Caroline Tully wrote:
Cheers - interesting -
why would they say she's a shaman - does she have Siberian connections??
: )
Mogg
> <http://www.livescience.com/history/081103-shaman-grave.html>:
>
> Female Shaman's Grave Loaded with Goodies By Jeanna Bryner, Senior Writer
>
> posted: 03 November 2008 03:45 pm ET
>
> A 12,000-year-old burial site in Israel contains offerings that include 50
> tortoise shells and a human foot, and appears to be one of the earliest
> known graves of a female shaman.
>
> The remains were discovered in a small cave called Hilazon Tachtit, which
> functioned as a burial site for at least 28 individuals. The grave woman,
> likely a shaman, was separated from the other bodies by a circular wall of
> stones.
>
> Other grave goodies buried within that wall included tail vertebrae from an
> extinct type of cattle called an auroch, skulls from two stone martens
> (members of the weasel family), bony wing parts from a golden eagle, the
> forearm of a wild boar and a nearly complete pelvis from a leopard.
>
> "What was unusual here was there were so many different parts of different
> animals that were unusual, that were clearly put there on purpose," said
> researcher Natalie Munro, a zooarchaeologist at the University of
> Connecticut.
>
> Great pains were likely taken long ago to collect the animal remains for the
> grave, not to mention the long trek that must have been made from the
> closest domestic site at the time, about 6 miles (10 km) away, say the
> researchers.
>
> This care along with the animal parts point to the grave belonging to both
> an important member of the society and possibly a healer called a shaman,
> the researchers conclude in their research published this week by the
> journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Such healers
> mediate between the human and spirit worlds, often summoning the help of
> animal spirits along their quests, according to the researchers.
>
> Life was tough
>
> The woman was about 45 years old when she died and based on measurements of
> the skull and long bone, she stood at about 4.9 feet
> (1.5 meters). Wearing of her teeth and other aging signs on the bones
> suggested the woman was relatively old for her time. And she likely had a
> limp or dragged her foot, the researchers speculate, due to the fusion of
> the coccyx and sacrum along with deformations of the pelvis and lower
> vertebrae.
>
> The human foot lying alongside the body came from an adult individual who
> was much larger than the women.
>
> "What's interesting is it's only the foot," Munro told LiveScience.
> "She hasn't been disturbed, but a part of another human body was definitely
> put into the grave. It could be related to the fact they were moving body
> parts around sometimes, but we don't know why."
>
> At least 10 large stones had been placed on the head, pelvis and arms of the
> buried individual, which the researchers suggest helped to protect the body
> and keep it in a specific position, or possibly to hold the body in its
> grave.
>
> Scattered around the body and beneath it were tortoise shells. Before
> arranging the shells inside the grave during the burial ritual, humans
> cracked open the tortoise shells along the reptiles' bellies (so as not to
> crack the back part of the shell) and sucked out the meat, possibly for
> food.
>
> "So they took the insides out by breaking the belly, but they left the back
> intact and that was probably meaningful," Munro said.
>
> Rituals begin
>
> The woman was part of the Natufian culture, a group of hunter-gatherers who
> lived from 15,000 to about 11,500 years ago in the area that now includes
> Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
>
> The finding is particularly interesting since the Natufians were on the
> verge of becoming a more sedentary, farming society.
>
> Finding an early shaman grave during this transition makes sense, Munro
> said.
>
> "With the beginning of agriculture we seem to see an intensified ritual
> behavior," Munro said. "When things change dramatically, people tend to try
> to reestablish the legitimate order of things by using ritual and religion
> to deal with change."
>
> She added, "These people are starting to live in more permanent communities;
> they're in more contact with one another from day to day.
> It's not surprising that we start to see evidence for those ritualized
> behaviors at this point in time."
>
>
>
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