List of archaeologically attested women from the ancient Mediterranean region

The following very incomplete list features women from the ancient Mediterranean region and adjacent areas who are attested primarily through archaeological evidence. They are notable either as individuals or because the archaeological data associated with them is considered significant.

Archaeology and ancient women
Archaeological data preserves information about women of different classes and social standings, while also saving details that might not have been preserved in texts. Scholars have noted its importance in revolutionizing our understanding of ancient women and providing new theoretical frameworks for analyzing them, such as gender archaeology. Archaeological projects regularly uncover surprising information about ancient women on subjects as varied as motherhood to the historical inspiration for Amazons.

Archaeological data provides a wide range of information about ancient women. For example, bones reveal aspects of lived experience and family relations. Grave goods and funerary monuments record life histories, social roles, and religious affiliations. Evidence from sanctuaries documents relationships between mortal women and deities. House layouts indicate gendered spatial dynamics and work space. Correspondence and records on papyrus, wood, or clay tablets preserve information about economic histories, social networks, and emotional experience. Poems and hymns showcase women's contribution to ancient literature. Visual culture highlights narratives about women but also the way they are portrayed by male artists. Such archaeological evidence reveals valuable data not just about the individual woman herself, but also about women's history in ancient regions more generally. As many scholars have noted, archaeology provides an important corrective because ancient literary sources often emphasized elite women, were written by male authors, or the women were literary constructs rather than 'real' women.

Geographical scope and chronology
Although ancient women from the wider Mediterranean region have often been analyzed based on their individual cultures, as area-studies has impacted scholarly disciplines, researchers have recognized the wider shared context of the Mediterranean and its adjacent areas. It is now recognized that these various cultures have a connected history in antiquity. This reflects the dynamic cultural interactions resulting from trade and migration, wherein people of various cultures often lived amongst each other or came into contact at ports and emporia, as well as the pressures of warfare and imperialistic projects. 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. 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."

The 'ancient' period herein spans the Sumerian and Egyptian periods through Late Antiquity (the pre-Medieval).