Alright it's time to begin the process of atonement for getting crazy behind on journal entries! Today I had the pleasure of bringing Maureen to T38 to excavate locus 55, the burial in the northeast corner of the operation that contained small human remains. We realized today that inside the tomb were the remains of a single individual. This individual was likely interred as a primary interment. A number of the bones, including ribs and vertebrae were articulated. Given the elements we uncovered we have no reason to believe that the MNI is anything other than one. The "mess" so to speak can be easily explained by the lack of sealing on the tomb. There was no stone on the northern side to contain the remains. This would have left the structure vulnerable to a range of taphonomic factors including water, wind, and bioturbation. Given that we found some suslik bones, it seems likely that the human remains found immediately outside of the tomb likely belonged to the same individual. We will compare finds to verify this hypothesis.
The most striking feature of the burial was the damage on the cranium. There are clear signs of trauma on the frontal bone. The explicitly circular shape of the wound suggests that this was a peri-mortem blow. This opens up many avenues of thought! Was this a sacrificial burial for the site? An indication of violence during the EB?
While we do have teeth, the absence of cultural materials within the tomb makes it difficult to estimate where this burial fits into the chronological schema of the site and this particular area. I still believe that this episode preceded the others, just based on its elevation and position relative to the structure, but hopefully some dates can verify this! Tomorrow I will excavate the burial to the bottom. It still appears that this feature was lined with clay/ plaster. This is visible to the naked eye and would explain the high volume of degraded limestone clasts. Hopefully the "bottom" of the tomb will be easy to discern. While the "gate" stone is now floating, the east and west walls continue to go down. It is confusing as to why -- when so much work was put into this structure -- it was not entirely closed, especially since it resembles locus 22 in so many ways. Given the scarcity of infant burials in the EB the character and composition/ motivations for this construction are particularly interesting.