Seminar with Prof Rick Schulting: Wed 18 March 2020
Published: 3 March 2020
Wednesday 18 March 2020
Prof Rick Schulting, University of Oxford
What lies beneath: an Early Bronze Age butchered bone assemblage from Charterhouse Warren, Somerset.
Chair: Dr Derek Hamilton
Wednesday 18 March 2020, 4-5.30pm
Room 208 in the Alexander Stone Building
Steven Pinker’s 2011 book ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature’ reflects on the decline in violence over the course of human history. The site of Charterhouse Warren in Somerset reveals the darker side of our nature. Excavated in the 1970s, and dating to the Early Bronze Age, ca. 2200 BC, the scattered remains of at least 40 men, women and children were found in a 20m-deep pit. This largely unknown assemblage is striking for the sheer number of cutmarks indicating dismemberment, alongside perimortem fracturing of long bones and injuries to skulls. While evidence for violence is not unknown in British prehistory, nothing on this scale has been found, and the site joins a small number of Continental Neolithic and Bronze Age sites showing extreme violence and postmortem processing of human remains. This presentation provides an overview of the new research being undertaken on the assemblage, documenting and characterising the extent of the injuries, investigating who these victims were, and understanding the site’s place in the wider context of the European Early Bronze Age.
First published: 3 March 2020
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