News research suggests Britons in the Bronze Age were brutal cannibals who ate their enemis after analysis of the bones of 37 people found discarded in Somerset
Bronze Age Britons were cannibals who ate their enemies, suggests new research.
Analysis of bones from at least 37 people, discovered in Somerset and dating back around 4,000 years, found they were killed, butchered, and probably consumed before being thrown down a 50 feet-deep shaft. Archaeologists studied more than 3,000 human bones and bone fragments found at Charterhouse Warren, the largest-scale example of interpersonal violence from British pre-history.
They say the treatment of the remains was likely a means to dehumanise or “other” the victims. The research team believe the massacre was probably “revenge” for a perceived offence, implying a cycle of violence and questioning the idea that Early Bronze Age Britain was relatively peaceful.
There have been hundreds of human skeletons found in Britain dating between 2500BC and 1500BC, but direct evidence for violent conflict is rare. Study lead author Professor Rick Schulting, from the University of Oxford, said: “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. 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 15-metre deep shaft at Charterhouse Warren in Somerset. They were a mix of men, women, and children, suggesting they were representative of a community.
Unlike most contemporary burials, Prof Schulting says the skulls display evidence of violent death from blunt force trauma.
To uncover the mystery of what happened to the victims, researchers from several European institutions analysed the bones.
Their findings, published in the journal Antiquity, showed 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. At the nearby Palaeolithic site of Gough’s Cave in Cheddar Gorge, the research team say cannibalism was likely a form of funerary ritual.
But Charterhouse Warren is different. The researchers say evidence for violent death, with no indication of a fight, implies the victims were taken by surprise.
The team believe it is probable they were all massacred, and the butchery was carried out by their enemies. They say it is unlikely the victims were killed for food 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, the researchers believe cannibalism may have been a way to ‘other’ the deceased.
By eating their flesh and mixing the bones in with animal remains, the killers were likening their enemies to animals, thereby dehumanising them.
Competition for resources and climate change don’t seem to have exacerbated conflict in Britain at that time, and there is currently no genetic evidence to suggest the co-existence of communities with different ancestries that could have resulted in ethnic conflict.
The researchers say this suggests that the conflict was caused by social factors. Perhaps theft or insults led to tensions, which escalated out of proportion.
Evidence for infection with plague in the teeth of two children indicates disease may have also exacerbated tensions.
Prof Schulting said: “The finding of evidence of the plague in previous research by colleagues from The Francis Crick Institute was completely unexpected. We’re still unsure whether, and if so how, this is related to the violence at the site”.
He says that, ultimately, the findings paint a picture of a prehistoric people for whom perceived slights and cycles of revenge could result in disproportionally violent actions.
Prof Schulting 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.”
