Stake attention in this memory
The image is a museum exhibit, located at the Museo Arqueológico Nacional de España, at 40.424, -3.689, in Madrid, Spain. The exhibit is a description of the use of metal objects for social differentiation in the Bronze Age. It includes an illustration of a human skull with a diadem and other ornaments, labeled "Cráneo con diadema de plata y otros adormos de la sepultura 62 del yacimiento de El Agar, Oihual de Luz Sint." (Skull with silver diadem and other ornaments from grave 62 of the El Agar site, drawing by Luz Sint). Below the illustration is a description in Spanish, followed by an English translation of the same. The text describes how Bronze Age societies visually marked their social differences through the use of prestige elements, and metal objects played a particularly important role in this respect. The text goes on to explain how bronze weapons, but only the highest-ranking people used precious metals such as silver and gold. This taste for ostentation extended to other exotic materials which came from distant lands and were therefore rare and very costly, such as ivory. Within this competitive framework, amassing wealth in the form of metal objects was the first step towards valuing and viewing them as a primitive form of money.
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