Death and Architecture: The Pre-Pottery Neolithic A Burials at WF16, Wadi Faynan, Southern Jordan

The neolithic of the Levant marks the earliest appearance of sedentary farming communities in the world. The transition from hunting-gathering to farming began between 20,000 and 10,500 years ago, the latter marking the start of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) period, during which domesticated cereals, sheep, and goat begin to appear (Kuijt & Goring-Moris 2002 ). Whether there was a relatively rapid transition during the preceding PrePottery Neolithic A (PPNA) period (11,700–10,500 BP), perhaps as a response to the dramatic global warming that marks the end of the Pleistocene, or a more gradual emergence arising from long-term subsistence intensifi cation during the Epipalaeolithic (20,000–11,700 BP) remains an issue of contention (for general reviews see Mithen 2003 ; Barker 2006 ) . It is undisputed, however, that the transition to sedentary farming lifestyles encompassed all aspects of economy, technology, architecture, social organisation, ideology, and ‘culture’ in the widest possible sense. Archaeological evidence indicating that attitudes towards life and death were transformed as part of this process should not be surprising as the harvesting and then sowing of domesticated crops are fundamentally related to manipulating the process of regeneration. The documentation and interpretation of Epipalaeolithic, PPNA, and PPNB mortuary evidence is inevitably constrained by the quality and quantity of data available. This is notably limited for the PPNA period, which many see as the critical phase of transition from hunter-gatherer to farming lifestyles. In this contribution, we present new evidence concerning PPNA mortuary practices from the site of WF16 in southern Jordan. The number of burials located at this settlement is unusually high for a PPNA site. It stands at around forty burials found within the limits of the excavation ( Table 6.1 ), but the total number of burials must be higher, considering the spatial and stratigraphic extent of the unexcavated part of the settlement. The excavation report is still undergoing preparation, and osteological analysis has yet to be undertaken. As such, any interpretation of this data set remains both incomplete and provisional. But even from the evidence currently available, WF16 contributes greatly towards our knowledge of PPNA burial and the transformation in mortuary practice across the hunter-gatherer–farming lifestyle transition in southwestern Asia. We will show that the relationship between the living and the dead at WF16 was defi ned not only by the different ways in which the people were treated at death, but also through diverse attitudes towards their remains for a prolonged period post-mortem. The roles played by memory, curation, secondary intervention, and manipulation of human remains created multiple layers of mortuary practice at WF16, which was also part of the life of the settlement itself, with real consequences for its living community. This is best seen through the manner in which the dead continued to be part of the settlement through careful choreography of burials, the treatment of the human remains, and the repeatedly changing architectural make-up of the settlement the burials were positioned within.