 Human Burial Evidence from Hatab II Cave Nick Barton, Abdeljalil Bouzouggar, Louise Humphrey, Peter Berridge, Simon Collcut, Rowena Gale, Simon Parit, Adrian Parker, Edward Rhodes & Jean-Luc Schwenninger It is CAJ house style to use irst names Human Burial Evidence from Hatab II Cave and the Question of Continuity in Late Pleistocene–Holocene Mortuary Practices in Northwest Africa The method of interment in the Iberomaurusian appears to have varied widely from site to site and even within cemeteries. In some cases, the bodies were lexed and carefully placed in pits (e.g. Grote des Pigeons, Taforalt) whereas in others the corpses were extended or were dismembered prior to burial and the bones scatered or deliberately placed in ossuaries, as at Afalou Bou Rhummel (Arambourg et al. 934, 19–23). Despite the apparent diversity in mortuary behaviour, one of the most visible characteristics of the buried humans is the absence of one or more teeth in the anterior dentition of the jaw, particularly afecting the upper central incisors. Where such material has been studied in detail, it is clear that the front teeth were deliberately extracted during the lifetime of the individual, a practice referred to as dental ablation (Tayles 1990). The dating of the Late Palaeolithic Iberomauru- sian has been dealt with in several recent reviews and it is now believed unlikely to be much older than about 18,000 years bp, at least in Morocco (Barton et al. 2005; 2007; Bouzouggar et al. 2006; in press). Evidence for Archaeological excavations in 2002–3 at Hatab II Cave in northwestern Morocco revealed an undisturbed Late Palaeolithic Iberomaurusian human burial. This is the irst Iberomaurusian inhumation discovered in the region. The skeleton is probably that of a male aged between 25 and 30 years. The individual shows a characteristic absence of the central upper incisors reported in other Iberomaurusian burials. Accompanying the burial are a stone core and a number of grave goods including bone lanceheads, a marine gastropod and a gazelle horn core. Thermoluminescence dating of a burnt stone artefact in association with the burial has provided an age of 8900±1100 bp. This is one of the youngest ages reported for the Iberomaurusian and raises questions about persistence of hunter-gatherer societies in the Maghreb and the potential for continuity in burial practices with the earliest Neolithic. Human mortuary activity is well atested in the archaeological record of Late Pleistocene northwest African. Burials are known from various locations in the Maghreb region where they appear to be part of a cultural tradition that began in the Late Palaeolithic Iberomaurusian (Lubell 2001). Sites with collective burials include those in central and western Algeria, such as Afalou Bou Rhummel Cave (Arambourg et al. 1934; Hachi 1996; 2003) and most notably in eastern Morocco at Grote des Pigeons, Taforalt, where two zones in the cave produced a reported number of over 180 human individuals (Ferembach et al. 1962; Roche 1963). To these can be added lesser sites such as Ifri n’Ammar, close to Taforalt, in which a sepulchre of four closely spaced burials was recently excavated (Mikdad et al. 2002; Moser 2003). Examples of single burials in the Iberomaurusian are, in contrast, rela- tively rare but they do include an adult burial from Ifri el-Baroud (Ben-Ncer 2004) as well as an isolated skull from Taza, Algeria (Meier et al. 2003), and a new discovery from Hatab II in northern Morocco reported in this article. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 8:2, ??–?? © 2008 McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research doi:10.1017/S0959774308000??? Printed in the United Kingdom.