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In a recent study by Dr. Sawada and his colleagues in Scientific Reports, 183 human bones were surveyed, of which 52 were found to be worked human bones, all of which belong to the Neolithic Liangzhu culture.

The Liangzhu culture emerged around 5,300–4,500 years ago in the Yangzi River Delta in southern China. Named for the modern site of Liangzhu, the culture represents one of the earliest and largest walled urban societies in ancient China.

The urban sites are typically surrounded by large enclosures and moats. Additionally, urban sites built dams, canals, altars, palaces, workshops, and cemeteries, all indicating a high level of social stratification.

However, Dr. Sawada and his colleagues were interested in the unique phenomenon of human bone modification.

Typically found discarded within the canals and moats of the Liangzhu culture, the worked human bones represent the first and only known instance of human bone modification in Neolithic China.

According to Dr. Sawada, "So far, no archaeological materials from periods after the Liangzhu culture have been identified that directly continue this practice. However, …we do find different treatments of the dead in later times across China, such as the custom of skull burials."

As the culture has no written records, the significance of the bones, religious belief systems, and leaders of the Liangzhu culture are unknown.

The majority of worked bones could be classified as skull cups, mask-like facial skulls, small plate-shaped skull fragments, skulls with posterior perforations, mandibles with flattened mandibular bases, and limb bones with working traces.

The analysis by Dr. Sawada and his colleagues concluded that the majority of bones seemed not to have a specific age or sex preference, with some having been obtained from children, adolescents, and adults alike. Additionally, both males and females were found to have undergone bone work.

A difference they did not see was in the bone pathology, indicating low nutritional health, possibly due to these individuals belonging to a lower social status.

In many cultures, worked human bones are the result of an intricate relationship between the worker and the worked, associated with kinship and conflict.

However, the lack of signs of violence and cutmarks indicate these worked bones were unlikely to have been obtained during episodes of violence, possibly linked with war or enmity.

Additionally, the presence of many of these bones in Zhongjiagang, which served as Liangzhu's workshop, may suggest that these bones were the result of a standardized production process.

The lack of cutmarks further indicates these were not obtained through dismemberment but likely were collected after the soft tissue of the deceased had decomposed. Hereafter, the bones were worked.

Interestingly, the majority of these worked bones appear unfinished, around 80%, and were apparently deliberately discarded in the canals of the moats.

This treatment of the dead is in direct contrast to prior periods in which smaller-scale communities typically interred their dead in formal burial contexts. This may be linked to greater and tighter-knit kinship and social relationships in these earlier societies.

However, with the advent of the much larger and less closely known Liangzhu culture, social bonds appear to have undergone a fundamental transformation. Dr. Sawada and his colleagues propose that urbanization may have altered how the living viewed the dead, particularly those outside their immediate kinship networks.

These worked human bones were possibly perceived as "other" and thus not afforded the same commemoration and ancestor worship. The high proportion of unfinished worked bones suggests these remains may not have been rare or symbolically privileged materials, but rather more readily available resources in a society where anonymous death had become commonplace.