Researchers previously assumed that some of the graves at the site were royal burials. A new study presents a different theory, which challenges existing ideas about early class structures
Sonja Anderson
Sonja Anderson - Daily Correspondent
April 3, 2025 3:58 p.m.
grave
Thousands of years ago, people had been buried both inside and outside of this cist tomb. Cambridge Archaeological Journal
In modern-day Turkey, a cemetery dating to the early Bronze Age holds burials full of luxurious goods—and numerous human sacrifices.
Archaeologists have long been puzzled by the details of the sacrificial rituals. But a recent study published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal has revealed a telling detail that sheds new light on the narrative: The richest tombs in the cemetery are filled with teenagers.
bead
Beadwork associated with burials inside and outside a cist tomb Cambridge Archaeological Journal
The site, called Başur Höyük, is located in Turkey’s southeastern Siirt province at the margins of the ancient region of Mesopotamia. Between roughly 3100 and 2800 B.C.E., communities began performing “conspicuous and sometimes violent funerary rites” at the cemetery, per the study.
Eighteen graves have been found at the site: simple pits, pits covered with stone and buried chambers built with stones, which were filled with copper items, cloth and beads.
Previously, researchers had identified one of these treasure-filled burials as a “royal tomb.” It held two children, who were surrounded by goods and apparent human sacrifices.
metal
Metallic, copper-based grave goods from Başur Höyük Cambridge Archaeological Journal
Experts initially thought these burials belonged to royals, whose attendants were sacrificed and buried alongside them “in a ritual symbolizing the transition to the afterlife and the maintenance of social order even after death,” as La Brújula Verde’s Guillermo Carvajal writes. This theory was based on the idea that by the early Bronze Age, Mesopotamian societies were ruled by kings and organized into social hierarchies.
But the new study complicates that idea. When researchers analyzed nine such sacrifices from the cemetery, they found that the victims were chosen for specific reasons: Many of them were girls, and most had died between the ages of 12 and 18. They also weren’t biologically related.
“The fact that they are mostly adolescents is fascinating and surprising,” lead author David Wengrow, an archaeologist at University College London, tells Live Science’s Kristina Killgrove. “It highlights how little thought scientists and historians have really given to the importance of adolescence as a crucial stage in the human life cycle.”
The study suggests that rather than class structure or “close kinship,” the children at Başur Höyük were killed and buried together because of their age.
“We are dealing with adolescents brought together, or coming together voluntarily, from biologically unrelated groups to carry out a very extreme form of ritual,” Wengrow tells Live Science.
Adolescence is a “stage of development unique to the human life course” that has long been “a crucial arena for social experimentation,” write the researchers. As such, it’s possible that the ancient inhabitants of Başur Höyük chose human sacrifice victims based not on class, but on “ritual associations of youths or ranked age sets” that formed “long before such arrangements ‘broke out’ into the wider arena of human political affairs.”
The researchers will continue to examine the skeletons of Başur Höyük. As Wengrow tells Live Science, many of the buried teenagers don’t appear to be locals. The team is still working to learn more about their origins.
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