ARCHAEOLOGISTS have analysed more than 3,000 human bones and bone fragments from the Early Bronze Age site of Charterhouse Warren, on the Mendip Hills, concluding that the people were massacred, butchered, and likely partly consumed by enemies as a means to dehumanise them.
The bones are part of the collections at Wells & Mendip Museum, and were made available for scientific analysis.
There have been hundreds of human skeletons found in Britain dating between c.2500-1500 cal. BC, but direct evidence for violent conflict is 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,” said lead author of the research, Professor Rick Schulting from the University of Oxford. “It paints a considerably darker picture of the period than many would have expected.”
In the 1970s, the scattered bones of at least 37 individuals were discovered in a 15m-deep shaft at Charterhouse Warren. They were a mix of men, women, and children.
Unlike most contemporary burials, the skulls display evidence of violent death from blunt force trauma. To uncover the mystery of what happened to these people, researchers from several European institutions analysed the bones. Their results are published in the journal Antiquity.
The researchers found numerous cutmarks and perimortem fractures (made around the time of death) on the bones, suggesting that they were intentionally butchered and may have been partly consumed, begging the question: why would people in Early Bronze Age Britain cannibalise the dead?
At the nearby Palaeolithic site of Gough’s Cave in Cheddar Gorge, cannibalism was likely a form of funerary ritual. Charterhouse Warren is different, say the research team. Evidence for violent death, with no indication of a fight, implies the victims were taken by surprise; it is probable they were all massacred, and the butchery was carried out by their enemies.
The possibility that they were killed for food is said to be unlikely as there were abundant cattle bones found mixed in with the human ones, suggesting the people at Charterhouse Warren had plenty to eat without needing to resort to cannibalism. Instead, cannibalism may have been a way to ‘other’ the deceased. By eating their flesh and mixing the bones in with faunal remains, the killers were likening their enemies to animals, thereby dehumanising them.
It is suggested that the conflict was more likely to have been caused by social factors –
perhaps theft or insults led to tensions, which escalated out of proportion – rather than resource competition and climate change, or ethnic conflict. Evidence for infection with plague in the teeth of two children indicates disease may have also exacerbated tensions.
“The finding of evidence of the plague by colleagues from the Crick Institute was completely unexpected,” said Professor Schulting.
“We’re still unsure whether, and if so how, this is related to the violence at the site.”
He added: “Charterhouse Warren is one of those rare archaeological sites that challenges the way we think about the past. It is a stark reminder that people in prehistory could match more recent atrocities and shines a light on a dark side of human behaviour.
“That it is unlikely to have been a one-off event makes it even more important that its story is told.”
The human bones are all currently in Oxford, and Wells & Mendip Museum is hoping to put some of them on display when they are eventually returned to Wells.
There already is a small display on the Charterhouse Warren farm site in the Museum’s Balch Room.
David Walker, Wells & Mendip Museum’s Honorary Curator, said: “The human and animal remains are an extraordinary assemblage.
“We will never know what happened all those years ago, but the scientists using new techniques like Archaic DNA analysis can tell us a lot about these individuals and their society.”