‘The darker angels of our nature’: Early Bronze Age butchered human remains from Charterhouse Warren, Somerset, UK
Date published
2025-02
Free to read from
2025-01-07
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Volume Title
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
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Article
ISSN
0003-598X
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Citation
Schulting RJ, Fernández-Crespo T, Ordoño J, et al., (2025) ‘The darker angels of our nature’: Early Bronze Age butchered human remains from Charterhouse Warren, Somerset, UK. Antiquity, Volume 99, Issue 403, February 2025, pp. 101-117
Abstract
Direct physical evidence for violent interpersonal conflict is seen only sporadically in the archaeological record for prehistoric Britain. Human remains from Charterhouse Warren, south-west England, therefore present a unique opportunity for the study of mass violence in the Early Bronze Age. At least 37 men, women and children were killed and butchered, their disarticulated remains thrown into a 15m-deep natural shaft in what is, most plausibly, interpreted as a single event. The authors examine the physical remains and debate the societal tensions that could motivate a level and scale of violence that is unprecedented in British prehistory.
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Github
Keywords
Archaeology, 4301 Archaeology, South-west England, Beaker, violence, cutmarks, cranial trauma, cannibalism
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Attribution 4.0 International
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Funder/s
This work was supported by a British Academy grant (SG163375). The radiocarbon dates were funded by NERC’s NEIF programme (NF/2018/1/3).
Isotope analyses were partially funded by a British Academy Newton International Fellowship to T.F-C (NF17085).
Isotope analyses were partially funded by a British Academy Newton International Fellowship to T.F-C (NF17085).