Human engagement with #death led to a variety of #mortuary practices. In #archaeology we're usually confronted with their final result, but often left with only vague ideas of underlying concepts.

This makes peculiar present #funeral practices valuable sources. A short thread.
Consigning the physical remains of a deceased to scavenging birds is an indeed interesting concept:

Transporting the dead body (and undead soul?) into an afterlife - figuratively ('flying away with the bird') and literally (being eaten rather than decaying).
Personally, I find this particularly interesting due to my own work and research regarding the so-called #PrePotteryNeolithic in the #Levant and #Mesopotamia - which also has produces some hints at a remarkable #mortuary #ritual.
Best known examples might be the famous Neolithic plastered human skulls from sites like #TellEsSultan ( #Jericho): Specific individual's heads were given back a face with gypsum and shells and paint - and then apparently displayed.

https://blog.britishmuseum.org/facing-the-past-the-jericho-skull
This, plastering and painting, of course only could have been done to the bare bones once there was no flesh anymore - hinting at a later exhumation of bodies ... or #excarnation ('defleshment') in the course of #burial #ritual.
Interestingly, there are #Neolithic contexts and physical traces on bones which could hint at, as Hodder & Meskell put it in their article in Current Anthropology 52(2), 2011, "a concern for the processes of #bodily #articulation or #disarticulation".

http://radicalanthropologygroup.org/sites/default/files/pdf/class_text_136.pdf
The complex PPN #iconography adds to this. A recurring motive at #GöbekliTepe, #CatalHöyük and others e.g. are depictions of birds (e.g. #vultures) and separated human heads - or headless bodies:

https://www.dainst.blog/the-tepe-telegrams/2017/05/17/a-separated-head-between-animals-on-a-stone-slab-from-goebekli-tepe
Furthermore, among the bones of birds found at #GöbekliTepe, necrophagous species (i.e. feeding on corpses) like vultures and corvids (crows, ravens etc.) were dominating - much more than usually expected in contemporary settlements ...

https://books.google.de/books?id=CdnECgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA72&ots=p-zf2UTP3h&dq=notroff%20et%20al%20gathering&hl=de&pg=PA65#v=onepage&q&f=false
... so, either Neolithic hunters really had a thing for crows and ravens (feathers?) - or something seemed to have attracted quite a large number of such birds to this site high up in the mountains.
And while I of course do not intend to equal modern-day #SkyBurial in Asia with prehistoric #funerary practices, analogies like this do provide a useful frame to evaluate our archaeological data along the large variety of human responses towards death - and #funerary diversity.
Short addition to this thread: Speaking of funerary diversity - I just had the pleasure following an interesting summary of "25 years of research at #Catalhöyük by Ian Hodder earlier today and since he was touching the fascinating topic of the complexity of burials there ...
Hodder again mentioned the removal of #skulls from #burials, their replastering and circulation among the settlement.

This and the practice of ' #secondary' (i.e. re-) burial seems a particular phenomenon of the later phases pf occupation at #Catalhöyük.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318042962_Skull_Retrieval_and_Secondary_Burial_Practices_in_the_Neolithic_Near_East_Recent_Insights_from_Catalhoyuk_Turkey
Even more interesting (and the reason I ... uh, pun ... dig up this thread again) was his description of evidence for #delayed #burial and the special treatment of bodies to keep them in anatomical position (e.g. wrapping bundles).

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289525849_Living_above_the_Dead_Intramural_Burial_practices_at_Catalhoyuk
Also #smoking was a particularly mentioned possibility for such special treatment. And yes, there are ethnographic analogies for this practice too - e.g. the smoked #Anga #mummies from #PapuaNewGuinea (warning: EXPLICIT photos).

https://www.livescience.com/50948-photos-smoked-mummies-papua-new-guinea.html
You can follow @jens2go.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: