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View of the excavation area: Some of the dead were lying on their sides, others on their backs
Photo: Prof. Dr.
Martin Furholt / University of Kiel
Stone Age people were not exactly gentle with the bones of the dead.
But what archaeologists found in Vráble, Slovakia, surprised even researchers.
An excavation team uncovered the skeletons of 38 people on the outskirts of an approximately 7,000-year-old settlement.
Some of the dead lay on their sides, others sprawled on their stomachs or backs, limbs spread.
One crucial body part was almost always missing: the skulls.
The archaeologists had trouble even determining how many people were in the tomb.
"In the case of mass graves with a confusing find location, the identification of an individual is usually based on the skull," explains project manager Martin Furholt from the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel (CAU).
The Kiel research team is investigating the site together with colleagues from the Archaeological Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (Nitra).
The dead in the ditch
The find site in Vráble has been of interest to researchers for years, as there was once a kind of mega-settlement here from the Neolithic period.
Geomagnetic investigations have now revealed more than 300 houses that can be assigned to three villages.
The site is thus one of the largest known settlements of the early Neolithic in Central Europe.
Between 5250 and 4950 BC people lived there who decorated their ceramic pots with bands of lines, which is why archaeologists today assign them to the so-called Linear Band Culture.
This summer, the excavation team from Germany and Slovakia worked their way through a 1.3-kilometer double ditch that encircled the southwestern village.
Apparently the ditch was not suitable for defense.
The archaeologists rather suspect that the village community wanted to differentiate itself from the others.
Why is unclear.
The mostly headless skeletons lay in an area of about 15 square meters in the ditch.
Only one contained the skull, the skeleton belongs to an infant.
No one knows where the rest of the skulls went.
It has long been known that people in the Neolithic Age practiced macabre burial rites from today's perspective.
With great effort, our ancestors processed the bones of the dead.
They chopped up, ground up or charred human remains before finally burying them.
Not infrequently, skeletons ended up in ditches in Stone Age settlements.
Yes, without a head like in Vráble?
This is unique in this dimension so far.
"It surpassed all our expectations"
During previous excavations, archaeologists found human bones in Vráble.
"We expected more human skeletons, but this exceeded all our expectations," says Furholt about the find that the university has now announced.
But who were the 38 dead and how did they die?
Further investigations should now clarify this.
The bones contain important information that can be decoded using modern technology.
For example, the research team is trying to secure old DNA in the bones.
The analyzes of the genetic material could show whether the deceased were related.
Initial indications speak for unsavory practices, at least from today's perspective.
The dead were probably not carefully placed in the ditch, but rolled or thrown into it when their bodies were already rotting.
This theory is at least supported by individual bones that had already separated from the rest of the skeleton when they landed in the ditch.
The 38 people probably did not die at the same time, but at a longer time interval, possibly even over generations.
"Possibly skeletonized corpses were pushed into the middle of the ditch to make room for new ones," says anthropologist Katharina Fuchs.
It is unclear why the 38 people were buried in this way.
On the outskirts of the settlement there were normal graves that contained grave goods, even from today's point of view.
Beheaded or just rotten?
But how did the 38 people die?
Did they die in a massacre?
Or were headhunters at work?
The archaeologists now want to follow all the traces.
A non-violent declaration is also conceivable.
"In some skeletons, the first cervical vertebra is preserved, which indicates a careful severing of the head rather than decapitation in a violent, ruthless sense," says Fuchs.
Accordingly, the dead of Vráble would not have been beheaded alive.
But who later removed the heads and for what purpose?
Could the skulls serve as a good luck charm or trophy?
"It may seem reasonable to suspect a massacre with human sacrifices, perhaps even in connection with magical or religious ideas," says Maria Wunderlich from the CAU.
Military conflicts could also play a role.
»What is indisputable, however, is that this find is absolutely unique for the European Neolithic.«
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