Stone Age Buried - The discovery of the cemetery

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Experts who have been working at Faynan uncovered a cemetery with ‘30 graves, that contained the remains of 40 individuals’ reports the Jordan Times . The remains were placed in graves under the floors of private houses and these were sealed with a rudimentary plaster. The skeletons are often in a sleeping or fetal position and had obviously been placed in the grave with great care and even tenderness. A preliminary investigation has shown that some bones were removed and that on occasion the graves were used for a second burial.
The graves are believed to hold the earliest human remains that have been found at Faynan. They could date back as far as 11,000 years old. The Archaeology News Network states that Steven Mithen, an expert on the period stated that these "burials include infants and children, indicating a high level of mortality within these prehistoric communities." It is clear that, despite developing sophisticated settlements, life at Faynan was precarious and often sadly short.
The experts discovered some evidence of what to modern eyes appear to be gruesome and macabre practices. It seems that the bones of the dead were brought to the site in packages made of plaster and fibers. Stranger yet, is that some of the heads of the dead may have been on display in the houses at Faynan. All the burials were in the settled area and there was no separate space for burials, which is the norm in most societies.
The Stone Age burials here are very different from the burials Shkārat Msaied , Jordan where the dead were dismembered and placed in a cist.
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