The emergence of cemetery in West Asia : based on the results of archaeology and natural sciences

在叙利亚西北部Rouj盆地的Tell el-Kerkh的第一个户外墓地中发现了大约240人。我们对这些墓葬进行了考古和自然科学分析，并重建了新石器时代克尔赫陶器社会人民的社会和精神生活。我们能够将这些墓葬置于西亚丧葬习俗的编年史中。在公元前6500年左右的陶器新石器时代中期，户外墓地的出现可能与粮食生产经济的发展和祖先崇拜中使用人骨的减少有关。

About 240 human individuals were discovered in the first outdoor cemetery at Tell el-Kerkh, in the Rouj Basin, northwest Syria. We undertook archaeological and natural scientific analysis of these burials and reconstructed the social and spiritual lives of the people from the Kerkh Pottery Neolithic society. We were able to place the burials within the chronological history of funeral practices in West Asia. The appearance of outdoor cemeteries in the middle Pottery Neolithic period around 6500 BC was probably connected with both the development of a food-producing economy and a decline in the use of human bones in ancestor worship.