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An archaeological interpretation of irish iron age bog bodies
Abstract
In 2003, the discovery in Irish peat bogs of two well-preserved Iron Age bodies provided an opportunity to undertake detailed scientific analysis with a view to understanding how, when, and why the two young male victims were killed and their bodies consigned to the bogs. Research also looked at other Iron Age objects deposited ritually in peat bogs, including other bog bodies. The locations at which the bodies were discovered were researched and a wealth of historical, folklore, and mythological material was consulted to assist interpretation of the finds. A theory was developed that appears to explain not only the ritual killings in question but also the deposition of bog bodies and other objects in peat bogs in proximity to significant territorial boundaries. The theory links the bog bodies with kingship and sovereignty rituals during the Iron Age.
... There is substantial evidence that individuals deposited in bogs experienced torture before their placement (e.g. Aldhouse- Green, 2001Green, , 2015Brothwell and Gill-Robinson, 2002;Kelly, 2006aKelly, and 2006bKelly, , 2013. However, if we consider the catalogues of Glob (1969) and Turner and Scaife (1995), not all bog individuals were subjected to sharp force trauma or any damage upon death. ...
... For example, prior to deposition in a bog, Clonycavan man, excavated in Ireland, was provided with a final meal. His hair was styled with an imported pine resin from France or Northern Spain, suggesting a level of grooming and ritual preparation before he was subjected to a series of sharp-blunt force trauma to the upper torso (Kelly 2013). The trauma inflicted onto the body comprised of three stab wounds to his torso. ...
... Three lacerations have also been recorded. Clonycavan man's nipples have been cut, suggested by Kelly (2006aKelly ( and 2006bKelly ( , 2013) as a sign of rejected sovereignty. The other laceration is a 40 cm cut across his abdomen, possibly from purposeful disembowelment peri-mortem (Green and Arnold, 2008;Kelly, 2006aKelly, and 2006bKelly, , 2013. ...
The analysis of sharp force trauma has usually been reserved for prehistoric osteological case studies. Bog bodies, on the other hand, due to the excellent preservation of the soft tissues, provide a unique example of visible lesions. This type of preservation of prehistoric soft tissue trauma that would otherwise be predominantly absent from osteological remains allows archaeologists to understand better the methods in which these individuals died and potentially the demographic for who performed these acts. Unfortunately, analysis of sharp force trauma in modern forensics is limited, lacking major revision for the last decade. Likewise, archaeological analysis of sharp force trauma is limited to osteological indicators (e.g., marks on bone and cartilage). Therefore, this experimental study performed in 2016 aimed to compare lesions observed on prehistoric bog bodies with those on a human proxy – pig carcases and create an assailant profile through correlating weapon type and volunteer body mass index (BMI). A Multivariate Kruskal-Wallis test (MKW) revealed that the wound areas created by two different weapons under study (a dagger or spear) could not significantly differentiate assailants based on their BMI with 95% confidence level. A binomial logistic regression model was used to predict further the likelihood that either a spear or a dagger caused the observed stab wounds on the individual bog bodies under investigation, given the specific wound lengths and unknown true BMI of the victims. This logistic model was approximately 92% accurate in classifying the weapon type given the exact wound length across different possible BMI values of an assailant (BMI range: 18.0-31.5 kg/m2).
... Poetry as a point of entry into the buried life of the feelings or as a point of exit for it … Heaney (1991, 52) In this paper we delve into the entangled relationship between archaeology and the late Northern Irish poet Seamus Heaney (1939-2013. We delve incompletely into texts, especially the poems The Tollund Man and Bogland (Heaney 1969(Heaney , 1972, literary critical archaeological writings, and aspects of Irish peatland archaeology. ...
