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We do not know why, around 4,000 years ago, dozens of men, women, and children were deliberately killed and their dismembered bodies thrown into a 15m-deep limestone shaft in the Mendip Hills of Somerset. What is clear, however, is that they were subjected to brutal treatment both before and after their deaths, in an act of mass violence that is so far without parallel in the archaeology of prehistoric Britain. A thought-provoking study, recently published in Antiquity (see ‘Further reading’ below), offers detailed analysis of the more than 3,000 individual bones and fragments, representing the remains of at least 37 individuals, that were excavated at Charterhouse Warren in the 1970s. Including both males and females, and ranging in age from newborn babies to older adults, this group reflects an unusual burial practice for the period in which they lived, when individual, intact inhumation was much more common. They also stand out, however, due to the extensive evidence of peri- and post-mortem damage on their remains, adding stark new details to our still-evolving understanding of interpersonal violence in prehistoric Europe.
Conflict archaeology is a relatively young branch of archaeological study, and often focuses on rather more recent periods than that which witnessed the killings at Charterhouse Warren. However, evidence is increasingly emerging to attest to violent interactions both in the Bronze Age and the Neolithic period (see CA 230 and ‘Science Notes’ in CA 397). While prehistoric weaponry has been extensively excavated and analysed, the most vivid traces of man’s inhumanity to man are found on human remains. It is not always obvious if an ancient injury represents an accident or an act of deliberate violence – a broken rib, for example, can be caused as easily by a fall as a blow – but, in some cases, cut marks and distinctive fracture patterns testify to the use of specific weapons and, much more rarely, some remains are found with the offending blade or arrowhead still embedded in bone. Nevertheless, this can only ever present a partial picture, dependent as such evidence is on the survival and completeness of a skeleton. Moreover, any injuries that only affect soft tissue would be osteologically invisible.
Prehistoric violence
Hundreds of well-preserved Early Bronze Age human skeletons have been excavated across Britain, but not all of these have been subjected to scientific study, and, in those that have, this kind of direct, physical evidence of violence against a person is relatively scarce, leading to suggestions that this was a comparatively peaceful time on these shores. However, undeniable examples of aggression against individuals are known. One such case is ‘Racton Man’; his crouched burial was discovered in West Sussex in 1989, and today his remains are in the Novium Museum in Chichester (CA 300). Aged around 45 or older at the time of his death c.2300-2150 BC, in life he would have been an imposing figure, robustly built and, at 6ft in height, exceptionally tall for the period. He was also set apart by the prestigious dagger that had accompanied him to the grave: Britain’s earliest-known bronze object, literally cutting-edge technology that had been cast at a time when this material was very much a novelty. Yet a blade was also the cause of Racton Man’s death: his skeleton preserves the marks of a lethal attack, with a slice to his upper arm and another to the lower part of his right shoulder. These evoke images of an arm struck as it was raised to block a blow to the man’s head, followed by a second, fatal cut deep into the exposed armpit.
Racton Man’s apparent prestige in life, and the way in which he met his death, has led to suggestions that this individual might reflect a custom of combat-contested leadership. A detailed description of the burial, published in 2017 by Stuart Needham and others in The Antiquaries Journal, explores this theme in more detail, while also citing a number of other Bronze Age inhumations with blade wounds (particularly to the forearm, suggesting ‘parry’ injuries), at sites in Cambridgeshire, Dorset, East Sussex, Hampshire, Somerset, and Wiltshire.
It was not only bladed weapons being wielded in anger, however. Another Bronze Age burial cited by the Antiquity paper’s authors was discovered at Stonehenge. There, in 1978, John G Evans was re-excavating a cutting (from Richard Atkinson’s 1954 investigations) through the monument’s bank and ditch when the collapse of a section exposed well-preserved human remains. These (as Evans reported in the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine) proved to belong to a 25- to 30-year-old male who had been shot at close range by multiple arrows. Three of the man’s ribs had penetrating injuries, while the tip of an arrowhead was still embedded in his sternum.
While individuals like those discussed above had clearly been singled out for aggression, they nevertheless appear to have been interred respectfully, following the typical rites of the time (the man found at Stonehenge had also been laid to rest in a crouched position, accompanied by artefacts). The fragmentary remains excavated at Charterhouse Warren are very different in nature, both in their treatment and the number of people represented. Nothing else of this scale is known from Bronze Age Britain, and for possible parallels we must turn to continental Europe, and to the Neolithic period, separated from the Somerset finds by hundreds of miles and some 3,000 years.
