Death, Mortuary Ritual, and Natufian Social Structure

Mortuary data are used to examine social structure and differentiation within the prehistoric Natufian cultural complex of Southwest Asia. New interpretations are presented regarding the nature and importance of changes in Natufian social structure through a rigorous analysis of burials from the three best documented sites. Intra-settlement descent group differentiation, perhaps along extended family or kin-group lines, is inferred for the early Natufian. We interpret this novel development to be a result of adopting new markers for social relations during a period of social change and stress when larger populations rapidly coalesced and resided together for longer periods each year. There is no evidence to indicate that any of these kin-groups had significantly greater wealth or status. Mortuary behavior changed significantly during the late Natufian, in part reflecting greater emphasis on the burial of individuals and increased settlement mobility. We argue that there is no strong mortuary evidence for hereditary social inequality during the Natufian, and that mortuary ritual was multidimensional and had considerable embedded meaning that often lacks direct ethnographic parallels and simple categorization into evolutionary stages.