... Bullock, Collier, and Convery 2012) that has cut down into the 'wet centre' of many peatlands. This is the process that reveals but also erases archaeology: the later prehistoric bog bodies of Clonycavan and Old Croghan Man (Kelly 2013) were found as a result of peat extraction, whilst bog bodies from other countries, including The Tollund Man, were also discovered in this way. The partial survival of most bog bodies is also of course due to cutting, these human remains were very nearly nothing and it is likely other bodies have been entirely destroyed. ...
... To return finally to bog bodies: Kelly (2013) proposed that the later prehistoric Irish bodies mentioned above, Clonycavan and Old Croghan Man, were 'failed' kings, once the 'consort' of an 'earth goddess', but sacrificed as part of fertility rituals. This is a direct interpretive link to Glob's (1969) The Bog People, which as outlined above, played a critical role in Heaney's inspiration for The Tollund Man: Glob, to Heaney and Kelly and back. ...
In this paper we discuss the entangled relationship between literary creation, archaeology and representations of gender in the poetry of Seamus Heaney, in particular the ‘bog poems’ The Tollund Man and Bogland. We trace the early formative connections between the poet, peatlands and ‘bog body’ research, in which both literary critical and archaeological scholars have analysed themes including ‘the bog as archive’, theory and practice of archaeology and the process of poetic creation and imagining in Heaney’s writings. We discuss archaeological perspectives on Heaney’s poetry, and outline literary critique that has problematised the representation of gender in the ‘bog poems’. Finally, we consider the poem Bogland and read this through the lens of Irish peatland archaeology, in particular its destruction by industrial peat extraction. To conclude, we reflect how Heaney’s poetry as a form of archaeological knowledge and narratives must continue to be subject to ‘excavation’, contextual readings and critique.
... Whilst several discussions acknowledge the 'brutality' of injury and death (e.g. Kelly 2012;Giles 2014), the bodily experience of pain by the individuals has not been directly considered. More broadly, whilst there is of course a profusion of palaeopathological studies detailing mortality, health and disease in past societies, Kjellström (2010, 57) has observed that 'none of the often cited palaeopathology textbooks has the word pain in its index', suggesting that the reason for this may be: 'the difficulties in dealing with such an individually perceived and culturally controlled issue.' ...
... Even for those individuals who display evidence for extended pain which may be equated with 'torture', such as Old Croghan Man, Clonycavan Man and Dätgen Man, different readings of the precise sequence of events associated with their deaths provide subtly varied interpretations in terms of a 'ritualized' killing, as has been argued for the latter examples (Kelly, 2012). An interpretation that proposes the removal of nipples prior to loss of consciousness might suggest that the subsequent display of the resulting extreme but non-fatal pain was an integral component of the event. ...
This paper highlights the potential for what could be termed an ‘archaeology of pain’, reflecting on the potential significance and role of the infliction, suffering, endurance and observation of pain by individuals in the past. It presents a case study of ‘bog bodies’, human remains recovered from wetland which, due to the anoxic, waterlogged conditions, preserves human flesh and associated evidence, including injuries and cause of death. The central argument is that evidence from pathological investigations of certain later prehistoric bodies provides hitherto neglected information concerning the embodied experience of pain, in particular its duration and intensity, which may be central to the interpretation of these events. This understanding can be framed not only in terms of the experience of pain by the victims, but also in the potential perception of pain and suffering by those inflicting these and potentially by any observers of the final moments of these individuals.
... In comparison, the Laramie samples were subjected to freezing and thawing and wetting and drying, but not regular high levels of humidity. As with the "bog bodies'' of Western Europe (Kelly, 2013) or mummified Inca human remains (Williams and Katzenberg, 2012), the preservation of bison keratin in a Late-Prehistoric (ca. 300-500 BP) site in northcentral Wyoming at the bottom of a cliff edge (Pelton et al., 2019) can be attributed to local conditions favorable to keratin preservation. ...
