Around 4000 years ago, at least 37 men, woman and children were brutally butchered, dismembered and possibly eaten by their enemies before their remains were tossed into a 15-metre-deep cave shaft with cattle bones.
It is the largest and most extreme episode of mass violence known from prehistoric Britain. The archaeologists behind the discovery think the perpetrators did it to dehumanise, or 鈥渙ther鈥�, the victims, possibly as revenge to send a political message.
Until now, evidence of violence was scarce during the Early Bronze Age in Britain, suggesting this was a relatively peaceful time compared with earlier and subsequent periods. The remains from Charterhouse Warren in Somerset, south-west England, challenge that view.
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鈥淭hings went horribly wrong,鈥� says at the University of Oxford. 鈥淚t doesn鈥檛 take much imagination to realise that this was an horrific event, especially when holding the bones of a young child that was treated in this way.鈥�
Two excavations in the 1970s and 1980s originally unearthed the human remains from the Charterhouse Warren cave shaft. The only report of them, made in 1988, documented around 200 bones and simply noted that some had cut marks on them with signs of butchery.
Wanting to better understand prehistoric violence in Britain, Schulting and his colleagues revisited the archived bones to see what clues they might contain. They were astonished. The collection actually contained more than 3000 bones and they displayed significant signs of trauma.
Soon, detailed analyses of the remains painted a gruesome picture. Dated to between 2210 and 2010 BC, numerous skull fractures and broken bones indicated that the victims 鈥� ranging from newborn to adult with over half being older children and adolescents 鈥� suffered violent deaths.
Rib fractures suggested that chest cavities had been ripped open. Meanwhile, cut marks on bones were consistent with dismembering, decapitation, disembowelling and defleshing, most likely with stone tools. Further evidence revealed instances of scalp, jaw and even tongue removal.
鈥淭his re-analysis demonstrates a scale of brutality unparalleled in prehistoric Britain,鈥� says at the University of Cardiff, UK, who wasn鈥檛 involved in the study. 鈥淭his is much more than just a massacre. Great effort has been made to dismember, disarticulate and fragment the bodies to make the victims unrecognisable as individuals.鈥�
Along with butchery, some of the remains showed potential bite marks, which the researchers think indicate an example of cannibalism. However, Madgwick is less convinced because there are few cut marks consistent with flesh removal and scavengers can鈥檛 be ruled out for the bite damage.
Moreover, a 2023 study found DNA from the plague-causing bacterium Yersinia pestis in two of the victims鈥� teeth, which only deepens the mystery and seems at odds with how the bodies were treated.
This conundrum aside, the researchers think that, far from a frenzied, thoughtless attack, the evidence points to something that was methodical and had significance. Speculating what caused such violence, they compared it with other known instances of prehistoric butchery and ruled out various possibilities, including climate change pressures, competition for resources, mortuary rites, starvation or ethnic conflict.
Their best guess is that social tensions among local communities, possibly arising from theft or insults and exacerbated by the fear of illness, spiralled out of control, resulting in a disproportionate form of ritualistic 鈥渧iolence as performance鈥� to make a political statement.
鈥淚t would have had repercussions, promoting cycles of violence and embroiling the surrounding communities as revenge was sought by relatives and allies,鈥� says Schulting. 鈥淚t is highly unlikely that this was a one-off event.鈥�
Antiquity