Mass killings
Germany and Austria are home to a number of ‘mass fatality sites’ dating to c.5500-5000 BC, where entire communities appear to have been wiped out. The reasons behind these massacres have long been lost to memory, though it has been suggested that the more settled, agriculture-focused lifestyle associated with this period may have sparked greater competition for land and resources, and a greater emphasis on amassing material ‘wealth’. The most famous of these sites was discovered at Talheim, Germany, in 1983; there, a large pit was found to hold the remains of 34 men, women, and children who had been killed with weapons, but whose skeletons bore the marks, too, of repeated healed traumas, indicating that such hostilities were a regular occurrence within this society.
Meanwhile, at Schöneck-Kilianstädten (also in Germany), road-building works in 2006 uncovered another mass grave containing the remains of at least 26 individuals who had died from blunt-force injuries and arrow wounds. In many cases, the bones of their lower legs had been broken at around the time of their death as well, which has been interpreted as possible torture of living captives, or mutilation of their corpses.
The make-up of such burials suggests that whole communities were being targeted, perhaps representing raids on settlements. Adding to this, at Asparn-Schletz, in Austria, archaeologists have uncovered the remains of at least a dozen longhouses surrounded by an oval ditch, within which lay the mostly prone skeletons of 67 men, women (though few young females who, it is suggested, may have been abducted), and children, most of whom had died from blunt-force skull trauma. Telling clues have also emerged from the later Neolithic period; in 2005, excavations at Eulau in Germany revealed the remains of 13 men, women, and children, who had been buried in four graves c.2600 BC. Fractured skulls, a flint arrowhead embedded in the spine of one woman, and defensive injuries to forearms and hands speak of a violent attack on this group who, DNA analysis has revealed, shared close familial relationships.
Evidence of injuries
While the span of time and distance between these sites and Charterhouse Warren means that direct comparisons should be made with caution, there are striking similarities between the snapshot of society that each burial represents, and the way in which they were killed. When examining all the skull elements from the shaft group, the paper’s authors note, some 30.4% present evidence of fracturing at around the time of death, while if you limit this analysis to the 20 fragments that include at least part of the right eye socket (and therefore definitely belong to different people), the rate goes up to 45%. It appears that at least a significant proportion of these people had been killed by blows to the head – and this violence had continued after death.
While earlier accounts of the excavated remains make note of cut marks on the bones, the full extent of this damage (and the sheer number of human remains) has only become clear in the recently published analysis. Cuts – mainly using stone rather than metal tools – appear, often multiple times, on 20% of the human remains (including more than 25% of the skull fragments), while a third show signs of deliberate fracturing. Chillingly, the researchers note, these do not represent further fatal injuries – rather, the bodies were being systematically taken apart. A mixture of shallow slices and short, deep cuts on neck vertebrae speak of heads being separated from bodies, while damage to several scapulae, at the elbow end of humeri and the hip end of femurs, and on bones from the foot and ankle reflect the careful disarticulation of joints.
Some of these processes are strikingly similar to butchery marks seen on animal bones, and cuts on some of the long bones and ribs do suggest that the Charterhouse Warren bodies were defleshed and then at least partially consumed. Around a third of the human remains have fractures characteristic of breaks to fresh bone (possibly accessing the marrow), while several ribs have breaks from being bent. Most tellingly, some of the small bones from hands and feet have crushing fractures consistent with being chewed by the flat molars of omnivores (such as humans) rather than the sharper teeth of carnivores. This does not appear to have been an act of desperation driven by starvation; on the contrary, the presence of numerous cattle bones within the shaft suggests that food was plentiful. Might there instead have been a ritual motivation?
Ceremonial activity?
Less than 2 miles to the west of the shaft site is Gough’s Cave. Like the Neolithic mass burials mentioned before, this location represents an earlier episode of human activity – this time reflecting the Magdalenian culture that inhabited Cheddar Gorge c.15,000 years ago, and is also known from Continental cave sites like Altamira in Spain and Lascaux in France (CA 330). However, it offers intriguing parallels to the Charterhouse Warren finds as well, particularly regarding suggestions of prehistoric cannibalism. This cave has produced the remains of six individuals (a 3-year-old child, two adolescents aged 12-14 and 14-16, and three adults, one of them elderly) which also show signs of dismemberment and butchery, including possible human chew marks on foot- and hand-bones, and ribs. Here, though, evidence of possibly ceremonial activity is more explicit: at least three crania had been carefully shaped into ‘skull cups’ (CA 254), and one of the butchered arm-bones had been carved with a zig-zag pattern before it was broken and chewed (CA 331, ‘Science Notes’). There is no clear evidence, either, that the Gough’s Cave individuals had violent deaths, leading to suggestions that cannibalism instead formed part of their funerary rites.
