A local Neolithic community in northeastern France may have clashed with foreign invaders, cutting off limbs as war trophies and otherwise brutalizing their prisoners of war, according to a new paper published in the journal Science Advances. The findings challenge conventional interpretations of prehistoric violence as bring indiscriminate or committed for pragmatic reasons.
Neolithic Europe was no stranger to collective violence of many forms, such as the odd execution and massacres of small communities, as well as armed conflicts. For instance, we recently reported on an analysis of human remains from 11 individuals recovered from El Mirador Cave in Spain, showing evidence of cannibalism—likely the result of a violent episode between competing Late Neolithic herding communities about 5,700 years ago. Microscopy analysis revealed telltale slice marks, scrape marks, and chop marks, as well as evidence of cremation, peeling, fractures, and human tooth marks.
This indicates the victims were skinned, the flesh removed, the bodies disarticulated, and then cooked and eaten. Isotope analysis indicated the individuals were local and were probably eaten over the course of just a few days. There have been similar Neolithic massacres in Germany and Spain, but the El Mirador remains provide evidence of a rare systematic consumption of victims.
Per the authors of this latest study, during the late Middle Neolithic, the Upper Rhine Valley was the likely site of both armed conflict and rapid cultural upheaval, as groups from the Paris Basin infiltrated the region between 4295 and 4165 BCE. In addition to fortifications and evidence of large aggregated settlements, many skeletal remains from this period show signs of violence.
Friends or foes?
Archaeologist Teresa Fernandez-Crespo of Spain's Valladolid University and co-authors focused their analysis on human remains excavated from two circular pits at the Achenheim and Bergheim sites in Alsace in northwestern France. Fernandez-Crespo et al. examined the bones and found that many of the remains showed signs of unhealed trauma—such as skull fractures—as well as the use of excessive violence (overkill), not to mention quite a few severed left upper limbs. Other skeletons did not show signs of trauma and appeared to have been given a traditional burial.
This did not seem consistent with the usual massacres or executions of captured raiding parties, per the authors. It's possible the traumatized individuals were community members who had been killed in combat and brought home for burial. But battle-related injuries would typically target the head, not other body parts, and the marks on the remains are more consistent with intense torture and mutilation, per the authors. This may have been a form of punishment or sacrifice of the group's social outcasts, but isotropic analysis revealed otherwise.
The authors examined 40 bone samples and 31 teeth from the two sites to uncover clues to diet, social background (like infant and child-rearing practices), and provenance of the individual remains. They also analyzed 33 human bone samples excavated from 10 other Alsatian sites dating back to the same period, as well as 53 animal bone samples from the region to establish which game would have been available.
The results showed a marked difference between remains that exhibited signs of violence and trauma ("victims") and those that did not ("non-victims"), suggesting the skeletons belonged to two distinct communities. The "non-victims" were local; the "victims" were not, suggesting the latter may have belonged to invading groups.
"The lower limbs were [fractured] in order to prevent the victims from escaping, the entire body shows blunt force traumas and, what it is more, in some skeletons there are some marks—piercing holes—that may indicate that the bodies were placed on a structure for public exposure after being tortured and killed," Fernandez-Crespo told Live Science. "We believe they were brutalized in the context of rituals of triumph or celebrations of victory that followed one or several battles." And given the central location of the burial pits, "the act would have been a public theater of violence intended to dehumanize the captive enemies in front of the entire community."
DOI: Science Advances, 2025. 10.1126/sciadv.adv3162 (About DOIs).
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