Overview
- An international team reports in Science Advances that a single adult woman was cremated on an in situ pyre at the Hora 1 rock shelter at the base of Mount Hora in northern Malawi about 9,500 years ago.
- Researchers identified roughly 170 bone fragments, thermal damage consistent with temperatures above 500 °C, and ash deposits the size of a queen bed, indicating a large, carefully tended fire.
- Osteological evidence points to cremation within days of death, cutmarks consistent with body preparation, movement of remains during burning, and a notable absence of skull and teeth.
- Building and maintaining the pyre likely required at least 30 kilograms of wood and grass, and stone tools recovered within the deposit may reflect funerary inclusions or use in preparation.
- The site shows earlier and later large fires, including relit blazes within 500 years after the cremation, underscoring persistent place-memory; comparable in situ pyres are otherwise known from an 11,500-year-old child burial in Alaska.