The human face and the origins of the Neolithic: the carved bone wand from Tell Qarassa North, Syria

Fragment of a bone rod made from a large mammal bone and engraved with two human faces (scale in cm).

Antiquity Vol 88:339, 2014 pp 81-94
Juan José Ibáñez, Jesús E. González‑Urquijo and Frank Braemer

The origins of the Neolithic in the Near East were accompanied by significant ritual and symbolic innovations. New light is thrown on the social context of these changes by the discovery of a bone wand displaying two engraved human faces from the Early Neolithic site of Tell Qarassa in Syria, dating from the late ninth millennium BC. This small bone object from a funerary layer can be related to monumental statuary of the same period in the southern Levant and south-east Anatolia that probably depicted powerful supernatural beings. It may also betoken a new way of perceiving human identity and of facing the inevitability of death. By representing the deceased in visual form the living and the dead were brought closer together. [...] antiquity.ac.uk

Link 2: Une étrange figurine aux yeux clos découverte au Proche-Orient (B&W 3)
Related paper: The early PPNB levels of Tell Qarassa North (Sweida, southern Syria) (2010)
Entrada relacionada (2012)


Actualización 12-03-14. Ancient 'Ritual Wand' Etched with Human Faces Discovered in Syria
Archaeologists have unearthed an ancient staff carved with two realistic human faces in southern Syria.
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The wand, which was likely used in a long-lost funeral ritual, is one of the only naturalistic depictions of human faces from this time and place, Braemer said...


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