Keratin is scarcely found in the archaeological record and is typically only preserved if conditions are conducive to the preservation of other organic materials. However, the rate of decomposition of keratinous materials, such as horn sheaths and hooves, is unknown. This study measures the rates of keratin decay and scavenging by animals of bison hooves over a two-year period in two environments: one at low elevation with warm temperatures and high humidity levels and the other at high elevation with generally cooler temperatures and low humidity levels. We find that keratin decays at a faster rate in humid environments, and a keratinous ecofact such as a hoof should be expected to decay, if exposed to the elements, within 5 years in warm, humid, low elevation environments. In cool, low humidity high elevation environments, we find that keratinous ecofacts should be expected to decay within 20 years. These decomposition rates allow us to put constraints on conditions of keratin preservation in the archaeological record.
... That so many bog mummies are discovered by peat-cutters and thus emerged in a macerated state only adds to their monstrous, nonhuman appearance. These bodies were also deposited on ancient kingship boundaries, leading archaeologists to suggest that the practice may also have related to sovereignty rituals, in other words, class-based boundary-making (Kelly, 2012). ...
In the early middle ages, a community of Irish monks constructed a monastery outpost on the lonely Skellig Michael just offshore of County Kerry. These skelligs served as a mysterious boundary land where the known met the unknown, the worldly wrangled with the spiritual, and the very parameters of humanity itself were brought into question. Amid a period of great transition in Irish society, the monks willfully abandoned the luxuries of developing Western civilization on the mainland (and on the continent more broadly) to test their endurance through religious asceticism on a craggy island more suitable to birds than bipeds. This article reimagines the Skellig Michael experiment as a liminal space, one that troubles premodern efforts to disassociate from animality in an era when “human” and “animal” were malleable concepts. As Western society transitioned from animist paganism to anthropocentric Christianity and Norman colonial control, the Skellig Michael outpost (which survived into the 1300s) offered a point of permeability that invites a critical rethinking of early Irish custom. This article applies theories of liminality and Critical Animal studies to address the making of “human” and “animal” in the march to “civilization,” arguing that species demarcation and the establishment of anthroparchy has been central to the process.
... In contrast, unrehabilitated bogs that have been used for peat extraction are brown deserts scarred with industrial incisions and linear drains. Bogs are part of Ireland's natural heritage, their preservative abilities keeping a record of the environmental, social, and cultural past as far back as the Ice Age (Kelly 2013). Their uniqueness in terms of habitat and heritage is matched by their richness as a natural resource. ...
This case deals with the intertwined societal questions of the bogs in the Irish Midlands. The case is a version of a world-wide tension between existing industrial structures and contemporary requirements for greening the economy, and especially of the inequal spatial division of its impact. Could culture and cultural activities help us to find alternative community-based solutions to cope with the impacts of climate-change mitigation? The article illustrates a two-phase adaptation to changing environmental conditions and expectations. The first phase is the state-level response of the Irish government to climate-change and the requirements of the EU-directives partially at the expense of the local communities depending on the bogs economically (peat-industry, turf-users). The second phase is the local response to the state-level actions and what have local cultures to do with it.
... Their value as exceptional repositories of information about past human experience and environments is incontrovertible. Their meaning and significance as human remains have been a matter for discussion in numerous papers of recent years (Kelly 2012;Roberts 2013;Wills et al. 2014). The potential for the public to learn from them is great. ...
The conservation of a bog body is complex and a challenge for all those involved. A substantial list of requirements needs to be pulled together by the conservator in designing an effective and appropriate conservation strategy for these rare and important finds. Past treatments have often been reactive and constrained by lack of research and testing. Bog body materials are not yet sufficiently characterized and the level of access for which we are designing conservation treatments has not been comprehensively anticipated. This paper examines some of the questions conservators will need answered before they can design more successful long-term strategies for the conservation of bog bodies, and makes an attempt to answer them. In doing so, it places in context past treatments and hopes to stimulate future research that may aid in improving the preservation of bog bodies for the future.
