14 - Early Massacres: Mass Violence in Neolithic Europe

Summary

This chapter provides an overview of sites of mass violence from Early Neolithic central Europe. It focuses on the Linearbandkeramik (LBK), for which several such sites are now known, more than on other Neolithic cultures. It seems that the victims of mass violence were buried, if at all, by inclusion in disorganised mass graves without any sign of post-mortem care. This indicates intentional non-conformity to the usual burial practices of the LBK and thereby wilful neglect of the funerary expression of victims’ individual cultural identities. So far, every newly discovered mass-violence site has revealed new facets of violent behaviour, including likely evidence for massacres, selected capture, torture, mutilation and systematic execution. The bioarchaeological complexity of these mass-violence sites necessitates highly comparative approaches for their interpretation that incorporate all sites where human remains have been deposited as well as their periodic reappraisal. Currently, warfare seems to be the most plausible reason for most of the group violence encountered in the LBK, especially the drastic massacres of settled communities. LBK massacre victims are characterised by perimortem cranial injuries, careless deposition in settlement contexts, lack of post-mortem attention, and the suppression of their cultural identity.