Free lecture in Victoria, Sunday May 19 at 10amNeolithic Halloween?: Plastered Human Skulls, Archaeology Origins of Religion in Near Eastern Neolithic Villages.
Sunday May 19th, 2019 at 10:00 am
Cedar Hill Rec. Center (Secular Humanist Association of Victoria)
Dr. Ian Kuijt
Professor of Anthropology
Notre Dame University, Notre Dame, Indiana
PhD (Harward), MA (SFU), BA (Lethbridge)
When early agriculturalists first started living in the world's oldest villages in the Near East they did something quite extraordinary: they started burying deceased family members under the floors of their single room houses, and to collect, curate, and store the skulls of their relatives. Since the excavation of Jericho in the 1950s researchers have debated why Near Eastern Neolithic villagers practiced skull removal and plastering. Recent field work has documented the wide-spread use of these practices some 10,500 years ago, and clearly identified that the elaborate manipulation of the dead was central to ritual and mundane life within the world's first agricultural villages. Human skulls, often found in groups, were occasionally covered in clay plaster to recreate eyes, noses, ears, and other facial features. It is clear that Neolithic people used skulls as heirlooms, and through such manipulation created tangible connections to the past.
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