Butchered bones reveal massacre in Bronze Age Britain

[Judi Lynn]

December 16, 2024

Imma Perfetto
Cosmos science journalist

The remains of at least 37 people unearthed from the Early Bronze Age site of Charterhouse Warren in England have revealed the darker side of human prehistory. Recent analysis suggests the individuals were killed, butchered, and probably partly eaten before being thrown down a 15m-deep shaft.

This is the largest-scale example of interpersonal violence from British prehistory, and which archaeologists have concluded was likely carried out to dehumanise the victims. The more than 3,000 human bones and bone fragments were radiocarbon dated to between 2,210 and 2,010 years before 1950, when direct evidence of violent conflicts such as this are rare.

“We actually find more evidence for injuries to skeletons dating to the Neolithic period in Britain than the Early Bronze Age, so Charterhouse Warren stands out as something very unusual,” says Rick Schulting from the University of Oxford, UK, who led the research. “It paints a considerably darker picture of the period than many would have expected.”

The remains were initially unearthed in the 1970s. They represent a mix of men, women, and children, suggesting the group may represent a community.

Recent analysis revealed the skulls display evidence of violent deaths from blunt force trauma. Numerous cutmarks and perimortem fractures (made around the time of death) were also found on the bones, suggesting that they were intentionally dismembered, “defleshed”, and may have been partly consumed.

More:
https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/archaeology/massacre-bronze-age-britain/

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Sounds like warfare, or they cast some group as 'the other'

Maybe they were eating the dogs

[rampartd]

3. cannibalism is generally taboo

if for no other reason than we taste bad, but the diseases transmitted can be pretty sevee.

reasons are generallt boiled down to starvation " the donner party or jamestown

or

ritual : some kind of funeral honor or an attempt to transfer the strength of an enemy

these guys were not even treated as human, so maybe some kind of demonstration of terror?

i've been speculating on this story since yesterday when i read it. none of it pleasant.

the cambridge link is probably the best one i;ve seen on the story, but still many questions.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/darker-angels-of-our-nature-early-bronze-age-butchered-human-remains-from-charterhouse-warren-somerset-uk/93EBB135C857C7B7992FC80A4ED927AF

[wnylib]

4. Ritual sacrifices to the gods? Such sacrifices have occurred at other locations

and times in human cultures. Some ritual sacrifices and cannibalism were associated with fertility rites in early agricultural communities of the ancient Eastern Mediterranean region.

If I remember right, I think that some Romans or Greeks wrote about human sacrifices among Celtic and Germanic tribes north of the Roman Empire.

[rampartd]

5. human sacrifice was certainly endemic in the neolithic

the bog bodies , at least some of them seem sacrificed, . the celts burned those wicker cages , and many early city states sacrificed an annual king in the spring. in any case the ceremonial sacrifices would have been individuals i think, not dozens (the aztecs, on the other hand .....) and rarely eaten.

i hope that we learn more.

another interesting question involves the age of the sacrifice. in europe they seem to be adults, in mesopotania or carthage certainly children, mostly infants, suggesting population control as an underlying motive.

https://archive.org/details/20200305goldenbough

[wnylib]

6. Cannibalism was part of the fertility sacrifices in some of the

eastern Mediterranean ancient societies.

A priest, priestess, or king was sacrificed and their blood and body given out to be eaten and drunk by other priests or selected people to ensure fertility of the soil and the people. Some of the blood was poured on the soil and pieces given to farmers to plant in their fields.

The fertility was intended not just for crops and herd animals, but to ensure continued life for the people who depended on those foods for survival. A cycle of life celebration, from conception to birth, life, death, and return to the soil to continue to feed the people. It was associated with societies that had dying and resurrecting gods, i.e. ancient Egypt (Isis), and very ancient Greece and Rome, before they became more advanced societies (Demeter, Aphrodite).

Outside of Egypt, Isis was known as Ishtar or Astarte.

A sublimated remnant of that ancient belief and custom exists in Christianity in the Eucharist, aka Holy Communion. "This is my body....This is my blood." Not a Jewish concept. It must have entered into Christianity from Greek and Roman converts in the early days of the church.

Human sacrifice in northern Europe was associated with appeasing the gods and with divination (discerning divine will, prophesying the future).

[rampartd]

7. that sounds reasonable

well, as reasonable as "appeasing the gods" can possibly sound.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. Adding a link

Hat tip, cickbaity Vice

Scientists Unearth 4,000-Year-Old Massacre Where Victims Were Cut Up and Eaten
By Luis Prada

December 17, 2024, 2:14pm

‘The darker angels of our nature’: Early Bronze Age butchered human remains from Charterhouse Warren, Somerset, UK
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2024

Rick J. Schulting, Teresa Fernández-Crespo, Javier Ordoño, Fiona Brock, Ashleigh Kellow, Christophe Snoeck, Ian R. Cartwright,
David Walker, Louise Loe, and Tony Audsley

Abstract

Direct physical evidence for violent interpersonal conflict is seen only sporadically in the archaeological record for prehistoric Britain. Human remains from Charterhouse Warren, south-west England, therefore present a unique opportunity for the study of mass violence in the Early Bronze Age. At least 37 men, women and children were killed and butchered, their disarticulated remains thrown into a 15m-deep natural shaft in what is, most plausibly, interpreted as a single event. The authors examine the physical remains and debate the societal tensions that could motivate a level and scale of violence that is unprecedented in British prehistory.

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