Household and Death. Feasibility Study for the Holistic Case Study Baja on Social Commodification and Identity in the Late Aceramic Neolithic of the Southern Levant
Final Report Abstract
The aim of the feasibility study was to evaluate material evidence potentials for active households and burials at Ba’ja, thereby enriching the existing material base from previous seasons for the intended "deep Knowledge" project. In order to examine these potentials, the layers of the lower stratigraphy in Area C were chosen: They did not only confirm expectations of relevant findings for the study’s topic: Unexpectedly, the lower layers at Ba`ja have proven to be very rich in inhumations and evidence for intentionally buried households, suggesting a much greater complexity of our research questions. For the first time, and after many seasons of excavations, evidence suggested that we have intra-mural burial grounds at Ba’ja and not just sub-floor burials, and that households were subject to be buried like humans. In detail, formally buried household inventories - mostly exposed to fire - can be reported from above Area C’s grave horizon which was dug through the lowermost floors into the sterile layers underneath the site. The two graves excavated in 2016 were formal single and double burials, contrasting with the hitherto unique collective burials of Ba’ja (repetitively used small rooms for inhumations with up to 15 individuals and their burial goods: mostly young and very young children). The 2016 stone cist burial of an elite person was richly furnished with grave goods (flint dagger, upper arm rings, pestle, etc.), during two acts of grave goods deposition; it provided insights into an increasing hierarchisation at Ba’ja. The pit burial of an empathically related baby and infant had no grave goods; it announced the extended children’s burial ground found during 2018 and 2019 in the neighbouring rooms. Active households at Ba’ja mean ordinary domestic subsistence activities associated with household production in the sense of workshops (e.g. Ba’ja’s famous sandstone rings). This season confirmed an earlier impression that households at Ba’ja can also be attested as intentional formal and non-formal ritual depositions, respectively room fills, witnessing also formal transformations of "terminated" household inventories. Altogether and up until now four evidence types of households could be identified for Ba’ja: inventories of active households (rare), intramural ritual depositions (transformed) household inventories and events (occasional), intramural non-formal disposals of household inventories (common), and extra-mural disposals of household inventories/ refuse dumps (rare). Aside the known sherds of large and rather crude vessels made from marl and/or clay with chaff and/or herbivore dung as well as grit (including recycled plaster) temper, the 2016 evidence of small bowls with heavy and coarse grit temper was astonishing: Does Ba`ja provide evidence of a halted prelude of pottery production in South Jordan? In addition, and as enigmatic as this, a locus with a large number of heated/ burnt copper minerals challenges ideas on the earliest use of copper minerals. Resumed discussions on earthquakes affecting the Ba`ja occupations enforced their meaning for the ontology of living in Ba`ja. In conclusion: The feasibility study elaborated the high potential of the site to approach – within holistic and transdisciplinary frameworks – "deep knowledge" questions related to the early Neolithic ethos from inside beginning village life, helping to understand early Neolithisation from the evolutionary micro-perspective. Especially the intramural "burying of the terminated" as acts of memory, respect, and possibly fear, seem to have ruled the cognitive spheres of the Ba`ja inhabitants' ethos: They kept (and controlled?) the otherworldly in their habitation spheres. Life and death in Ba`ja wasn’t just a cognitive system; all spatial, socio-economic and ritual practices and expressions met in interacting household and death value systems aiming to develop further the hierarchies of settled life.
