A fragile human skull removed in a block of earth from 'Ain Ghazal in 1984 was excavated in the laboratory in 1997. The bone preserves evidence of a reddish pigment and a black substance - possibly bitumen - but since the face was missing, it is not certain if this decorated skull was also modeled in plaster. The combination of the use of red pigment and a black material (bitumen ?) reflects another facet of the variability accorded to certain human skulls in the Natufian and Neolithic periods throughout the Levant.
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Rollefson et al. (1998) studied this question.
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