Clay Beads from Southwest Asia Dated to 15,000 Years Ago

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL—According to a statement released by Hebrew University of Jerusalem, clay ornaments, including 142 beads, pendants, and a tiny, child-sized ring, have been discovered in Southwest Asia. Laurent Davin of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem said that the ornaments, recovered from four different sites, were made by Natufian hunter-gatherers some 15,000 years ago. “This discovery completely changes how we understand the relationship between clay, symbolism, and the emergence of settled life,” Davin said. The beads were shaped into cylinders, disks, and ellipses. Fibers preserved on some of them show how they were strung and worn. A number of the unbaked clay objects had then been coated in a thin layer of liquid clay colored with red ocher. In all, Davin and his colleagues found that the Natufians had fashioned 19 types of clay beads, many of which resemble plants collected by the hunter-gathers, such as wild barley, einkorn wheat, lentils, and peas. Additionally, 50 fingerprints were found preserved in the clay, showing that children, teens, and adults all participated in making the ornaments. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Science Advances. To read more about the Natufians, go to "The First Bakers," one of ARCHAEOLOGY's Top 10 Discoveries of 2018.