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archaeologist have unwrap a pile of 15 human skull in a Neolithic village in Italy . The bones were fatigue and break out , but there was no evidence of violence , leading the researchers to surmise the heads were on a regular basis handled as part of an ancient ascendent ritual .
Although human osseous tissue are often find in archaeological excavations of burial country , this picky aggregation of skull is unparalleled because it was found inside a building , Jess Thompson , an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge , recount Live Science in an email .
An illustration of what the Masseria Candelaro skull cache might have looked like in the Neolithic.
In a subject published Nov. 13 in theEuropean Journal of Archaeology , Thompson and workfellow wrote that the skull hillock was regain at the site of Masseria Candelaro , a prehistorical village in the Italian province of Puglia . Radiocarbon dates from some of the 400 osseous tissue fragments mountain chain from 5618 to 5335 B.C. , suggesting the skulls were from Neolithic people who die over the duad of nearly three C . Most of the skull appear to be male .
Masseria Candelaro was a little hamlet gird by concentric ditch . Within the Greenwich Village , excavators found a sunken characteristic they shout Structure Q , which had layers of both domestic and ritual artifacts deep down . The skull memory cache was find in one of the top layer and lightly plow with soil , suggesting the bones were desert rather than eat up . commit that Structure Q was not a cemetery , finding finger cymbals there is strange , Thompson enjoin .
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Archaeologists Jess Thompson and Sofia Panella study skull bones from Masseria Candelaro.
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Because the skulls did not have cut marks or other grounds of fury , the research squad find out that these were the foreland of enemies collected as trophies . Rather , the agency the skulls were infract suggested they were retrieved from burials , pile up by posterity and actively handled over several generation in some kind of antecedent ritual .
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" We certainly remember that human bone had a specific kind of significance , and perhaps was see to be an effectual or strong substance , given the geometrical regularity with which it was interact with , " Thompson said .
It ’s unclear what the Neolithic people were doing with their ancestors ' bone . It may have been a sort of showing , Thompson say , " even though we did n’t find any adjustment propose they were suspended or attached to anything . "
In the end , the final location of the skulls in Structure Q was unlikely to have been villainous . rather , it may have been a way of " decommissioning " the powerful and symbolically charged bones by taking them out of circulation and transform them into " ex - ancestors , " the research team conclude .
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