Young Girls at the Center of Sacrifices and Hierarchies in Bronze Age Türkiye

Cambridge Archaeological Journal, she underlines the role of adolescence as a distinct age class in collective rituals, revealing a form of social inequality rooted well before the emergence of the first urban states of the region.

An overwhelming discovery in the heart of Turkey, mass sacrifices

In southeast Turkey, on the Başur Höyük site, the excavations led by Haluk Sağlamtimur revealed a necropolis dated between 3100 and 2800 BC. AD, at the hinge between the late Chalcolithic and the Ancient Bronze Age. Eighteen tombs have been uncovered there, some of which have carefully constructed dry stone structures and multiple burial devices. The burials contain groups of bodies deposited according to organized patterns, sometimes accompanied by ceremonial furniture or textiles.

What strikes archaeologists is the recurrence of specific biological profiles among the sacrificed individuals: the majority are adolescent girls aged 12 to 16. Osteological analyzes show compatible lesions with violent deaths – including cutting -edge cranial perforations and basin injuries. Burials like those in the southeast area of ​​the site reveal a juxtaposition between central burial and bodies arranged on the outskirts or grouped at the entrance, indicating a symbolic hierarchy of the deceased in funeral space.

This singular composition contrasts strongly with other contemporary Mesopotamian sites. It questions the nature of local power and the role of adolescents in highly codified funeral rituals. As David Wengrow points out, this obliges to take into account adolescence as an active social category in ancient societies, and not as a simple biological step.

“Royal” tombs, but for whom?

The richest tombs of Başur Höyük – notably the tombs 15 and 6/9 – contain a remarkable accumulation of goods: more than 900 metallic objects, including blades, spearheads, pins and insignia shaped according to advanced techniques such as lost wax. To this are added nearly 100,000 pearls in semi-precious stones and shellfish, often sewn on textile fragments. These elements have long been interpreted as the material signs of a local elite or an aristocratic lineage.

However, the paleogenetic analyzes carried out by Selina Brace and her team reveal an absence of biological kinship between individuals buried in the same grave. The Read and Kin tests show that none of the subjects studied was linked to another within three degrees. This absence of filiation contradicts the hypothesis of a hereditary continuity of power or family burial.

The researchers therefore suggest a different model. The tombs would not be dynastic, but ritual, centered on specific age groups. The arrangement of the bodies, the differences of adornment between the interior and the outside of the cists, and the standardization of funeral ornaments on the periphery support the idea of ​​a symbolic stratification based on the ritual role. These elements testify to a social hierarchy not based on birth. The hierarchy would then be based on participation in collective rituals. Sacrifices are probably suspected of mechanisms of integration, initiation or age passage.

An unstable and unequal social model, based on sacrifices

As David Wengrow and his co -authors point out, the dominant presence of adolescent girls in the most richly endowed tombs, often accompanied by signs of violent death, evokes the existence of ritual “age classes”, rather than a classic dynastic system. These groups would have structured society in life stages. The sacrifices then potentially marked the entry or exit of adolescence in a ritual context.

The model suggested by the authors move away from the state formation linear schemes. These patterns are generally based on the monarchy and hereditary elites. Rather, they evoke societies capable of alternating between egalitarian and hierarchical forms of organization. An alternation depending on the moments and contexts, especially rituals. In this context, teenage sacrifices could translate a temporary hierarchy, intensely ritualized, but not institutionalized politically.

The isotopic analysis of strontium and lead shows that several sacrificed young girls were not from the Başur Höyük region. This data, combined with the absence of a biological link between them, suggests that it was not a family group. These could be individuals recruited – or captured – in external communities. This scheme strengthens the hypothesis of ritual mobility or sacrificial logic involving young women as agents of a social order being structured.

A society at the crossroads

At the edge of the major Mesopotamian cities and Anatolian pastoral groups, Başur Höyük occupies a contact space. As much geographic as cultural. This “village-village”, as Wengrow and his colleagues qualify, controlled the flow of strategic raw materials. In particular copper, obsidian, fine stones. And this between the Highlands of the East Anatolian and the booming urban centers of the South Mesopotamian. This position gave him a key economic role. But also an ideological function, as a place to experiment with new forms of power.

The sumptuous burials, like tombs 15 and 17, are the material reflection of a carefully orchestrated symbolic hierarchy. The objects associated with it reflect a funeral scenography designed to mark the social order. The game of 40 stone pieces discovered with several young girls testifies to a deep ritualization of death. It is also the obvious sign of a theatricalization of power and its hierarchies.

What Başur Höyük reveals is that the foundations of inequality may not come from a centralized state apparatus. They come from local ritual assemblies where authority was first expressed within the framework of the sacred. In other words, social and political hierarchies may have been “tested” in marginal communities before winning in major urban centers. A hypothesis which redefines the chronology of the formation of inequalities in human history.

Source: Wengrow D, Hassett B, Sağlamtimur H, et al. “” “Inequality at the Dawn of the Bronze Age: The Case of Başur Höyük, a 'Royal' Cemetery at the Margins of the Mesopotamian World”. Cambridge Archaeological Journal. 2025