Ritual and Violence at British Neolithic Monuments

Full Title: Ritual and Violence at British Neolithic Monuments: How can the monument-focused deposition of individuals who experienced violent deaths inform our understanding of symbolism and ritual in the Early British Neolithic?

In 2023 The Council for British Archaeology and CIfA's Early Careers Special Interest Group ran an online conference for early career archaeologists and heritage specialists to share their interests and research.

Speaker: Claire Hayes

Blurb: For my dissertation I carried out a desk-based analysis of human remains interred at EBN monuments to identify individuals that died violently. I also carried out a comparative analysis on similarly interred intentionally killed animals to supplement and interrogate my findings. This original research forms the basis for my presentation.

Although the deposition of human remains at monuments is well documented, the deposition of remains belonging to individuals who experienced violent deaths is not well understood. While not characteristic of most depositions, their repeated representation implies a consistent and intentional decision to combine the ritual nature of monumentality with acts of violence.

Due to the relative rarity of deposited human remains showing explicit signs of violence, the treatment of human remains has been compared to the treatment of animal remains within monumental contexts. The lives of humans and animals were symbolically and practically enmeshed, therefore a comparative overview of the ritualised treatment of both provides a more complete impression of attitudes towards symbolism and ritual activity, thereby allowing for subtle patterns of behaviour to emerge.

Studies of crania from British EBN assembles found that an estimated 7.4% had suffered traumatic damage, and this is supported by similar findings from Linearbandkeramik assemblages in Europe (6.2%). These figures suggest that violent deaths were positively selected for deposition. Furthermore, the comparable treatment of human and animal remains within monumental contexts strongly implies that there were symbolic traditions and behaviours embedded in EBN attitudes to deathscapes.

My presentation will explore possible explanations for this ritual behaviour and the significance of EBN monuments as a setting.