Story highlights The skull of a man was found in a rock shelter in Lapa do Santo, Brazil

Researchers say the decapitation was not the result of a murder but probably a burial practice

(CNN) A 9,000-year-old skull found in Brazil may be the oldest case of ritual decapitation in the New World, scientists say.

The skull of a man found in a rock shelter in Lapa do Santo shows a cranium with amputated hands resting on the man's face.

Researchers said the decapitation was not the result of a murder but probably a burial practice during the culture's early Archaic period.

It was part of burial rituals that included the "manipulation of the body," said Andre Strauss, lead researcher of the study, which appeared in the journal PLOS ONE.

"Lapa do Santo's inhabitants seemed to use the human body to express their cosmological principles regarding death," he said.