We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected]
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
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.
Childhood palaeopathology remains an underutilised resource in the study of Roman Britain, particularly for exploring the lives of the rural population. Lesions in child skeletons provide unique insights into past lifeways and population health, as adverse environmental conditions translate more readily into the osteological record of these vulnerable members of society. To demonstrate the range of information gleaned from the children, 1,279 non-adults (0–17 years) from 26 first- to fifth-century urban and rural settlements were analysed, comparing morbidity and mortality in the most comprehensive study to date. The distribution of ages-at-death suggests migration between country and town, the latter presenting a stressful and unsanitary environment. However, as demonstrated by high rates of metabolic disease and infections, life in the countryside was hampered by demanding physical labour and potentially oppressive conditions with restricted access to resources.