Deep Inside a Spanish Cave, Roman Women May Have Worshipped a Mysterious Goddess

Best known for its Paleolithic art, Valencia’s Cova de les Dones also contains a Roman sanctuary where researchers say women appear to have played an active role in the worship of a female deity

Sonja Anderson | Daily Correspondent

August 28, 2026 2:43 p.m.

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Spain’s Cova de les Dones has surprised archaeologists time and again, revealing traces of human activity spanning thousands of years.

In the 1960s, archaeologists identified Iron Age materials at the site, leading to its classification as an Iberian cave sanctuary. Five years ago, another team discovered that the cave contained Paleolithic art—some of it apparently more than 24,000 years old. Last year, they announced that one of the cave’s chambers contained at least 15 Roman inscriptions and a first-century coin from the reign of Emperor Claudius.

Now, following further investigation, researchers have identified the chamber as a Roman sanctuary where women appear to have taken an active role in the worship of a female deity some 2,000 years ago. The team has now documented at least 110 Latin inscriptions on the chamber's walls and ceilings—the largest known concentration of Latin inscriptions in a Roman cave sanctuary, according to the researchers.

Five of the inscriptions are votives, tributes dedicated to a goddess reverentially called Domina, or “the Lady,” says researcher Silvia Alfayé Villa, a historian at the University of Zaragoza, in a translated statement from the University of Alicante. Three of them also contain the term MALACI, which Alfayé Villa describes as a previously unknown designation for a goddess. Its precise meaning—and its possible connection to the cave’s abundant water—remains under investigation.

The experts identified several female names among the inscriptions, says researcher Virginia Barciela, an archaeologist at the University of Alicante, in the statement. They also discovered jewelry, chalice-shaped vessels, ceramic fragments, animal bones and spindle whorls on the surface of the chamber, which is located more than 650 feet from the cave entrance.

The researchers’ new findings have provided clues about who used the cave and how they may have worshipped there. Barciela says the spindle whorls, possibly offerings of textile-working tools, fit the inscriptional evidence for women’s active participation in the sanctuary.

The fact that five of the inscriptions refer to the same deity, and that they are concentrated in a defined area far from the cave's entrance, suggests that the chamber was a space for an organized cult, says researcher Sergio García-Dils, an archaeologist at the National University of Distance Education in Seville, in the statement.

Cova de les Dones lies near Millares, a small inland town in Valencia’s mountainous interior, about 40 miles southwest of the city of Valencia.

Although its Iron Age artifacts had drawn researchers’ attention by the 20th century, the cave’s wall art wasn’t discovered until 2021.

In 2023, a team led by Aitor Ruiz-Redondo, an archaeologist at the University of Zaragoza, recorded more than 110 graphic units, including paintings and drawings. Many depict animals, like red deer, wild horses and oxen. The paintings were created with red clay applied to the cave walls, where later mineral deposits helped preserve some of the ancient images.

Researchers identified the artwork as Paleolithic through stylistic analysis and other archaeological clues, although some of the marks are more difficult to date with certainty. One of them “was covered by a bear scratch,” Ruiz-Redondo told Smithsonian magazine in 2024. Specifically, it was overlapped by a claw mark made by a cave bear, a species that disappeared from Europe around 24,000 years ago.

The cave's name, Cova de les Dones, or ‘Cave of the Women’, is documented in an 18th-century account by the naturalist Antonio José Cavanilles. Barciela says the name may preserve an ancient reference to the presence of women—or female entities—at the site.

Sonja Anderson is a daily correspondent for Smithsonian magazine who covers art, archaeology and culture, from newly discovered artifacts to the latest art heists.