There are times when you don't have to find the perfect tomb to discover interesting details about past cultures. With a single accessory, for example the loose pieces of a necklace found in the tomb of a boy (or a girl) in ancient Jordan, valuable information can be obtained about the relationship between life and death in the Neolithic.
The Ba'ja village was inhabited between 7400 and 6800 BC. The community included artisans, merchants, and high-level authorities. And all of them actively participated in the creation of a spectacular necklace made with more than 2,500 colored stones and shells from the Red Sea.
The piece, discovered in the grave of a boy of just eight years old, included two amber pearls, the oldest known to date in the Levante Mediterranean, according to researchers from the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) and the Université Côte d'Azur. 'Azur in an article published in the journal PLOS ONE.
Body adornments, archaeologists point out, are powerful symbols that communicate cultural values and personal identities, making them invaluable in the study of ancient cultures. Although there are occasions, as in this case, in which it is not easy to reach this conclusion.
Especially since, when it was found in 2018 in southern Jordan, all the pieces that made up this necklace from around 9,000 years ago were scattered over the boy's chest and neck, along with a double-drilled stone pendant and a ring of delicately engraved mother-of-pearl.
By analyzing their composition, craftsmanship, and spatial arrangement of these items, the researchers concluded that all the fragments belonged to a single ornament made up of several rows that had crumbled over time. So they decided that the best way to continue their study was to create a physical reconstruction that is now on display in the Petra Museum.
“It is a very elaborate work, with several rows that required a great technical, aesthetic, artisanal and economic effort for the period to which it belongs. It's spectacular," says Hala Alarashi, from the Archeology of Social Dynamics group at the Milà i Fontanals Institution for Research in the Humanities, in a statement.
The boy was buried in the fetal position in an elaborate grave under a house floor and multiple layers of sediment. To be gifted on his deathbed such an imposing necklace created in the Ba'ja itself but using exotic products from other regions—fossil amber was an unprecedented material at the time—highlights “the important social status of this individual” within from one of the first peasant communities in the Near East, say the researchers.
The ornament is not a mere union of beads, specialists say, but was a symbol of cohesion and unity in the face of the emotions shared by family members, relatives and even people from other towns who participated in the burial rite.
"The necklace cannot be seen only as belonging to the realm of death, but also to the world of the living, materializing a collective memory and shared moments of emotions and social cohesion," they conclude.