In this light, does post-mortem consumption have to indicate a hostile act? Returning to the Bronze Age, archaeological evidence attests to a diverse range of funerary practices that would not necessarily tally with modern perceptions of ‘respectful’ treatment of the dead. In Britain, it appears that human remains were routinely curated, modified, and taken apart, while portions were circulated and/or reburied in new locations. Sites like Cladh Hallan on South Uist (CA 265 and 382), where ‘composite mummies’ were created from elements of different people who had died some time apart, and later buried beneath roundhouses; and Canada Farm in Dorset (CA 279), where skeletons were found with holes drilled through their long bones, exemplify this variety, and how challenging it is to interpret such practices. CA 368 reported on another study, published by Thomas Booth and Joanna Brück in Antiquity (2020), indicating that many Bronze Age bodies were not buried intact, but were fragmented and placed in other, sometimes significantly later burials like grave goods, or in the boundary ditches and pits associated with settlements. Even taking this wide range of funerary acts into account, however, the Charterhouse Warren individuals seem a case apart, in the way that they were subjected to violent deaths and then thrown down a shaft.
Interpreting evidence
The Charterhouse Warren group appears to represent a single event: there was little evidence on the human remains for rodent or carnivore gnawing, indicating that this part of the shaft had been rapidly infilled, and dating analysis by the paper’s authors (combining new radiocarbon results with two previously published dates) is consistent, too, with a single burial sometime in the period 2197-2038 cal BC. Why, then, were so many people put to death in such a brutal way? Might fear of disease have been a factor? A separate study of 30 individuals from the site, led by the Francis Crick Institute and published in Nature Communications (see also CA 401, ‘Science Notes’), revealed that two children tested positive for Yersinia pestis, the bacterium responsible for plague. If the group was deemed dangerous due to infection, however, it seems counterintuitive to consume their remains. Other possible motivations include revenge or punishment for breaking a social taboo, though the continued violence after death could indicate something performative, the Antiquity paper suggests. Could the fact that they were eaten and their remains discarded alongside cattle bones suggest that they were deliberately being treated like animals – that is, not just eradicating a group but dehumanising them?
Such an impulse suggests intense hatred of the ‘other’, which might indicate an attack from a rival tribe, or even warfare. A Bronze Age battlefield (albeit one dated around a millennium later than the Charterhouse Warren burial) has been identified in Germany’s Tollense Valley, where excavations have uncovered the remains of over 150 individuals, mostly young men, who had suffered violent deaths c.1250 BC. Intriguing evidence has also emerged from this site to suggest an inter-regional conflict. Isotope analysis indicates that some participants had not grown up locally, and this disparity is borne out by a study, recently published in Antiquity, that compared bronze and flint arrowheads from the valley to more than 4,000 contemporary examples from across Central Europe. Published last autumn by L Inselmann, J Krüger, F Schopper, L Rahmstorf, and T Terberger, ‘Warriors from the south? Arrowheads from the Tollense Valley and Central Europe’ demonstrates that, while the majority of the Tollense arrowheads were locally typical, there were also examples more in keeping with an area to the south (encompassing modern Bavaria and Moravia). Tellingly, these objects are not present in burials from the Tollense region, indicating that local people were not simply acquiring the arrowheads through trade with southern groups and then using them in battle themselves. Rather, it appears that southern warriors, perhaps even a southern army, had contributed to the bloodshed at Tollense. (The open-access paper can be found at https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2024.140.)
Might the Charterhouse Warren finds, then, reflect the persecution of people perceived as ‘outsiders’? In fact, isotope analysis suggests that these were people of local origin. Conflict between neighbours, or even within the same group, may have had social or political motivations, perhaps a theft or perceived insult that sparked an escalating cycle of tit-for-tat revenge, culminating in communal retribution. While the mass burial is presently unprecedented in British prehistory, this may be due to the protection and preservation offered by the limestone shaft, rather than indicating that such acts were an aberration in an otherwise peaceful society. As one of the paper’s authors, Professor Rick Schulting of the University of Oxford, commented: ‘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.’
Further reading:
R J Schulting, T Fernández-Crespo, J Ordoño et al. (2024) ‘“The darker angels of our nature”: Early Bronze Age butchered human remains from Charterhouse Warren, Somerset, UK’, Antiquity: First View, pp.1-17; https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2024.180 (open access).
All images: R J Schulting et al., unless otherwise stated
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