The Prehistoric Hug

One of my favourite methods of procrastination lately has been Pinterest.  If you haven’t heard of this site, you may have been living under a rock.  Now usually, you find things like recipes, crafts, and pictures of Ryan Gosling on this site, but today I found something a little different...



Google map of Italy
A is Mantua, B is Verona



A picture of the ‘Lovers of Valdaro’ immediately caught my attention, and I needed to learn more.  These skeletons were uncovered in 2007, and have been dated to the Neolithic period, about 6,000 years ago.  The pair was found in a necropolis at Valdaro near Mantua, Italy – ironically close to Verona, the city of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.  The intertwined skeletons are male and female, and aged to 20 and 18 years old respectively.  There is no evidence of a violent death, so this may just be yet another tragic love story. 



This picture interested me because it is very different from the other burials we have been discussing in class.  Many of the burials we have talked about have been interesting because of the grave goods, or way in which they were buried (e.g. the Viking boat burials), but none quite like this.  This is also a rare find because most of the internments found from the Neolithic period are single internments, and if there are multiple individuals, they are not touching.   



The Lovers of Valdaro



So many questions can be raised just by looking this pair of skeletons.  Did they die in this position, holding each other for warmth on a freezing night?  Were they placed like this after death? Was the woman sacrificed at the man’s death? So many questions that can really never be answered.  I think this is the part of archaeology that frustrates me the most.  You become so engaged in learning about the lives of the people that get uncovered, but there is only so much you can infer from the burial.  There are so many stories that we will know fully know, however, finding these little insights is enough to peak my interest and keep me searching for more clues.    

Works cited:

Stampa, L.  2011.  6,000 Years Later, the 'Lovers of Valdaro' Need a Home.  Time: World.  http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2092970,00.html