The Pre-Pottery Neolithic period in the Levant is a period of great social and economic change. To create and maintain social cohesion and manage social stress, inhabitants developed new forms of funeral practices and collective rituals that helped them shape their collective identities and memory. This thesis deals with rituals associated with collective public spaces and the more limited contexts of house burials. Both represent physical and symbolic connections between the living and the dead. The relationship between humans, ancestors, animals and objects is also discussed.
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