Uncovering a Community: Investigating Lifestyles and Death Ways at Neolithic Tell Sabi Abyad, Syria

As items buried in a closed, ritual context, pottery selected as grave goods represent the only unequivocal depositions of intact pottery vessels identified so far at the Late Neolithic site of Tell Sabi Abyad, Syria. In the selection of pots as burial goods the Late Neolithic community of Tell Sabi Abyad adhered to more widely understood notions regarding human burial, but also to local ideas and customs concerning the treatment of the dead. Whereas the use of simple, small pottery vessels as burial items can be seen as a wider regional trend, the association with particular groups of individuals appears to have been driven by more localized value systems. It becomes clear that the Late Neolithic notions of the afterlife, and the relevance of ceramic containers within burial contexts at Tell Sabi Abyad, were built up of various, overlapping cultural practices and meanings relating to wide-ranging relations engaged in by the late Neolithic inhabitants, including the regional, communal and personal.

This article presents the remains of a T-shaped burnt building found in trench V6 in Operation II at Late Neolithic Tell Sabi Abyad, Syria. The burnt building closely resembles the so-called Burnt Village excavated earlier at Tell Sabi Abyad in Operation I, level 6, but is slightly older: 6050-6020 BC. Many objects were discovered in the ruins of the burnt building, but a most striking discovery was the burial of a young woman. In this paper we present the V6 burnt building and its remains. We argue that the building was purposely set ablaze as part of a ritual related to fi re and death.

Late Neolithic graves excavated at Tell Sabi Abyad, Syria, have been dated by radiocarbon. This series of 46 human bone dates represents a sequence of cemeteries that is analyzed by Bayesian methodology. The dates show continuous use of the northeastern slope of the mound as a burial ground throughout the Initial Pottery Neolithic to the Halaf period.

Late Neolithic graves excavated at Tell Sabi Abyad, Syria, have been dated by radiocarbon. This series of 46 human bone dates represents a sequence of cemeteries that is analyzed by Bayesian methodology. The dates show continuous use of the northeastern slope of the mound as a burial ground throughout the Initial Pottery Neolithic to the Halaf period. DOI: 10.2458/56.17446