About 9,500 years ago, a community of hunter-gatherers in central Africa cremated a small woman on an open pyre at the base of Mount Hora, a prominent natural landmark in what is now northern Malawi, according to a new study coauthored by Yale paleoanthropologist Jessica Thompson. It is the first time this behavior has been documented in African hunter gatherers.
The study, published in the journal Science Advances, provides the earliest evidence of intentional cremation in Africa and describes the world’s oldest known in situ cremation pyre containing the remains of an adult. While burned human remains have been found (at Lake Mungo, Australia) dating back as far as 40,000 years, cremation pyres — intentionally built structures of combustible fuel — do not appear in the archaeological record until nearly 30,000 years later.
For the new study, an international team of researchers used archaeological, geospatial, forensic, and bio-archaeological methods, including microscopic examination of the pyre sediments and detailed analysis of the human bone fragments, to reconstruct the extraordinary sequence of events surrounding the cremation in unprecedented detail.
Their findings demonstrate that the mortuary and other social behaviors of ancient African foragers were far more complex than previously thought.
Jessica Thompson and team members excavating and mapping the pyre.
“Not only is this the earliest known cremation in Africa, it was such a spectacle that we have to re-think how we view group labor and ritual in these ancient hunter-gatherer communities,” said Thompson, the paper’s senior author and an assistant professor of anthropology in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Thompson leads a long-term research project at the site of the discovery in collaboration with the Malawi Department of Museums and Monuments.
Jessica Cerezo-Román, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma, is the study’s lead author.
“Cremation is very rare among ancient and modern hunter-gatherers, at least partially because open pyres require a huge amount of labor, time, and fuel to transform a body into fragmented and calcined bone and ash,” Cerezo-Román said.
The oldest evidence for an in situ pyre dates to about 11,500 years ago from the Xaasaa Na’ (Upward Sun River) archaeological site in Alaska, where researchers found the remains of a child about three years old. Prior to the discovery of the pyre at Mount Hora, the first definitively known cremations in Africa occurred around 3,300 years ago in eastern Africa and were associated with Pastoral Neolithic herders. Cremation is more common among ancient food producing societies — which generally possessed more complex technologies and engaged in more elaborate mortuary rituals — than among earlier hunter-gatherers.
The Malawi cremation site, Hora 1, is located under an overhang at the base of a granite inselberg (a large rocky hill or mountain) that rises several hundred feet from the surrounding plain. Archaeological research in the 1950s revealed that the site was used as a hunter-gatherer burial ground, but how long ago remained unknown.
Recovering cremated remains
Starting in 2016, Thompson’s work showed that people first inhabited the site about 21,000 years ago and used it for burials between about 16,000 and 8,000 years ago, with all the people interred in a complete state. The newly discovered cremation pyre from 9,500 years ago, by contrast, was part of a large deposit of ash, about the size of a queen bed, and containing a single, highly fragmented individual. The researchers found no evidence of anyone else being cremated at the site before or after.
An analysis of the 170 human bone fragments excavated from the pyre — mostly from arms and legs — suggest that the person cremated was an adult woman between 18 and 60 years old and just under five feet tall. By looking at her bones and the patterns of thermal alteration, the team determined that her body was cremated prior to decomposition, probably within a few days of her death. Cutmarks on several limb bones suggest parts of her body were de-fleshed or removed.
“Surprisingly, there were no fragments of teeth or skull bones in the pyre,” said Elizabeth Sawchuk, curator of human evolution at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and a bioarchaeologist involved in the study. “Because those parts are usually preserved in cremations, we believe the head may have been removed prior to burning.”
Building the pyre required gathering at least 30 kilograms (about 66 pounds) of deadwood and grass, pointing toward significant communal effort, the researchers said. Participants actively disturbed the fire during burning and continually added fuel to sustain high temperatures, according to the analysis of ash sediments and bone fragments. Evidence suggests the blaze reached temperatures greater than 500°C. Discovery of stone tools within the pyre suggest they were either added to or embedded within the burning remains, perhaps as funerary objects.
Sediment block with striped ash layers
The team also found evidence that about 700 years before the pyre event, the location had been the site of large fires. Then, within 500 years after the cremation event, multiple additional large fires were lit atop the pyre itself. Although no one else was cremated, this suggests that people remembered the pyre’s location and recognized its ongoing significance, the researchers said.
“The history of large fires in this location, the effort associated with the cremation, and the subsequent burning events reflect a deep-rooted tradition at the site linked to ritual behavior and memory-making tied to a place that was clearly a local landmark,” Thompson said.
While the cremation process is now clear, the motivation behind the event remains mysterious.
“Why was this one woman cremated when the other burials at the site were not treated that way?” Thompson said. “There must have been something specific about her that warranted special treatment.”
