Another characteristic element introduced by sedentarization is the huge increase in the number of burials, which has led many authors to confer on the Natufians a religious aura.
It is true that many graves dating from the Natufian period have been found. At the time professors Anna Belfer-Cohen and Erella Hovers wrote their study on the burials in the Levant during the Paleolithic and the Natufian, 417 bodies had been excavated that had been buried during the 1,500 to 2,000 years that the Natufian lasted. This number starkly contrasts with the 59 unearthed bodies that belonged to the Paleolithic, a period spreading over 60,000 years! Besides, the burials from the Natufian period can be described as intentional, whereas nothing allows us to read a similar purpose in the way the dead were dealt with during the previous period, corpses being often left to the caprice of nature. Things changed when the camp became permanent, the community having to decide in which manner it would dispose of its dead.
Yet, not only did the Natufians use a great variety of burial methods, they also showed little respect for the body of the deceased, indicating the absence of any real funerary tradition. The excavations at ’Ain Mallaha (Palestine) and at Hayonim Hollow (Israel) show that some burial pits were dug in deserted dwellings and others outside the village. The depth of the pits was variable. Actually, the pits were not all meant to receive a body. The fact that, in ’Ain Mallaha, numerous empty pits were found next to pits containing several bodies led archaeologists to conclude that the pits had another function before being used to bury the deceased. This conclusion is supported by the fact that new pits were dug where empty pits already existed.
Besides, while it was the custom to bury several bodies in one pit at the beginning of the Natufian period – some pits being even reopened to add another body – the majority of the fifty pits recovered in Nahal Oren (Israel) was used for individual burials.
Furthermore, nothing reveals a particular disposition or treatment of the dead during the Natufian. It seems that the bodies have been buried in a chaotic way, with neither age nor sex of the deceased, nor the position or orientation of the body indicating that these communities were applying a specific custom. Even the fact that ten percent of the bodies were accompanied with ornamental objects (necklaces, bracelets, tiaras and other jewelry in dentalium) cannot be considered as intentional, because these objects were only found in young adults’ graves, more revealing of a custom practiced when these individuals were alive than of a mortuary ritual.
All in all, the total absence of unity in their funeral practices, the fact that very few burial sites had been marked, the great variations shown in treating the dead – from one village to the other, from one burial site to the other, from one pit to the other – lead to conclude that the Natufians did not inherit any particular burial tradition from the Paleolithic era. On the contrary, disposing of the dead was a problem specifically brought by sedentarization, and that each community had to solve it the best way it could. The Natufians were, in fact, the first people who had to bury their dead in a systematic manner over a long period. In addition, the little concern they showed for the body of the deceased indicates that they probably considered death as part of the cycle of life, the body being just a vehicle for a spirit that will reinvest another body later.
Important differences appear between the funeral practices at the beginning of the Natufian period, and those at its end, when less-favorable climatic conditions oblige these communities to return to a nomadic lifestyle. It is during the late Natufian that secondary funeral practices make their appearance, the custom of separating the skull from the rest of the body being one of its most distinctive features.
Primary and secondary funeral practices relate to the treatment that the deceased undergoes: the first one occurs immediately after death, whereas secondary funeral practices take place a long time after one’s death, and are inevitably ritualized. The funeral rites of the Bara (Madagascar), for example, include three stages: the body is buried; a big feast is organized after the harvest that follows the death; once the process of decomposition is completed, the body is exhumed and buried again. Another example is that of the Hokkien (Taiwan) who bury their dead in a coffin and wait six to seven years the auspicious moment (determined by an oracle) to unearth the body. The bones are cleaned and are buried again in a ceramic urn. In a Berawan village in Borneo, the last rites to conclude the funeral ceremony of a chief who died in 1940 had to be postponed year after year, the Japanese occupant requisitioning the rice that was set aside for the occasion. It finally took place in 1946.
Overall, mortuary practices introduced during the late Natufian became standardized during the Neolithic: bodies were buried individually, multiple burials reappearing later; pits remained very simple; ornaments and funeral objects were absent; bodies were often buried beneath the floor of dwellings; the skull was sometimes separated from the body, but was not always plastered (fig. 4).
Numerous variations exist, not only from one site to the other, but also within the same site. At Jericho (Palestine), we find bodies buried under floors or between walls. At ’Ain Ghazal (Jordan), some were thrown on a heap of residue, while others were buried under a dwelling, and others still were left in an open space. Some were buried with folded legs, others out-stretched.
Many variations also apply to the custom of decapitation. Some were decapitated and buried under a plastered surface; others were buried with their head on. The skull, stored in holes made in the walls or under the floor, was sometimes separated from the body at the time of death, sometimes a long time after [16]. [See Appendix Decapitations and Plastered Skulls]
Fig. 4: Plastered skull (PPNB). Kfar HaHoresh, Israel © Nigel Goring-Morris
Finally, a few sites possessed real cemeteries, like at Tell Aswad (Syria) where the last excavated levels of the Neolithic era reveal cemeteries constructed outside the village, just before the site was to be abandoned by its inhabitants. As for the site of Kfar HaHoresh (Israel), it seems to have functioned as a cemetery for several villages throughout the region. However, these sites remain exceptional. Furthermore, the introduction of cemeteries does not imply the establishment of strict funeral customs, as the description of the excavation at Tell Aswad plainly states: “The dead (around sixty) were buried in pits of varied types (plural or simple, in primary or secondary burial), with an unequal level of development, and they underwent varied treatments.” [France-Diplomatie, Tell Aswad]
Clearly, practices begun during the Natufian period were further developed after the interruption of the Younger Dryas, without ever finding an unity that would characterize them as a cultural feature of the Neolithic era in this region. In addition, the way agriculture and animal domestication propagated shows that communication between the different sites existed. However, these exchanges did not apply to funeral practices, implying that they did not possess a determining cultural value for these populations: every community dealt with its dead the best way it could, and even the apparition of cemeteries did not encourage the introduction of a really unified funeral culture. This absence of unity can be explained by the fact that most primitive cultures considered death as an intermediate stage in the cycle of life. Inherited from the Paleolithic, the notion of nature encompassing all things in an eternal cycle dominated the beliefs. Funeral rituals had for unique purpose to ensure a peaceful transition to the spirit of the deceased.
Eventually, most funeral customs of the Neolithic were abandoned by the second half of the seventh millennium (PPNC). Burials became extremely rare and of a great soberness, if compared with those of the PPNA. Decapitations, like all other secondary funeral practices, disappeared. It would be difficult to explain and justify the abandonment of those millennial traditions, if they had been, one way or the other, related to an ancestor cult in which every individual would find its origins, or to the notion of an “afterlife" as the one religions and philosophies of the Axial Age will introduce later [see Part Four]. [See also Appendix Spirits and Funeral Practices]