ABSTRACT
The close cultural link between life and death probably explains why burials and burial practices have long been a focus of interest for prehistorians, along with such expressions of material culture as pottery, figurines, and stone tools. 'The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else', anthropologist Ernest Becker wrote in his 1973 Pulitzer Prizewinning book The Denial of Death. The first round of excavations in the south area and in Building 1 of the north area was now completed, giving the pair more time to concentrate on the Berkeley Archaeologists at atal Hyk (BACH) building. Nearly every day the two anthropologists were called up to the Goddess Pavilion to excavate another human burial. While the meaning of death at atalhyk remained shrouded in mystery, the human bones were beginning to reveal a lot about how the people here had lived, including whether or not men and women had lived as equals.
