LATEST ARTICLE: 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.
Amongst her unusual grave goods, was found 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.