May 19, 2006 — Early Neolithic Britons lived in violent and crime ridden societies, according to the first systematic survey of British skulls dating from that time.
Rick Schulting of Queen's University Belfast and Michael Wysocki from the University of Central Lancashire, UK, identified and studied the remains of about 350 skulls spanning from 4,000 to 3,200 BC.
Nearly 5 percent of the skulls, mostly from southern England, showed healed depressed fractures. About 2 percent of the skulls showed signs of injuries that were unhealed, suggesting these individuals were killed in the attacks.
In total, the researchers found evidence for trauma in 31 crania, with injuries ranging from rather light blows to the head to multiple lethal injuries. They presented the findings last month at a meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
"This is direct evidence for interpersonal violence. It reopens and reinvigorates debates over the nature of Neolithic society and the role that violence may have played," Schulting told Discovery News.
The study could be used in the future to compare data with other areas in Europe and other periods, said the researcher.
"It would be important to establish whether violence increases or decreases in the subsequent Bronze and Iron Ages, when there is certainly more evidence for formal weaponry," Schulting said
The healed injuries mainly took the form of small round or oval depressions and were distributed fairly randomly around the left and right sides of the cranium.
"The lack of side preference would be expected with a projectile weapon such as a sling, or a thrown stone," said the researchers.
The unhealed injuries, which variable in shape, were mainly found to the left side of the head, which would make sense if two right-handed people were fighting, said Schulting
It appears most of the injuries were caused by blunt instruments, such as wooden or stone clubs. But some fractures seem to have been inflicted by flint arrowheads and spear points.
Women were not exempt from the attacks. In fact, the incidence of trauma was actually somewhat higher among females. Indeed, one of the female skulls showed signs of a brutal attack with a stone axe. Another individual appeared to have had her ears chopped off in a possible sign of trophy-taking.
Anthropologist Christopher Knüsel at the University of Bradford, UK says the study is important because it adds knowledge to the British Neolithic, which has become central to debates surrounding Neolithic society.
"This research helps to transform our appreciation of the Neolithic from one that emphasized its apparent peacefulness to a period which saw considerable inter-personal violence and the origins of warfare over a wide geographic area," Knüsel told Discovery News.
