Florence - If the studies will confirm that the two corpses found in a necropolis in England are those of two Amazons (the woman-warrior of the antiquity), the female call-up was known in the ancient Roman legions. The digging out have been executed in a III-IV century AD site and it have brought to light the rests of two «Amazons» buried with their horses. To this recovery Archeologia Viva magazine devotes an ample service.
The discovery has happened in Brougham, some time ago called Brocavum, in the Cumbria region, it is in nord-western England. Here, between III and IV century AD, the members of an auxiliary military department were cremated together with the inhabitants of the near village. The military department came from the Danubian provinces, as support of the Roman contingent settled in Britain. The most amazing recovery has been that of the rests of two «women warrior», native of the east Danubian earths, where exactly the Greek legends placed the myth of the Amazons.
They were between 20 to 40 years old and this would make to think that the two women came from a Roman auxiliary unity somehow connected with that localized in Brocavum.
Hilary Cool is nevertheless prudent, the English archaeologist, responsible of the excavations, says: «Nothing than we know about the Roman army induces us to think that women were accepted and it can be also that the rests of the swords, found near the bodies of the two Amazons, belonged to their husbands instead, even high rank officials. It has already happened that we find some Germanic culture widows that they take the weapons of their men to protect house and family in contingent situations».
The recovery of purified sepulchral holes with the fire before the dead deposition confirm the east-European origin of the military unity displaced in Brocavum. This practice was diffused in the zones beyond the Danube that correspond nowadays to the Balkans and Hungary.
Sources
Changelog
- (26/11/2005) Translation and insertion in the site
