Cannibal Bronze Age Brits butchered and ate their enemies – a grim clue left in mass grave may explain the brutal act
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BRONZE Age Britons slaughtered and ate their victims, a new study has suggested. A mass grave, discovered at the bottom of a 15ft shaft, holds 37 skeletons who were butchered and most likely eaten, according to new analysis. The cannibalistic tendencies of early Britons upend a long-held belief that the Bronze Age was a mostly peaceful period.
![[Archaeologists analysed over 3,000 human bones and bone fragments at Charterhouse Warren, Somerset, to piece together the massacre]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/analysis-remains-least-37-individuals-957856444.jpg?strip=all&w=700)
Archaeologists analysed over 3,000 human bones and bone fragments at Charterhouse Warren, Somerset, to piece together the massacre. “We actually find more evidence for injuries to skeletons dating to the Neolithic period in Britain than the Early Bronze Age, so Charterhouse Warren stands out as something very unusual," lead author of the research, Professor Rick Schulting of the University of Oxford, said.
![[Cannibalism is the Bronze Age was unlikely an isolated event]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/analysis-remains-least-37-individuals-957856464_c1c917.jpg?strip=all&w=631)
“It paints a considerably darker picture of the period than many would have expected.”. There is no evidence that this was a battle. Instead, experts believe the victims were taken by surprise. It is the largest-scale example of human-on-human violence from before written records, archaeologists said.
![[Experts believe the plague, found in the teeth of two remains, could have inflamed tensions between two clans]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/analysis-remains-least-37-individuals-957856473.jpg?strip=all&w=700)
Bone analysis suggests the cause of death for victims was blunt force trauma. Cutmarks and bone fractures suggest victims were butchered to be eaten around the same time they died. But these violent Bronze Age Britons were not driven to cannibalism over starvation, according to archaeologists.
![[The Charterhouse Warren shaft, which was first discovered in 1972, is thought to host the oldest evidence of the plague in Britain dating back 4,000 years]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2cgh014-old-lead-works-ubley-957879046.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
This is because the area is abundant with cattle bones - suggesting the ancient community had a healthy supply of beef. Cannibalism may have actually been a way to dehumanise their victims, archaeologists wrote in their study, likening their enemies to animals.