... Previous studies of bog bodies have focused on better-preserved examples which typically reflect those found within the last century. Examples include Elling Woman (found in 1938), the Borremose bodies (1948-1950), Tollund Man (1950), Grauballe Man (1952, the Lindow bodies (1983)(1984)(1985)(1986)(1987)(1988) and the more recent finds from Ireland, including Clonycavan Man and Old Croghan Man, both discovered in 2003 (Kelly 2012a), and Cashel Man, discovered in 2011 (Kelly 2012b). Whilst there are exceptions, such as the Huldremose Woman originally discovered in 1879 (Frei et al. 2009), these are exceptional. ...
Recent programmes of dating, forensic examination and landscape studies have dramatically increased our understanding of well-preserved bog bodies. However, other examples, often existing only as ‘paper bodies’, remain less visible within debates about interpretation, but can provide a more comprehensive picture of what bog bodies represent. This paper presents the results of an examination of all known bog bodies found across England, Wales and Scotland, arguing that a geographical approach provides very different outcomes compared with focusing on the well-preserved bodies in collections. Specifically, we highlight that firstly, previous assumptions about the predominant dates of bog bodies are incorrect, secondly that there are significant sub-regional patterns in the data, and thirdly, that the correlation between body date and the date of discovery provides a likely reason for this bias. Despite this, the evidence reinforces the exceptional pattern of violent deaths being a significant feature of Iron Age/Romano-British period bog bodies.
... In others, there have been new discoveries in recent years, most notably in Ireland (e.g. Kelly, 2006Kelly, , 2012, but also in Germany (Bauerochse et al., 2018). ...
Bog bodies are among the best-known archaeological finds worldwide. Much of the work on these often extremely well-preserved human remains has focused on forensics, whereas the environmental setting of the finds has been largely overlooked. This applies to both the ‘physical’ and ‘cultural’ landscape and constitutes a significant problem since the vast spatial and temporal scales over which the practice appeared demonstrate that contextual assessments are of the utmost importance for our explanatory frameworks. In this article we develop best practice guidelines for the contextual analysis of bog bodies, after assessing the current state of research and presenting the results of three recent case studies including the well-known finds of Lindow Man in the United Kingdom, Bjældskovdal (Tollund Man and Elling Woman) in Denmark, and Yde Girl in the Netherlands. Three spatial and chronological scales are distinguished and linked to specific research questions and methods. This provides a basis for further discussion and a starting point for developing approaches to bog body finds and future discoveries, while facilitating and optimizing the re-analysis of previous studies, making it possible to compare deposition sites across time and space.
... The sacred kings of Tara in Ireland were married to the Earth goddess, which was believed to help ensure a constant supply of agricultural products. If the climate changed, threatening famine, this was a sign that the king had failed to maintain the goodwill of the goddess, which would often result in him suffering ritual mutilation, sacrifice and burial (Dalton, 1970;Kelly, 2012). ...
*This anthology is a community effort: a curation of working papers and commentaries gathered between 2012 and 2016 (it was published in present form in 2018). If you are looking for a cutting-edge examination of sunlight reflection (SRM) and carbon removal (CDR), or 'geoengineering', much research has since emerged. But this book is a snapshot of a kind of golden age in the emergence of SRM and CDR as scientific ideas and climate strategies. And you would be surprised at how little has changed (Editor's note).
If the detrimental impacts of human-induced climate change continue to mount, technologies for geoengineering our climate – i.e. deliberate modifying of the Earth's climate system at a large scale – are likely to receive ever greater attention from countries and societies worldwide. Geoengineering technologies could have profound ramifications for our societies, and yet agreeing on an international governance framework in which even serious research into these planetary-altering technologies can take place presents an immense international political challenge.
