At Pre-Pottery NeolithicPre-Pottery NeolithicThe first phase of the Neolithic (c. 9,600–6,900 BC), before the invention of pottery.→ Levantine sites -- Jericho, Ain Ghazal, Kfar Hahoresh, Nahal Hemar -- excavators have unearthed skulls and bones coated in lime plaster, sometimes pigmented with ochreOchreA red or yellow mineral pigment (iron oxides), used from prehistory for adornment, funerary rites and art.→, their orbits inlaid with shells to recreate the appearance of eyes. These "portrait skulls" are among the most striking funerary manifestations in all of world prehistoryPrehistoryThe span of human history before the invention of writing, from the Palaeolithic to the Metal Ages, known mainly through material remains.→. But how, exactly, did the living treat their dead before plastering them? At what stage of decomposition was the plaster applied? Why were some bodies entirely coated and others only at the skull? A 2026 study published in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences1 provides the first experimental answers to these questions, after 58 months of taphonomic monitoring of plaster-encased bodies in conditions approximating those of the Levantine NeolithicNeolithicThe "New Stone Age": a period marked by farming, herding, settlement and pottery, from around 10,000 BC.→.
Plaster burials of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic
The Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and B (PPNA and PPNB) of the LevantLevantA region of the eastern Mediterranean Near East (Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan), a major crossroads of the first human migrations out of Africa.→, between approximately 10,000 and 7,000 BCE, corresponds to one of the most profound transitions in human history: the shift from hunting-gathering to agricultureAgricultureThe cultivation of plants and production of food by working the soil, which emerged in the Neolithic in the Near East and independently elsewhere; it radically transformed human societies.→, the construction of the first permanent villages, and the emergence of new forms of religion and ritual. The funerary practices of this period reflect a new and intense relationship with the dead: burialBurialThe intentional deposition of a body, sometimes with offerings; a marker of symbolic behaviour.→ beneath house floors, secondary exhumation of skulls for retention in the living space, and elaborate skull decoration with plaster and shells.
Plaster skulls found at Jericho in the 1950s by Kathleen Kenyon triggered decades of research and speculation about their significance. Did they represent venerated ancestors, whose physical presence was maintained among the living? Were they supports for propitiatory rituals or communication with the spirit world? The precise nature of the practices that led to the creation of these skulls -- which body, at what stage, by what procedure -- remained largely unknown.
Indirect evidence from knife marks on some bones, the anatomical position of remains, and biochemical analyses suggested that plaster was applied to bodies in advanced decomposition rather than to fresh corpses. But no controlled experimentation had verified this hypothesis or specified the taphonomic timeline involved.
Fifty-eight months of taphonomic experimentation
An international team led by researchers from the University of Jordan and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem set up an unprecedented experiment: encasing animal bodies (porcine, physiologically close to human bodies) in lime plaster and monitoring their decomposition over 58 months under soil, temperature and humidity conditions calibrated on palaeoecological data from the Levantine Neolithic.
The results are instructive on several counts. First, plaster applied to a fresh body (within hours of death) cracks and separates from the soft tissues as they decompose, producing a rigid "sarcophagus" that rapidly fragments. Second, plaster applied to a partially decomposed body (two to six weeks after death, depending on temperature), when the soft parts have disappeared but ligaments still hold the bones in connection, adheres far better to the bony substrate and produces a stable cast that can survive millennia in the soil.
This taphonomic window -- a few weeks after death -- corresponds precisely to the stage at which the skull can be extracted from the body with its ligaments still partially present, coated in still-workable plaster and modelled to reproduce the deceased's facial features. The experiment thus confirms that Levantine Neolithic peoples exhumed their dead after a waiting period of several weeks, removed the skull, coated it in pliant plaster, then modelled the features of the deceased before the plaster hardened.
A ritual to keep ancestors among the living
The refined understanding of the taphonomic procedure illuminates the social and spiritual significance of these rituals. The delayed exhumation -- waiting for the flesh to disappear before intervening -- implies a well-defined mourning and transition period, at the end of which the deceased passes from the status of "dead" to that of "ancestor." The manufacture of the plaster skull materialises this transition: the body perishes, but the identity of the deceased, captured in the plaster portrait, persists in the space of the living.
Many ethnologists and anthropologists of religion have proposed comparative interpretations. In many contemporary traditional societies, two-stage funerary rites -- provisional burial followed by a "feast of the dead" after decomposition -- function to definitively separate the world of the living from that of the dead while institutionalising the memory of ancestors. The plaster skulls of the Levantine Neolithic may fulfil an analogous function: keeping ancestors "present" and active in communal life, as intermediaries between the world of the living and that of invisible powers.
The experiment also shows that manufacturing a plaster skull was technically demanding. Lime plaster -- obtained by calcining limestone, widely available in the Levant -- had to be prepared in the right proportions, applied quickly before setting, and modelled with precision to recreate facial features. These skills imply the transmission of craft knowledge and a degree of technical specialisation suggesting the existence of "funerary specialists" within Neolithic Near Eastern communities.
Implications for understanding the Levantine Neolithic
The precise codification of funerary ritual in the Levantine Pre-Pottery Neolithic reflects a major transition in the human relationship with death and ancestors. In PalaeolithicPalaeolithicThe oldest and longest period of prehistory (c. 3.3 Ma–12,000 BC), defined by chipped stone tools and a hunter-gatherer way of life.→ hunter-gatherer societies, the deceased were generally buried or abandoned, without elaborate treatment of remains. Neolithic sedentarisation transformed this relationship: houses and villages were now inhabited by the dead as much as by the living, the bones of ancestors were preserved and manipulated, and their physical presence maintained in the daily life of communities.
This Neolithic "funerary revolution" is probably linked to the emergence of new forms of property (land, houses, herds) and new needs for social legitimation. Ancestors -- whose presence is materialised in plaster skulls -- can serve as symbolic guarantors of territorial occupation and of the transmission of goods and rights within lineages. The plaster skull is not merely a portrait: it is a title deed and an instrument of social power.
The study also opens new methodological horizons. Experimental taphonomy -- reproducing decomposition and funerary ritual processes under controlled conditions -- is a rapidly growing discipline that allows hypotheses long unverifiable by traditional archaeology to be tested. Applied to the Levant's plaster skulls, it has produced answers that archaeology alone could not provide. Other questions remain open: what proportion of the deceased received this treatment? Was there selection by age, sex or social status? Demographic analyses of plaster-skull sites are beginning to provide answers, but they remain fragmentary.
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