The find
A statue uncovered at Sayburç in 2025 shows a human figure with rib markings, apparent shell-inlaid eyes, and — most strikingly — a mouth that appears deliberately stitched or sewn shut. It was found in a domestic setting, among burials, and is read as an image of the dead.
The figure gives Sayburç a clearer place in the region's symbolic network: this is not a hilltop sanctuary but a lived-in settlement, and its people were carving the dead too.
Why it matters
The sealed mouth is the point. Across this world, the head and face were treated as the seat of the person, and the dead were handled with elaborate care. A mouth deliberately sewn shut reads as a symbolic act — silencing, protecting, or marking the dead in some way we can't yet name.
It lets researchers reassess Neolithic ideas about death from a new angle — not only through buried bodies and worked skulls, but through a made image of a dead person. What exactly it meant remains open.