MARDIN PROVINCE, TURKEY—According to a Newsweek report, a 12,000-year-old burial uncovered at the site of a Neolithic settlement near the Tigris River called Çemka Höyük may hold the remains of a shaman, or a person who had been buried by a shaman. Ergül Kodaş of Mardin Artuklu University said that the burial, found within a roundhouse structure, had been covered with a long, flat limestone block. Some of the burial had been damaged during road construction, but most of it was found intact, he added. Examination of the bones suggests that the individual was a woman who died between the ages of 25 and 30. The skull of an extinct species of cattle known as an aurochs was recovered from the burial, along with the bones of a small ruminant, the bone of a partridge, a canid bone, and a marten bone. “Considering the fact that the female individual and the animal bones were deposited together in one burial, we may assume some symbolic relations between the animals and the hunter-gatherer-fishers of Çemka Höyük, who had already embarked towards a sedentary life,” Kodaş said. The researchers explained that the burial was very unusual when compared to other burials in the area of the same age. They think the limestone slab placed over the grave may have been intended to keep the woman from returning as a “bad spirit,” while the skull of the powerful aurochs may have been put in the grave to guard her remains. To read about excavations of a woman buried in Germany some 9,000 years ago, go to "The Shaman's Secrets."
