Villena's treasure is stolen, one of the most valuable of the Bronze Age
The thieves took it at dawn from the Archaeological Museum of Villena, in the Alt Vinalopó
BarcelonaThis morning the Villena treasure, one of the most valuable Bronze Age collections in Europe, was stolen from the Villena Archaeological Museum (Alt Vinalopó). The Civil Guard and the Judicial Police are already investigating the theft, as confirmed by sources from the Alicante municipality to the Efe agency. The museum alarm sounded at 5:16 a.m., according to the same sources, who are still unaware of the real impact of the theft.
The Villena treasure is a goldsmith collection dated around 1000 BC, mainly consisting of gold pieces. Among others, it includes 11 bowls, 28 bracelets, and three bottles; it also comprises three silver bottles, two mixed pieces of amber and gold, and another of iron and gold, and a final iron bracelet. According to the museum on its website, it is considered the most important collection of gold tableware from the Bronze Age, along with the treasures from the royal tombs of Mycenae, in Greece.
Archaeologist José María Soler and his collaborators discovered it in 1963 inside a vessel hidden in the bed of a dry riverbed in the municipality of Villena, a town of about 35,000 inhabitants located in the Alt Vinalopó region, in the northern interior of the province of Alicante. In October 1963, the first piece was discovered, a bracelet that could not be identified as jewelry at the time. Among the material that had been deposited for a construction project on Ferriz street, this bracelet was seen, although at first, they thought it might be a part of a truck's engine.
The construction manager, Ángel Tomás, left it on display waiting for someone to come for it, mistaken for a truck bearing, but fortune would have it that it ended up in the hands of local jeweler Carlos Miguel Esquembre, who turned to the expert eye of the director of the Municipal Archaeological Museum, José María Soler. This allowed for excavations to begin in the dry riverbed, which after several days, on December 1st, led to the most important archaeological find of the Bronze Age in all of Europe: a collection of 59 pieces of gold, silver, iron, and amber weighing almost 10 kilograms.
