12,000-Year-Old Nafutian Female Shaman's Grave Loaded With 'Goodies"

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A handout picture released by Israel�s Antiquity Authority shows tortoise shells found during excavations in the Natufian culture in Hilazon Tachtit, in the Galilee area of northern Israel.

Archaeologists have found the 12,000-old skeleton of a female shaman buried in northern Israel alongside 50 tortoises, body parts of a leopard, a boar and other animals as well as a human foot.

The burial site is among the earliest known of a shaman, or healer, according to the archaeological team led by Leore Grosman of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

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The Natufian Culture



One of the most remarkable ornaments is a collar from El Wad with twenty-five fragments of dentalia separating a particular type of bone bead, bilobate, called "twin-pendants" by D. Garrod. 

The elements of the necklace were found massed below the mandible and on the chest of an adult male subject (H.23), lying face down,  with his knees bent up to the left of the skull. 

This same individual wore a decoration of dentalia on his forehead and a band of dentalia round one of his femurs. 

He was accompanied by another adult in the same position.  Beneath them lay a young child.

The tomb had been filled with stones.




by François Valla and Ofer Bar Yosef

http://www.picturesofrecord.com/Natufian%2070.htm

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Animal figure in carved limestone found in the Judean desert and dated at 10,500-8,300 bce. 

From the Natufian culture which ranged from Southern Turkey to Sinai.

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              NAFUTIAN POT



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