Prehistoric women were fashionable, who knew?

A headline can make or break an article. An article posted on MSNBC.com recently caught my attention based on the headline, “Prehistoric women had a passion for fashion.” In Plocnik, Serbia, excavations point to a sophisticated metropolis with a taste for art and fashion. The article describes how archaeologists recently uncovered a Neolithic figurine of a girl in a short skirt and ornate top. The tribe lived between 5400-4700 BC at what is now Plocnik and knew about trade, handcrafts, art, and metallurgy. A thermal well might be evidence of Europe’s oldest spas, and this tribe pursued beauty by making clothes and jewelry. The most significant find, however, was the discovery of a sophisticated metal workshop with furnace tools including a copper chisel, which might prove that the Copper Age started in Europe at least 500 years earlier than believed. I don’t normally read articles on archaeology, but this one caught my attention solely because of the headline. A few words hooked me into reading a whole article about the Copper Age, which I actually thought was pretty interesting.