title: Uncovering a Community - Lifestyles and Death Ways at Late Neolithic Tell Sabi Abyad, Syria
Creators: name: Plug, Jo-Hannah
Publisher: name: University of Liverpool Repository
Year: 2028

description: The mortuary record of the Southwest Asian Late Neolithic is marked by a significant degree of regional, temporal, inter- and intra-site variation, with a broad range of behaviours co-existing in differing constellations at any given moment in time. This diversity has been attributed to a range of factors, including the effects of dynamic societal change, localised practices and beliefs, the cohabitation of different kinship groupings with their own origins and traditions, and a culture of improvisation. However, relatively few studies have attempted to deconstruct systematically localised and temporally specific mortuary behaviours throughout this long and dynamic period and vast region. The corpus of more than 300 human bone deposits found at 7th to early 6th millennium cal BC Tell Sabi Abyad, Syria, provides an excellent opportunity to approach the observed diversity from an explicitly site-based and temporal perspective. Mortuary contexts are often used to reconstruct aspects of daily life such as economy, subsistence, and social structure. Notably, the key aspect of such contexts - the human encounter with death - is frequently overlooked. Due to the universality of death as a human experience and the importance of mortuary rituals within many societies, the current thesis takes the social transition of death as evidenced through the treatment of the corpse as the central focus. Importantly, death and the treatment of the dead should not be considered as something distinct and separate from other aspects of society. To the contrary, as mortuary programmes are highly culturally contingent, it is essential to integrate evidence of such behaviour with broader knowledge of the societies in question. By bringing together settlement, multi-isotope, osteological and mortuary evidence, this thesis aims to evaluate to what extent aspects of life such as social groupings, lifestyles, and food-sharing practices formed structuring principles within mortuary behaviour. Furthermore, particular attention is given to temporality on different scales by constructing a robust chronology of the mortuary contexts and by incorporating taphonomic evidence through the application of an archaeothanatological approach. This study confirms the rich diversity of mortuary behaviour at Tell Sabi Abyad throughout the 7th and early 6th millennium cal BC. Whereas the detailed deconstruction of the mortuary sequences indicates strong normative behaviour in each step, most pathways incorporated alternative options at different stages. These included the manipulation of corpses prior to burial and the revisiting of buried bodies at later stages. Furthermore, although the dominant use of the cemetery resulted in a degree of separation between the living and the dead, certain individuals, or parts thereof, were kept close through protracted mortuary sequences and burial in and amongst houses. Importantly, understandings of the appropriate pathways in the social transition of death were not static but altered and reinvented throughout the site’s long history. Factors intersecting with these dynamic conceptions of death appear to have included changing lifestyles, variable interactions with the landscapes, and the influx of new community members and ideas. Although the burial record shows overall adherence to broader Neolithic symbolic practices and themes, such as the use of fire and animal-human linkages, there is also clear evidence for localised traditions and behaviours. This thesis argues that the exceptional diversity of death rituals observed for the Late Neolithic can only be understood through the detailed deconstruction of mortuary evidence and the consideration of the complex and unique interplays of death ways with cultural, social, external, and temporal factors on a site-to-site basis.