Babies in the Walls - Burials at 'Ain Ghazal, Jordan

In 1983 I saw the body of a newborn, or perhaps premature, baby protruding from the wall of an archaeological excavation unit under the hot Jordanian sky. The sight of that sad little body will never leave me, no matter how many more sites I excavate.

'Ain Ghazal, or Well of the Gazelle, on the outskirts of Amman, Jordan, is the oldest site I've ever worked at. Radiocarbon tests place it at around 9000 years old, or about the same age as the lowest (oldest) level at Jericho, its better known sister. That places it in a time period called the pre-pottery Neolithic, or new stone age. Agriculture was in its infancy, as was animal domestication, but stone tools were still in use. In the next couple of hundred years, the kiln technique of heating clay pottery would be developed, but it was not found here. Unlike many sites in that part of the world, it is not a Tel, or pile of occupations, each atop the previous one; it represents a single occupation, for perhaps less than 100 years.

The site was discovered during the building of a ring road around the city of Amman. Construction was halted by the Department of Antiquities when stone walls and painted plastered floors emerged from under approximately 2 meters of overburden in the wake of the bull-dozers, and archaeologists were called in. The first season was a brief winter season, 1982, intended to rescue the exposed, and therefore threatened, portions of the site, determine the boundaries of the site, and approximate the amount of work that would be needed, and was conducted by professors and students from Yarmouk University in Jordan. The size and complexity of the site called for major excavation in the summer of 1983, and for several following years.

That first summer, 1983, a contingent of students from the U.S., Jordan, and Great Britain converged on Amman, as the dig was conducted jointly by Yarmouk University and the University of San Diego. An archaeologist with the Department of Antiquities of Jordan was present throughout the excavation season. The crew was housed in a walled compound that in winter was a boy's school. I've certainly stayed in better places, but I've stayed in worse, as well, and our crew was soon joined by a cat who kept the mouse population down. But that, perhaps, is another article.

Excavation started slowly. The level of interest was buried beneath about 2 meters, or 7 feet, of "sterile" soil, which to an archaeologist means it contains no evidence of human occupation or use. Nevertheless, all the soil had to be removed by shovels, then trowels, and screened through fine mesh, just in case. Eventually we reached the level of the floors and walls, and things began to get interesting.

The walls were constructed of unshaped rocks, piled about a foot thick; their original height is unknown, thanks to time and overburden, but is estimated to be 5 to 6 feet. The floors were made of a limestone plaster, much like plaster of paris, carefully spread flat. In some places, fingerprints were visible in that plaster. After the floors had dried, they were painted red, probably with red ocher. All these materials were available locally at the time of construction. When the decision was made to remove walls and to excavate beneath the floors, we found our first burials.

In between the rocks of the walls of each structure we examined, we found the skeletal remains of newborn babies, with their skulls. Each building we examined had at least one infant burial; most had several. Whether the babies had been stillborn or killed at birth, or died in early infancy, was unclear from the remains. It is not impossible that these were tiny sacrifices to appease some ancient gods. In some cases the tiny skulls had been crushed by the pressure of the rocks; others remained intact, carefully positioned between rocks, in perhaps the last act for them by a grieving mother. One tiny hand lay flat on a rock, as if reaching for comfort. The still, quiet rooms offered none. None for the infants, and none for us, the final witnesses to their ending.

Most of the single-room buildings were fairly small, about 10 feet by 10 feet, and were determined to be homes. Each floor had a depression near the middle that showed signs of charcoal, and were obviously hearths, leading us to conclude that the roofs probably included holes of some sort for the smoke from heating or cooking to escape. Although most people think of Jordan as a very hot country, winters in Amman and the surrounding hills can be quite cold, complete with snow and ice, so heating would have been a necessity for the people of 'Ain Ghazal.

Beneath each hearth depression that we excavated, we found the skeletal remains of at least one adult -- but in these cases, no skulls were present. Because the bones were not articulated, that is, in the shape that we would consider a skeleton, we knew that these were secondary burials. The remains had been either interred (buried) or placed on a scaffold after death, left until they had decomposed to bare bones, then the bones returned to the home to be buried beneath the hearth. Were they elders, brought back to guard the homes from spirits? Or did the families merely want to keep those lost to them close, even after death? The bones were silent, and the missing skulls an even greater mystery.

In July we excavated a larger room, and in the rubble of that room, we discovered three skulls. Each was plastered with the same materials used in the construction of the floors, then facial features had been sculpted, painted, and given eyes of shell. Those blank shell eyes all faced, perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, in the direction of Jericho, which must have been known to the people of 'Ain Ghazal. They sat there in eerie glory, the only items in the room. They clearly represented distinct individuals, but who? And why were these skulls, and only these skulls, in that room? Again, we had only more questions, and no answers.

Near the end of the season, we found one complete adult skeleton with a skull. It was the skeleton of a woman of child-bearing years, and had been unceremoniously dumped in a garbage heap. Who was this mystery woman? An adulteress, perhaps? Someone who had committed an unspeakable crime? Or a woman without a husband or family to shelter her? Or perhaps she was a slave, a person of no status. She had no grave goods, such as jewelry or stone tools with her, so we can suspect that she was either poor or stripped of her belongings, but her skeleton gave no indication of how she had died. She remains the only non-infant intact skeleton at 'Ain Ghazal.

'Ain Ghazal is a fascinating site, with, to paraphrase Howard Carter's description of King Tut's tomb, "wonderful things within." With the burials, I can only bring you questions. I hope to bring you answers about some of the other aspects of the site in future articles.