis of the woman’s skeleton is completed.
Archaeologist Dr. Călin Ghemiş, who coordinated the excavation of the ancient burial site and its treasure, believes that this is the most important trove of gold ever found at a Bronze Age site. He described the hoard of gold and other precious items as “extremely rich during the Bronze Age.” He estimated that the burial could date back about 6,500 years.
“The gold hoard was a sensational discovery for its time, as all the gold pieces from the Carpathian Basin totaled about 150 pieces,” Dr. Ghemis marveled. “Well, here there are over 160 pieces in just one warehouse.
Tarii Crisurilor Museum poster for the exhibition of burial artifacts of women from the Tiszapolgár culture. (Tarii Crisurilor Museum)
The gold rings were transported to the museum’s laboratory for cleaning and processing. Dr. Ghemis identified the metal used as alluvial gold, meaning it was obtained by washing and screening sand rather than from underground mining.
Travel on the archaeologist’s highway
The Tarii Crisurilor Museum collaborated with several other Romanian cultural and educational institutions to support the excavations that uncovered the Tiszapolgá cultural burial site. Excavations related to this ambitious project, which includes parts of the Oradea-to-A3 corridor that are still under construction, have produced finds from a variety of cultures and time periods.
Various discoveries are related to the Neolithic, Bronze Age, Roman era, medieval and 18th century cultures of Romania. During excavations near the village of Santandrei, just west of Oradea, the team that found the Bronze Age tomb also unearthed the remains of two houses containing ceramics from the second to the fifth centuries BC. two AD. They also unearthed a third- or fourth-century Sarmatian settlement near Biharia, along with the skeletal remains of a woman and several pieces of jewelry buried with her.
A selection of rare Tiszapolgar ceramics at the Bronze Age display of the Zrenjanin National Museum in Serbia. (Jozefsu / CC BY-SA 4.0 )
The diversity of the team’s discoveries highlights the rich cultural heritage that Romanian archaeologists have been able to uncover through exploratory excavations along the path of the ongoing A3 motorway project. perform. The exciting and groundbreaking discoveries made as a result of this project are comparable to those of British archaeologists who were granted similar access to the British countryside regarding to the more famous HS2 high-speed rail project.
Rediscover the long-lost culture of Tiszapolgár
The findings related to the Tiszapolgár culture are especially noteworthy, since people here lived more than 6,000 years ago and artifacts and ruins that can shed light on cultural beliefs and practices are difficult to find. Tiszapolgar.
The Tiszapolgár people dominated a large geographical area during the Neolithic or Bronze Age. Their territory spans the Great Hungarian Plain, the Banat, Transylvania, Eastern Slovakia and parts of Ukraine in central and southeastern Europe. What little is known about this culture comes from excavations of the Tiszapolgár tombs, and those discoveries suggest that the culture was somewhat warlike, given the fact that weapons were often buried in the tombs. of men.
The Tiszapolgá people’s passion for gold revealed by this latest discovery adds valuable data points to the accumulated trove of information. As the A3 project continues, Romanian archaeologists hope to discover more archaeological treasures related to these mysterious people, whose exploits and achievements have remained largely hidden as time passes. via.
