Risky Business: A Life Full of Obligations to the Dead and the Living on the Early Bronze Age Southeastern Dead Sea Plain, Jordan

During the Early Bronze Age I, on the eve of establishing fortified towns on the southeastern Dead Sea Plain, people buried their dead in secondary mortuary rituals in cemeteries at Bab adh-Dhra‵, Fifa, and an-Naqa/es-Safi. While we know nothing of the living communities or their primary mortuary practices, we know the EBA people carefully collected even the smallest bones of their dead and transported them down to this area for burial in shaft or cist tombs. Drawing on ethnographic analogies and recently published skeletal analyses from Bab adh-Dhra‵, I explore potential anxieties attached to the living and dying in these communities.