Understanding history through burials: Insights from Ba’ja grave rituals

AMMAN — Ba’ja, located approximately 14 kilometres north of Petra, is a significant archaeological site representing the Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period.

Discovered by German archaeologist Hans Georg Gebel in 1983, Ba’ja has since been the focus of extensive excavations by various archaeological teams. 

The excavations at Ba’ja have uncovered three collective burials and one isolated female burial.

Marion Benz from Free University Berlin highlighted that, around 9,000 years ago, the inhabitants covered their burials with the same grit and limestone plaster used for their floors. 

“During the same season, two more burials were discovered, including a double burial,” Benz noted. These findings provide valuable insights into the burial practices and daily life of the Neolithic people who once inhabited the area, further enriching our understanding of early human history.

Benz explained, “We were able to excavate a child burial, and these discoveries from the 2016 season highlighted the site’s potential, leading to the launch of a new three-year initiative: the Household and Death in Ba’ja Project.” 

The project aimed to explore aspects of daily life and investigate burial rituals, grave goods, and the relationship between the living communities and their deceased members. 

Benz added that the project has led to the discovery of new burials of various types and isolated human bones, offering deeper insights into the Neolithic society that once thrived in Ba’ja.

“In the Household and Death Project, we aimed to bridge significant gaps through consistently trans-disciplinary work,” explained Benz. “Our research integrated various approaches such as social neurosciences, ethnology, archaeology, and anthropology from the project’s design to its interpretations.” 

The research’s results were interpreted by considering the diverse “life worlds” of the prehistoric inhabitants.

“Our purported ‘emic’ perspective remains an approximation, as with all ethnographic studies. 

We can view archaeology as an ethnographic study of the past,” Benz elaborated, noting that it can never fully capture the emic essence of personal experiences. 

While their research perspective may complicate understanding other cultures, their close genetic relationship enables them to empathise, observe, and interpret these practices.

Furthermore, human nature compels us to relate the unknown to the known, allowing scholars to assess spatial and temporal situations in the broadest sense.

“Without the ability to comparatively attribute meaning, each situation and object would require constant re-evaluation, making it impossible to act confidently in the present,” Benz explained.

“Therefore, there is a compelling need to diligently endeavour—albeit challenging—to dissociate from our life world in pursuit of achieving a comprehensive description.”

 Benz noted that the history of research on “Neolithisation” reveals the difficulty of this task, as ethnographic analogies invariably influence perceptions of the past. The new data on the graves from Ba’ja demonstrated the importance of freeing ourselves from preconceived assumptions. 

One noteworthy example is that the burial ground was not segregated from the living space, a pattern likely shared by many other early Neolithic communities. 

Graves were reopened, and the bodies of deceased persons were either reburied, reinterred, or even disposed of, leaving behind isolated and dislocated bones.

 “Burials remain among the most crucial archives of prehistory,” Benz stated. 

“They not only offer artefacts within a relatively closed context, serving as essential typo-chronological markers for archaeologists, but they also bridge two areas of knowledge that can be heuristically categorised as ‘things’ and ‘people,” Benz concluded.