Friday, 27 June 2014

Military History Photo Friday: Grave of a Celtiberian Warrior

As I mentioned in my previous post, I just visited the recently remodeled Museo Arqueológico Nacional. I have a series about the museum's collections coming up on the Black Gate blog, but in the meantime here's an interesting reconstructed grave of a Celtiberian warrior.

The Celtiberians were a mix of Celtic and native Iberian cultures. This grave dates to the 3rd century BC and was found near Zaragoza. It's a cist marked by a stela and contains an iron sword with silver damascening, the remains of a baton, a spear, tweezers, and a razor. You have to look good in the afterlife! There was also a spindle whorl and a clay ball of uncertain use. A pot contained the warriors cremated remains.

4 comments:

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Odd to think one's remains might be on display one day, isn't it?

Sean McLachlan said...

I want to be mummified so I can scare future generations of school-age museum goers.

D.G. Hudson said...

Our remains could also end up in a mishmash of bones like in the Catacombs of Paris. This is much more elegant than that.

Will our cremated remains endure as they now are almost totally ash when someone is cremated. (is that the actual bones in that container or representative of the remains?)I know, morbid question. . .

Sean McLachlan said...

D.G.: They look like actual bones to me, but without opening up the case and checking I can't be sure. There's a political storm in North America about archaeologists keeping bones of native Americans. That controversy doesn't exist over here. The lack of a genocide keeps temperatures cooler.

Looking for more from Sean McLachlan? He also hangs out on the Civil War Horror blog, where he focuses on Civil War and Wild West history.

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