A Zooarchaeological Approach to Feature Formation Histories at the Natufian Burial Cave of Hilazon Tachtit, Israel (12,000 cal BP)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Given its position on the doorstep of the Neolithic, the Natufian period was marked by significant socioeconomic change. A gradual shift to sedentism and ultimately, agriculture was accompanied by the increasing visibility of new spiritual practices. Hilazon Tachtit, a 12,000-year-old burial site in northern Israel, is home to the earliest shaman burial and funerary feast. The cave also includes the remains of 28 individuals interred in a variety of contexts. Some of these contexts are of clear anthropogenic origin, but others have more complex formation histories involving both anthropogenic and natural processes. Because the site is located inside a cave, it also served as a shelter for other species such as birds and carnivores that potentially impacted site deposits. For this paper, we carefully selected and applied a suite of faunal analyses to address the relative contribution of natural and cultural taphonomic agents to a variety of spatial contexts. Delving further into their formation histories will enable further investigation of each feature’s ritual significance.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53661