Excavations at Kibbutz Kfar HaHoresh, less than two miles from the town centre, have so far unearthed strangely decorated human skulls and evidence for unusual, complex burials. "This is the first example in the Levant of a purely religious complex from this remote period," says excavation director Nigel Goring-Morris of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "This is a totally new type of site." The cult centre seems to have serviced the religious needs of villagers a few miles away.

So far the remains of 65 people have been unearthed--but hundreds more are expected to be found as excavations continue. Many of the remains were interred as part of complex rituals. One partly disarticulated, headless man had been laid to rest on top of a pile of 250 aurochs (wild ox) bones, while at least four children were buried with fox mandibles. Several other individuals were interred with what may have been heirloom flint tools. Archaeologists at HaHoresh have also discovered a remarkable prehistoric "work of art": 50 human bones seemingly arranged in the shape of an animal, possibly an aurochs or a wild boar. This image was constructed, it seems, to mark the burial place of around a dozen people.

Three specially enhanced human skulls have also been discovered. Each of them had been deliberately de-fleshed after death and overlaid with lime plaster modelled to form facial features. Two of the skulls had then been painted red--one with red ocher, the other with a red pigment that must have come from quarries far to the north in what is now central Turkey. Red pigment, presumably signifying the blood of life, is known to have been painted onto corpses or skeletons in many ancient societies, probably as a form of sympathetic magic designed to help the deceased achieve life after death...