The Animal Woman:
Late Paleolithic Natufian Culture of the Southern Levant (Israel, Palestine and Jordan)
By Sarah Janes
The Grave of a Female Shaman
About 12,000 years ago, in the Hilazon Tachtit cave close to the Sea of Galilee — the small, lopsided body of a middle-aged woman was lowered into an oval-shaped grave. Her final resting place had been carefully cut into sterile breccia and plastered with mud. Laid on her side, her spine and pelvis following the curve of the egg-like hollow, her legs were folded inward at the knee. Ten large stones were placed directly on top of her head, pelvis and arms, perhaps to hold her in place. Congenital pathologies — including the fusion of the coccyx and the sacrum, and deformations of the pelvis and the lumbar and sacral vertebrae, mean that in life she would have had an asymmetrical appearance, an awkward gait and most likely a limp.
Her unusual grave goods included a complete articulated human foot, which had once belonged to an adult individual much larger than herself. Perhaps this was a form of sympathetic magic, to rid her of foot-dragging in an otherworld or afterlife.
She was also buried with 50 complete tortoise shells. The belly plates (plastron) of the tortoises were broken, but the carapaces intentionally undamaged. Many tortoise limb bones were found in the burial material, suggesting that there may have been a tortoise feast as part of this important woman’s funerary rites. The remains of these tortoises are part of a uniquely diverse assemblage of rare animal body parts, demonstrating significant investment of time and energy on the part of the deceased’s community. In this evidently deeply meaningful burial, we can track the spiritual and ritual innovations that evolved alongside a socioeconomic shift into settled, semi-sedentary village life.
As the people of the Natufian culture began domesticating animals and sowing the first seeds of agriculture in the Southern Levant, they also had more opportunity, space and time to begin cultivating and exploring personal interactions. Naturally, new social behaviours, habits and rituals developed, advancing an individual sense of self and facilitating new relationships between the inner and outer worlds. The body was more settled, but the mind and imagination continued to wander.
Animal Powers
Alongside the tortoise shells and bones, the burial niche at Hilazon Tachtit also contained the pelvis of a leopard (an extremely rare animal in Natufian burial contexts), the wing tip of a golden eagle and the radius and ulna of a wild boar (found aligned with the woman’s left humerus). Placed close to the ancillary foot were the skulls of two stone martens. There were also several articulated caudal vertebrae from the tail of an aurochs, the horn core of a male gazelle (of ritual significance and frequently seen in Natufian burials) and 3 cockle (Cerastoderma) shells (placed directly under the woman’s pelvis). A pointed gazelle bone tool, a pebble with 2 knapping scars, red ochre and part of a ritually smashed shallow basalt bowl — used for mixing ash or lime with water — comprise the human tool technology in the grave. It is widely believed that the ritualistic breaking of items, relegated them to paraphernalia of the dead. Once items had been used in a funerary context they would often be broken or abandoned.
Some scholars believe this cave burial to be that of a female shaman. Her grave goods and physical impairment are generally consistent with shaman burials cross-culturally.
The term shaman originates with the Tungus people of Siberia, but shamanic-type visionary adepts, able to communicate with the spirits of plants and animals - for healing, divination or other purposes, are recognised figures of great importance cross-culturally.
Certainly there can be no doubt that this woman was of great importance to her community and her burial appears to have been the first of many in the cave complex. Perhaps those that died after her benefitted from their proximity to her grave. Archaeological surveys of the site provide evidence for the cave later becoming a place of ritual importance, for community bonding, feasting and communing with the ancestors.
It was a regular practice at this time to reopen graves after a period and remove the bones of the deceased, particularly the skull, which may have been used in domestic rituals, re-buried or moved with group members when they travelled to a new area. Continuity of this activity is evidenced in the pre-pottery Neolithic B period that followed, and produced the famous Jericho (plastered) skull and the Neolithic and Chalcolithic proto-city settlement in southern Anatolia — Çatalhöyük.
Grave goods were of course common in even earlier periods. Neanderthals are thought to have buried their dead at times, and they may have developed mortuary rituals too. At the Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan, the controversial flower burial site has been suggested as an example. Burials discovered elsewhere in the Southern Levant region reveal an emphasis on the relationship between animal and human. At the pre-Natufian burial ground of ‘Uyun al-Hammam in Northern Jordan, graves contained an assortment of foxes, dogs, tortoise shells, horn cores, antlers, worked flint, bone tools and red ochre. In a Natufian burial discovered in the Hayonim Cave in the western Galilee a female was discovered decorated with a row of perforated fox teeth across her pelvis. Perhaps ancient people supposed the dead required the qualities these animals possessed for the next part of their journey. The protective tortoise carapace, the tenacity of foxes, the loyalty of the recently domesticated dog, the endurance of aurochs.
Especially in the case of the potential female shaman — an individual furnished with the most impressive array of power animal tokens, we can well imagine that these specific body parts of specifically symbolic wild animals could be seen to imbue her with the power and qualities they possessed in life. The careful placement of the wild boar’s powerful forearm against the woman’s humerus strongly suggests the intention to bring her some of the boar’s forcefulness or perhaps it represented her qualities in life, she may have been a belligerent defender of the young. This woman — advanced in age for the Natufian period at around 45 years old, is likely to have experienced pain in her hips and therefore the pelvis of the sinuous leopard represents the ultimate sympathetic magic salve.
Like many ancient naming traditions all over the world, I wonder if these people might have been given names according to the qualities they possessed, ones they developed, or those which were intended for them at birth. Qualities that reflected the qualities of the animals or the forces of the natural world that teemed around them. Perhaps this exalted woman’s mortuary menagerie of exotic beasts, hints at her accomplishments, her prestige and the excellent names she acquired during her lifetime. Perhaps these were the designations that eased her transition into the next life.
References:
A 12,000-year-old Shaman burial from the southern Levant (Israel)Leore Grosman, Natalie D. Munro, Anna Belfer-CohenProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Nov 2008, 105 (46) 17665–17669; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0806030105
BONE TOOLS AS THE PARAPHERNALIA OF RITUAL ACTIVITIES: A CASE STUDY FROM HILAZON TACHTIT CAVE. Belfer-Cohen, Anna, and Leore Grosman. Eurasian Prehistory (2017): n. pag. Print.
A Unique Human-Fox Burial from a Pre-Natufian Cemetery in the Levant (Jordan). Maher, Lisa A. et al. PLoS ONE 6.1 (2011): e15815. Web.
A Natufian Ritual Event. Grosman, Leore, and Natalie D. Munro.Current Anthropology 57.3 (2016): 311–331. Web.
The Social Role of Food in the Natufian Cemetery of Raqefet Cave, Mount Carmel, Israel. Yeshurun, Reuven, Guy Bar-Oz, and Dani Nadel. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 32.4 (2013): 511–526. Web.
