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Making Sense of Social Behavior from Disturbed and Commingled Skeletons: A Case Study from Çatalhöyük, Turkey

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In the Neolithic of Anatolia, Turkey, intramural burial practices were common. Dating from 6000 to 7400 B.C.E., the large east mound of Çatalhöyük was a place both for the living and for the dead who were buried mainly under the floors of the houses. Single primary interments were the norm, and secondary depositions, although less common, offer insights into the range of possibilities for the deceased after interment. Çatalhöyük houses had preferred areas for interment, and through several burial events in the same locale, the primary inhumations were frequently disturbed for the burial of others, leaving the disturbed bones in the pit or transporting them elsewhere. As part of their burial customs, dismemberment of the deceased body, partially or fully decomposed, also occurred at Çatalhöyük. Once a grave pit was open, they sometimes retrieved bones, possibly of specific individuals, or placed other bones into the grave. The complicated post-interment movement of human bones by the Neolithic people required the use of six depositional categories in order to accommodate the specific conditions of interment and the post-interment disturbance, dismemberment, and bone retrieval that characterize the site. From the 1995 to 2010 excavations, an MNI of 384 was determined for the number of primary, secondary, and primary disturbed skeletons interred on the site. A high percentage of the human remains were tertiary bones or loose bones from the disturbed contexts of the primary interments. The actions of the Çatalhöyük people relative to the deceased post-interment were the major source of the abundance of commingled remains on the site. © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York. All rights are reserved.
... Archaeological evidence for deliberate modification of corpses and multistage burial processes has been found in many regions of the world, particularly in Mesolithic and Neolithic contexts (Aufderheide 2003;Boz & Hager 2014). Some of the earliest evidence comes from Taforalt in Morocco, where bones dating to 15 000-12 000 BP bear physical traces of dismemberment and defleshing (Mariotti et al. 2016). ...
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The diversity of human mortuary practices and treatments in prehistory is widely recognised, but our understanding of the purpose and manner of corpse manipulation in many regions is limited. This article reports on unusual aspects of funerary archaeology at the Neolithic site of Dingsishan, southern China. Anatomical consideration of cutmarks on human bones and the positioning of bodies and body parts within burials suggests that mortuary treatments at this site included strategic and systematic disarticulation, evisceration and excarnation. Rather than signalling social differences, these practices may have resulted from the very practical need to save space.
... Whatever the reason for that, it seems clear that the skeletal representation tends to indicate a case of secondary deposits.In contrast, the presence of skeletons in the primary position in the chamber (AlonsoDíez et al., 2015), together with evidence of manipulation and fragmentation, suggests that the funerary practices were carried out in the burial location. Indeed, the over-represented skeletal parts may correspond to residual elements left behind when the tomb was cleaned periodically, as documented in some collective burial sites(Boz & Hager, 2014;Robb, 2016). The absence of some anatomical elements may therefore attest to a perimortem treatment of the skeletons after their burial without necessarily implying their removal to a secondary deposit(Cauwe, 1997;Crubézy, 2021;Fowler, 2010;Laffranchi et al., 2023;Smith & Brickley, 2009).Megalithic tombs outside the Iberian Peninsula also reveal the accumulation of funerary practices even in the same regions. ...
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Several recent studies have demonstrated the complexity of funerary practices in megalithic burials. Mortuary taphonomy has proposed models to explain these practices, in which different actions, such as the generation of primary and secondary deposits, the selection and manipulation of bone remains, the extraction of materials from the grave, and so forth, can be identified. However, in the northern sub‐plateau of the Iberian Peninsula, the interpretation of funerary gestures related to megalithic tombs has not been systematically studied from the perspective of taphonomy. In this paper, we study two sites, Los Zumacales and La Lora, dated to the fourth millennium B.C. The analysis considers all the burial practices linked with megalithic tombs, with a focus on the social and natural processes involved in the formation of these complex mortuary deposits. In both examples, direct evidence of perimortem manipulation of human remains is documented by the presence of fresh fractures and cut marks in different long bones. As suggested in the discussion, this evidence may be related to secondary reduction practices following the initial deposition of the bodies.
... Pero no es menos cierto que en varios osarios se observa un patrón mayoritario de conservación de aquellos elementos más resistentes al paso del tiempo, como los huesos largos densos. Es posible que la tendencia a la sobrerrepresentación de estos se deba a su condición de elementos residuales de ciclos de enterramiento antiguos como los que, recurriendo al estudio de los dientes (Boz y Hager, 2014;Robb, 2016;Aranda et al., 2020), creímos advertir en Ciella. Y todo ello nos lleva a pensar que, tras cada ciclo de enterramiento, las limpias y reducciones debieron ser frecuentes, hipótesis que respalda la no excepcional recuperación de huesos pequeños de momentos anteriores a los ciclos principales (Aranda et al., 2020;Santa Cruz, 2022). ...
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RESUMENEl culto a los muertos es una práctica documentada en el ser humano desde tiempos prehistóricos. Uno de los fenómenos funerarios que revisten mayor popularidad dentro de la Prehistoria Reciente es el megalitismo, desarrollado en amplios territorios de Europa desde mediados del v milenio cal BC, y caracterizado por la construcción de grandes tumbas colectivas cuyo imaginario permanece en el folclore popular hasta nuestros días. En este trabajo se ofrece una interpretación de las prácticas funerarias que engloban dicho fenómeno a partir del estudio regional del conjunto megalítico de la Lora burgalesa, en el noreste de la Submeseta Norte española. Tras décadas de estudio, que en los últimos años se ha focalizado en el análisis de las colecciones esqueléticas, ha sido posible profundizar en el conocimiento de las sociedades que enterraban a sus muertos en estas tumbas. Palabras clave: megalitismo, prácticas funerarias, enterramientos colectivosTopónimos: Lora burgalesa, Submeseta Norte españolaPeriodo: Neolítico Final, Calcolítico ABSTRACTThe cult of the death has been a well-documented human activity since prehistoric times. A popular funerary phenomenon of Neolithic period is megalithism, developed in large areas of Europe from the mid-5th millennium BC. It is characterised by the construction of large collective tombs that have remained in popular folklore to the present day. This paper offers an interpretative approach to the funerary practices involved in this phenomenon from the regional study of the megalithic complex of la Lora burgalesa, in the northeast of the Spanish North Plateau. Decades of study, which in recent years focus on the analysis of skeletal collections, have provided us with a better knowledge of the societies that buried their ancestors in these tombs. 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... Given the extremely tight flexion of some of the articulated skeletons, Mellaart also believed that these represented secondary burials as well: "Evidently care was taken to preserve the skeleton intact in anatomical position…" (Mellaart 1967: 204). During much of the Hodder excavations, the observed commingling of skeletal remains under house floors was instead interpreted primarily as the result of successive disturbances to earlier primary interments by later ones, while the tight flexion of some skeletons was no longer interpreted as reflecting secondary burial practices (Andrews et al. 2005;Andrews and Bello 2006;Boz and Hager 2014). The prevailing interpretative model has been called into question once again, however, as recent excavations and a re-evaluation of previous findings have revealed substantial variation in skeletal completeness, preservation, articulation, and flexion among primary burials Haddow et al. 2021). ...
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