In this important book, a diverse collection of internationally respected scientists, philosophers, legal scholars, policymakers, and civil society representatives examine and reflect upon the global geoengineering debate they have helped shape. Opening with essays examining the historic origins of contemporary geoengineering ideas, the book goes on to explore varying perspectives from across the first decade of this global discourse since 2006. These essays methodically cover: the practical and ethical dilemmas geoengineering poses; the evolving geoengineering research agenda; the challenges geoengineering technologies present to current international legal and political frameworks; and differing perceptions of geoengineering from around the world. The book concludes with a series of forward looking essays, some drawing lessons from precedents for governing other global issues, others proposing how geoengineering technologies might be governed if/as they begin to emerge from the lab into the real world.
... And finally, he points to the after-work of commemoration: the graveside performances and monuments (warrior 'stelae' or tumuli, figurines or motifs) as corollaries of Greek epic poetry, which fixed them in both the land and the memory of their brothers-inarms and descendants. Seminal to all of these ideas was the heavily referenced work of Vernant (1991b (Stead, 2006) and violence (Redfern, 2009;Armit, 2012;Kelly, 2013;Aldhouse-Green, 2015); it created a richer understanding of the character of Iron Age conflict and a more critical approach to the 'Celtic warrior' (Creighton, 2000;Hunter, 2005;Giles, forthcoming). In my own work, I have combined osteological and material culture evidence to suggest that codes of honourable conduct governed communities like the Arras culture of Iron Age East Yorkshire: agreed, staggered stages of conflict before blood was shed, which were highly performative (Giles, 2012(Giles, , 2015. ...
Over the (slightly more than) two decades that the European Journal of Archaeology (formerly the Journal of European Archaeology ) has been in print, we have published a number of excellent and high profile articles. Among these, Paul Treherne's seminal meditation on Bronze Age male identity and warriorhood stands out as both the highest cited and the most regularly downloaded paper in our archive. Speaking informally with friends and colleagues who work on Bronze Age topics as diverse as ceramics, metalwork, landscape phenomenology, and settlement structure, I found that this paper holds a special place in their hearts. Certainly, it is a staple of seminar reading lists and, in my experience at least, is prone to provoke heated discussions among students on topics as far ranging as gender identity in the past and present, theoretically informed methods for material culture studies, and the validity of using Classical texts for understanding prehistoric worlds. Moreover, in its themes of violence, embodiment, materiality, and the fluidity or ephemeral nature of gendered identities, it remains a crucial foundational text for major debates raging in European prehistoric archaeology in the present day.
... However, they admitted that their work with different sources was not systematic. Multiple authors have used historical sources for illustrating the actions and causes behind the deposition of human remains in bogs (for example, Aldhouse-Green 2015; Asingh and Lynnerup 2007, 289;Fredengren submitted for publication;Kelly 2013). Historical sources may contain also folkloristic information, but each case needs thorough study to analyse if this information is characteristic of folklore. ...
The aim of this article is to introduce what kind of place-lore concerning bog bodies can be found in Estonian folklore. How could this place-lore be used by archaeologists? There is folklore describing people buried in swamps and bogs and drowning in wetlands. Moreover, some place-lore mentions finds of human remains from wetlands, which refers to incidents where bog bodies were found in the past but of which we do not have any knowledge based on archaeological records. The case-study presented in this paper illustrates the complex relationship between an archaeologically documented find, the Rabivere bog body and place-lore. There are various stories about the Rabivere bog body, and this place-lore has been used to interpret the bog find. This paper gives an example how folkloric information can provide a rather different picture about the past in comparison with archaeological data, bringing out the possibilities and difficulties of this kind of interdisciplinary approach.
... In Hughes' words (2011, 193), this serves to 'stall a threatening and violent world' through expul-sion. The deposition of these fragmented remains on socio-political boundaries (Kelly 2013) or liminal locales (which may have been seen as portals to the world of spirits and ancestors: Giles 2009) was important, reinforcing such thresholds through appropriate offerings or sacrifices. Yet in the Celtic world, decapitation need not have been a mark of disdain or humiliation. ...
