The dead and the plastered.

The dead and the plastered

Excavations at 'Ain Ghazal--a site in present-day Jordan that dates back to Neolithic, or New Stone Age, times--have yielded what investigators say is a "rare symbol of early ceremonial treatment of the dead"--a plastered human skull.

This nearly 9,000-year-old skull of an adult male demonstrates the sophistication of artisans who lived in the prehistoric village, report Alan H. Simmons of the University of Nevada-Reno and his colleagues in the spring JOURNAL OF FIELD ARCHAEOLOGY.

Although its forehead and lower jaw are missing, the skull's eyes, nose, right cheek and an ear opening are coated with plaster carefully molded to form facial features. A tooth socket is filled with a plaster plug. The specimen contains none of the painted decorations observed on plastered skulls previously found at a few other Middle Eastern Neolithic sites. Four cut marks at the back of the cranium suggest the skull was stripped of its flesh after death, say Simmons and his co-workers.

The skull turned up in 1988 in a pit beneath a house, reflecting a common burial practice in the intensively studied village (SN:3/3/90, p.142). Its wide-open plaster eyes and large, slightly upturned nose with long, thin nostrils are stylistically similar to the faces of plaster statues previously unearthed beneath houses at the Jordanian site, the scientists note.

The symbolic meaning of the statues and the plastered skull remains unknown. Endowing a skull with human features molded from plaster may have been a way to pay homage to the deceased, particularly to revered members of the community, Simmons and his colleagues suggest.

Whatever its significance to the prehistoric inhabitants of 'Ain Ghazal, "the skull stands as silent testimony to the power of ritual at a time when humankind was still in the experimental stages of settled village life," the researchers conclude.