Archaeologists in Turkey have discovered groundbreaking evidence linking prehistoric facial piercings to the bodies of the people who wore them.
Personal adornment - including earring-like objects thought to be worn as piercings - has been documented among Neolithic or Late Stone Age peoples at multiple sites in Southwest Asia, with evidence dating back as far as 12,000 years ago. But none of the objects interpreted as piercings had previously been directly associated with body parts where they might have been worn.
Now, analysis of excavations at the Boncuklu Tarla archaeological site in southeastern Turkey has revealed burials in which piercing decorations were found placed near the ears and mouths of the grave occupants. Dental wear on the lower incisors of these remains, dating to about 11,000 years ago, resembled known wear patterns caused by wear from a type of ornament called a labret, often worn under the lower lip.
This is the first time that facial piercings in Neolithic people from Southwest Asia have been directly linked to the body parts they perforated, researchers reported Monday in the journal Antiquity. Their findings further confirm that the practice was already common during the early Neolithic.
People of all ages were buried in Boncuklu Tarla, but the newly described ornaments were only found near the remains of adults. This suggests that such decorations were not worn by children and that acquiring these piercings may have marked coming-of-age rituals within social groups, according to the study.
There are other types of evidence for coming-of-age rituals in the Neolithic, such as burials where the body is arranged with certain artifacts "or the placement of the deceased in certain locations prescribed for a certain age group," says anthropological archaeologist Dusan. Boric, associate professor at Sapienza Università di Roma in Italy, in an email.
"But I can't think of many other examples as compelling as this one," says Boric, who was not involved in the study.
'Unbelievable' amount
Hunter-gatherers occupied Boncuklu Tarla from about 10,300 BC to 7100 BC, when people began to move away from a nomadic lifestyle and form settlements. The site was first excavated in 2012 and has since yielded an abundance of ornamental objects from the Neolithic period, with around 100,000 decorative artefacts found so far - a staggering number, said study co-author Dr. Emma L. Baysal, associate professor of archeology at Ankara University in Turkey.
"The sheer volume is unbelievable. This is a site of people who love decorations more than any other site," Baysal told CNN. "They had tons and tons of beads and they made elaborate things out of beads," including necklaces, bracelets, animal-shaped pendants and decorations that could be sewn onto clothes, Baysal said.
They also made decorations for ear and lip piercings. Labrets, which are still worn in some cultures in the Amazon and Africa, come in different shapes: round, elongated and disc-shaped. Some are long and thin, but most have one end that is wider and flattened, and they vary in diameter and width.
Scientists have identified 85 objects from the burials of Boncuklu Tarla as ornaments worn in piercings, made from materials such as flint, limestone, copper and obsidian. The researchers classified the labrets into seven types, based on their shape: all were at least 0.3 inches (7 millimeters) in diameter, and the longest was just over 2 inches (50 millimeters) long.
Ornaments described as Type 1 had long shafts and a "spike-like appearance" and were likely worn "inserted into the flesh or cartilage of the ear," the study said. The elongated types 2, 4 and 6 were also thought to be ear ornaments. By comparison, Type 3 and 5 Labrets had shorter, more bulbous shafts - better suited to lip wear. Type 7, a flattened disk, was also considered a type of labret.
Some labrets had been displaced from their original positions in the graves, possibly by rodents, although they were still located near the head and neck area of the human remains. Other pieces were still "in place on the upper or lower surface of the skull or under the lower jaw," the study authors reported.
Scientists have long thought that Neolithic objects called labrets were used as piercings, "particularly in relation to the mouth or ear," Dusan said.
"Now, however, we have irreversible and robust contextual evidence from the site of Boncuklu Tarla that here and very likely at other largely contemporaneous sites such objects were indeed associated with these parts of the body, as they were found at burials and probably worn during the funeral. the same way in life."
'A kind of social status'
Although children were buried with pendants and beads, none had ear ornaments or labrets near their heads, necks or chests, suggesting that facial piercings were reserved for adults, the researchers concluded.
"It probably has to do with being an adult," Baysal said. "Maybe some kind of social status related to age, or a certain role in society."
For archaeologists trying to piece together how prehistoric peoples presented themselves to each other and to outside groups, piercings and other forms of body adornment are "the absolute best source of information we have about people from these periods, until writing was invented and people printed expresses itself immediately," Baysal said.
This form of personal expression may be rooted in the mythologies of traditional societies, Dusan added, in which "a specific genre of myths concerns the origins of ornaments and body adornment, suggesting a fundamental importance of decorating the body as a action that goes beyond purely aesthetic considerations," he said. 'Wearing body decorations may rather have been an act of personality construction and protection.'
Mindy Weisberger is a science writer and media producer whose work has appeared in the magazines LiveScience, Scientific American, and How It Works.These adornments not only share tools or other artifacts from everyday life, but also share a highly recognizable view of Neolithic people, as the human motivation to express identity or community through piercings and other personal adornments continues to this day continues.
"When you put on earrings, you don't see which earrings you are wearing. You don't do it for yourself because you can't see them. You do it because of the way you project yourself to other people. And I don't think that has changed in all these thousands of years," Baysal said. "It's a way we can identify with people from the past and think, 'Actually, they're a lot like us.'"
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