New research suggests dozens of Bronze Age Britons were killed in an attack unlike any previously known archaeologists studying this time period and place.
Research into human remains from Charterhouse Warren in south-west England, carried out by a team of researchers from various institutions, including the University of Oxford, was published in Antiquitya magazine of world archaeology. At least 37 Bronze Age men, women and children were found to have been “killed and butchered” and then cannibalized, their bodies thrown down a nearly 50-foot-deep natural well. Although archaeologists have found remains of Bronze Age and later Britons who died violently, these incidents were largely isolated. Mass graves from this period have also been found, but the remains were buried with respect, unlike those studied.
Researchers first learned about the shaft in the 1970s. In the 1970s and 1980s, two excavations were carried out. Human remains, as well as some artifacts, including a flint dagger, were found at various points in the pit during these excavations. In total, more than 3,000 individual human bones and bone fragments have been recovered. These bones were used to estimate that at least 37 individual assemblages of remains were present on the shaft. The different lengths of the bones show that the people killed were both men and women, and ranged in age from infants to adults. Ongoing research is working to determine how the individuals related to each other.
The way the remains were removed made the detailed examination possible, the researchers said. The shaft helped preserve the bones and keep them together.
Cambridge University Press on behalf of Antiquity Publications Ltd
The bones “show clear evidence of blunt force trauma,” according to the researchers, suggesting that many of the people in the shaft “suffered a violent death.” Investigators said other injuries also occurred, including the removal of the scalp and severed muscles in the jaw suggesting removal of the tongue or lower jaw. Some of the victims may have been decapitated or dismembered.
The victims may have been held captive or ambushed, due to the severity of their injuries, investigators said. It is unclear who may have carried out the attacks.
There is also evidence that the bodies were cannibalized, the researchers said, including human tooth marks on the bones and indicators that the marrow, the soft tissue inside the bones, was removed. The researchers said the cannibalism likely took place “within a context of violent conflict, in which individuals are dehumanized and treated like animals.”
“Some 37 men, women and children, and possibly many more, were killed nearby with blunt instruments and then systematically dismembered and fleshed, their long bones fractured in a way that can only be described as carnage “, the researchers said.
Later in the publication, the researchers referred to the scene as a “massacre” and suggested that it might even have been a “political statement” of violence so blatant that it would have “resonated throughout the region and throughout of time”. However, it is unclear what could have triggered the violence: “Neither climate change, ethnic conflict, nor competition for material resources appear to offer convincing explanations,” according to the researchers, leaving the only likely option that the violence erupted as apart from a pattern of revenge or violence between communities.
“At this stage, our research has raised as many questions as it has answered,” the researchers said. “Work is underway to shed more light on this decidedly dark episode of British prehistory.”