Imported bling shows ancient ‘ Lady’ was fashionista

Her jewelry indicates trade across Europe

A fabulous hoard of jewelry and unprecedented objects recovered from the grave of a highranking Celtic lady who lived more than 2,500 years ago hint at far- flung trade across Europe.

Among the treasures in the grave were golden brooches, an elaborate gold- and- amber necklace and a long gold earring that looks like 21st- century club bling. The site, located in what is now southwestern Germany, is the earliest such “rich grave” of a Celtic woman and one of the few like it to have escaped looting, researchers said.

“We were surprised to find the grave goods were still there, even the gold, waiting for us,” said Dirk Krausse, state archaeologist of Baden- Württemberg in Germany and co- author of a new study about the finds. The intact site, he said, “opens a window through which we can see the past.”

The grave of the Lady, as the researchers call her, wasn’t the only repository of gold. Buried nearby was a 2- to 4- year- old girl, probably the Lady’s daughter, researchers reported in the latest

Antiquity. The girl’s gold brooch, a child- sized version of the Lady’s, signals “the highest social rank,” Krausse said. The Lady herself, who was in her 30s, may have had a ritual or magical role, Krausse said.

Whatever her place in Celtic society, the Lady was buried in sight of the first city north of the Alps. Known as Heuneburg, it was a trade center that covered some 250 acres — more than twice the size of Vatican City — by 600 BC. It boasted exotic mudbrick architecture similar to buildings in far- off Phoenicia on the eastern Mediterranean, and residents enjoyed luxuries from across Europe thanks to commerce on the Danube River.

Imports account for many of the Lady’s fine possessions, such as her bracelets, carved of English jet, and a 2- inch amber pendant, probably fashioned from amber collected near the Baltic or North Sea.

The Lady’s grave shows that people, as well as materials, flowed in and out of Heuneburg. Her gold beads were decorated with a technique typically used by the Etruscans, the people who lived across the Alps.

YVONNE MHLEIS, OFFICE FOR CULTURAL HERITAGE Gold brooches, top, were taken from the grave of the Celtic Lady, who was buried in 583 B. C. in what is now Germany, and gold earrings belonged to a little girl buried nearby, who was probably her daughter.