The following list features women from the ancient Mediterranean region and adjacent areas who are attested primarily through archaeological evidence.
Scholars have noted its importance in revolutionizing our understanding of ancient women and providing new theoretical frameworks for analyzing them,[1][2] such as gender archaeology.
Archaeological projects regularly uncover surprising information about ancient women on subjects as varied as motherhood[3] to the historical inspiration for Amazons.
[14] Correspondence and records on papyrus, wood, or clay tablets preserve information about economic histories, social networks, and emotional experience.
[19] Such archaeological evidence reveals valuable data not just about the individual woman herself, but also about women's history in ancient regions more generally.
[27][28] As such, it has become common for larger surveys and collections to group together women from the various Mediterranean cultures (including the territories of the Roman empire), Mesopotamia, and the Black Sea, as has been done in this list.
[29][30][31] For example, Budin & Macintosh Turfa note that dissatisfaction with treatments of the wider region led them to use an area-studies organization in their Women in Antiquity (2016): previous studies of the region's ancient women, they say, "consisted primarily of Greece and Rome, giving exceptionally short shrift to the rest of the ancient world—places like Mesopotamia, Egypt, Israel, Cyprus, Etruria, and the Celts.
[49] In Kanesh, Zizizi became a successful moneylender, providing support for the conclusion that “the tablets women wrote indicate that they served crucial roles in trading networks, managed finances and workers, and pushed against societal expectations...”[47] An archived tablet found at Kanesh, holds a letter from Zizizi to her parents, that was written during an outbreak of disease, and shows her expressing anguish during that time.
[58] The inscription names Aristaineta as the dedicator of the monument with four familial statues at the top to Pythian Apollo, and then lists her father, mother, son, and herself.
[citation needed] The curse tablet cache was excavated in-situ outside the Athenian Long Walls, near classical Xypete, slightly northwest of the harbor port, Piraeus.