A “shaman” burial from the PPNA settlement of Çemka Höyük, Upper Tigris Basin, Turkiye

Abstract

Knowledge of the burial customs of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) in the Near East is increasing. Particularly, lately a large number of burials and skeletal remains have been unearthed in the Upper Tigris Basin, thanks to a number of new excavation projects in recent years. The newly revealed findings indicate that PPNA burial customs varied considerably in the region from site to site. However, the 10th millennium BCE burial ÇH 2019/05 at Çemka Höyük shows as well that there are also different burial practices with in settlements. ÇH 2019/05 belongs to a female individual, accompanied by animal skeletal elements, who appears to may have been a shaman or at least had been buried by someone practicing ways associated with what we understand nowadays as animism or shamanism. Hence, the burial may represent one of the earliest known examples of its kind in an Anatolian Neolithic context.