Traumatic death rends the fabric of personal and social relations in a manner that is qualitatively different to other kinds of mortality. Mourners must deal with the personal affects, familial consequences and political aftermath of such events. This paper examines the way in which performances around such difficult deaths were used to express and negotiate trauma, through the lens of Iron Age burials in Britain and Ireland. It draws on performance theory developed in relation to contexts of violence to argue that such funerals embodied a necessary tension: articulating pain whilst working towards a re-making of the world. The paper makes an original contribution to the archaeological analysis and interpretation of funerary performance, and moves recent debates on violence in the Iron Age into a new arena of study.
The article aims at questioning the Egyptological communal opinion that “in ancient Egypt, there was no artist in the proper sense of the word”, as stated in the Lexikon der Ägyptologie (III, 833). It starts with a brief historiography of this assumption before addressing the issue of the definition of art and artist, in general, and more specifically from an ancient Egyptian point of view. After a broad statistical overview of the numerous Egyptological data which allow us to trace members of the trades recognized as artistic by ancient Egyptians themselves, it analyses how one may study their social profile and perception in Antiquity, before concluding on the necessity to re-integrate the concept of artist in the discourse of Egyptology
Contemporary displays of bog bodies often focus on the scientific analysis of human remains and discussion of the results. One of the biggest challenges archaeologists and museum curators face is to account for the degree of violence that has often been perpetrated against the individual or individuals, whose remains survive as bog bodies. René Girard’s sacrificial theory may help to account for evidence of excessive violence or ‘overkill'. Girard did not discuss archaeology let alone bog bodies, but he draws upon a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, to investigate the phenomenon of scapegoating. Whilst the writer is cautious about presenting sacrificial theory as the only explanation for bog bodies, this paper will attempt to make the case for a more detailed consideration of Girard’s work in so far as it applies to bog bodies.
Lindow Man, the British Bog Body discovered in 1984, and the Danish examples Tollund and Grauballe Men, discovered in 1950 and 1952, represent quite literally the violent face of a confrontational past. But what exactly do the archaeological narratives say? When presented with the forensic evidence can we explicitly conclude they were murdered as human sacrifices to appease the Germanic and Celtic gods and goddesses during times of affliction? Or are they simply an example of our own imposition of modern assumptions onto the past in a flare of sensationalism and mystical dramatization of the tumultuous affairs of noble savages? How have these narratives played out in the public sphere, particularly museum and heritage, and in modern culture such as the Irish poet Seamus Heaney’s bog poems. Do they reinforce harmful myths of an excessively violent past dominated by innately uncivilized natives? Who does the past really belong to and who has the authority to voice it? Many facets of bog body scholarship remain hotly contested including the human sacrifice interpretation, the usage of Tacitus as the only remaining historical source and Heaney’s use of the bog victims as a metaphorical analogy for the Northern Ireland sectarian violence. My contribution is precisely to present these interpretational narratives from a critical perspective and question scholarly assumptions of ritualism. Further, I will explore how archaeological narratives are presented to the public through the unique heritage that bog bodies embody. Lastly, I will investigate the conceptualization of the “other” through Tacitus’ Germania and Heaney’s bog poems.
From Tutankhamun’s curse to the mystery that surrounds Ötzi’s murder, the public is drawn to stories about mummies. Why mummies are so fascinating is a complex question, but part of the answer may lie in our tendency to resocialize mummies—our scientific investigations lead to the reconstruction of their social identities, often revealing fine and sometimes intimate details. In the process, our research becomes more accessible and interesting to the public. What is often overlooked, however, is how this research can connect to broader anthropological themes, such as embodiment, identity, and social bodies. This chapter attempts to demonstrate how we can harness this fascination and engage more directly with the public by asking different questions. To illustrate this, I discuss three different areas of mummy research (tattooing, Tutankhamun, and disease) that tend to generate considerable public interest. I then discuss how we may be able to reframe research questions and the resulting narratives, leading to a more publically engaged mummy science.
