THE HUMAN REMAINS
by Theya Molleson and Peter Andrews
The bulk of the research carried out this year was restricted to building 1. A total of at least 64 individuals must have been buried here. This number includes four neonates in the Fill. With 13 infants under two years and 15 sub adolescent juveniles more than half the sample is of immature individuals. Old adults, of which there are 11 are well represented.
The proportion of immature to adult skeletons is very high but is compatible with an expanding population based on an extended family (or possibly a polygamous family). If each of the areas, NW Platform, 71 and 110 was used by a different nuclear family within the extended family unit this could explain the distribution. The contemporaneous use of the three areas samples sibling (brothers) families at different stages. Thus the youngest family is buried in on the north west platform (B38) and their children who died in infancy are buried there in phase I; surviving children that subsequently died in phase II (B36) and phase III (B35).
(left) Figure 18: Infant burial excavated in Building 1 in 1997
We can postulate that the family that used area 71 for burial (B30, 40) was already older in phase I than the B38 family and most of the children aged five or more. B31 could contain the dead children of another sibling. In each case B38, 30, 40, 31 the last burials include an adult female or male; the death of a spouse that ended the family unit. The surviving spouses could have been buried in phase II with the east platform group.
The above describes the demographic pattern of Building 1, its generality can only be confirmed by future work. If the pattern is real there must be a decision to occupy a building possibly at a point in the segmentation of a family towards the development of a new extended family (cf. Bedouin family structure). The death of the senior member or over-population would mark the end of the life of one extended family, which is the end of the phase of a particular building.