Archaeology is the study of the human past from its material remains, most of which are made of or found within soils and sediments. Past human actions impact the soil record, as seen through relics of changes in soil characteristics and qualities, changes to sedimentation, and the presence of archaeological features and artefacts preserved within modern soils. Soil and sediment conditions control what survives in the burial environment, what decomposes, and consequently influence all archaeological sites, artefacts, and ecological remains. The study of these remains, through survey, excavation, and post-excavation analyses, informs our understanding of past cultures and environments, providing insight into how people have interacted with the soil, both directly, through settlement, land use, and monument construction, and indirectly, by altering local ecosystems over time. Soils can be considered repositories of traces of human action, and in turn the soils of Ireland have formed under the continuous influence of people, up to the present day, when most land in Ireland is actively managed for agriculture, forestry, extraction or construction. Consequently, all land managers are stewards of soil-bound heritage, and have the opportunity and responsibility to recognize the archaeological heritage value of land in their care, and to participate in conserving this value as a public good. This chapter reviews some of the soil evidence for Irish landscape history, the heritage content of soils, archaeological work that has helped discover that heritage, and issues surrounding the management of the cultural heritage in soils.
This paper is inspired by new materialist gender theory and the way it reconfigures the analysis of bodies and the environment. Here the relationships entangled in wetlands and bogs through depositions are in focus. More specifically, it deals with the placing of bodily remains and artefacts in wet contexts around the political and religious centre of Uppåkra in Scania, South Sweden. The aim of this paper is to map some of the processes that led to those people ‘becoming bog bodies’ and investigates their role in a situated political ecology. By examining who these people were and became during the life course and in death, it will open up a discussion on precariousness, vulnerability and masculinity, where victims of sacrifice were perhaps not only selected, but also possibly made. The paper brings a neglected dataset of skeletal remains from bogs to the attention of research and present new radiocarbon dates as well as osteological analysis of these remains. It engages with concepts such as slow violence and necropolitics derived from discussions within the environmental humanities.
What is it about hair that helps humanise the dead, particularly these well-preserved bog bodies who are so often the victims of violence? As the articles in this special volume of Internet Archaeology make clear, hair is an exquisitely rich source of evidence on origin, diet and health as well as social traditions. Yet the meaning of hair can vary greatly between times and cultures.
A number of injuries were observed in a recent examination of 150 Thames ‘river skulls’. Eight of these, exhibiting both healed and unhealed blunt force trauma, were sampled for AMS 14C dating. The results span the Middle Bronze Age to the Late Iron Age/Romano-British period, with the majority falling within the Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age. Given the potential time-span involved, this clustering is striking—particularly as it is consistent with the results of other dating programmes on Thames crania—and appears to confirm the likelihood of an association between human remains and weaponry entering the Thames over this period. In this regard, it is intriguing that the majority of the injuries are the result of blows with a blunt instrument, raising questions over the nature of conflict at this time. Other crania do show sharp force injuries, but have yet to be systematically dated. We discuss these results in the broader context of recent discoveries of human remains and weapons associated with watery places in later prehistory across northern Europe, reinforcing the idea that both are best seen within a context of ritual deposition, though the details vary across time and space.
The paper presented here addresses the issue of how far current evidence permits the admittance of ritual murder or human sacrifice in the European Iron Age. It argues from two basic premises: firstly that the notion of human sacrifice is the more acceptable within the context of strictly hierarchical, slave-owning societies for whom human life was not, of itself, sacrosanct; secondly that, since there is a solid body of both literary and archaeological evidence for human sacrifice in antiquity, there is no intrinsic reason to deny its presence in later European prehistory. However, scrutiny of the data reveals that, if human sacrifice did take place in Iron Age Europe, it appears to have been both rare and special. More importantly, virtually all the evidence has a measure of ambiguity and is capable of alternative interpretation.