‘Something horrible’: Somerset pit reveals bronze age cannibalism

A collection of human bones discovered 50 years ago in a Somerset pit are evidence of the bloodiest known massacre in British prehistory – and of bronze age cannibalism, archaeologists say.

At least 37 men, women and children were killed at some point between 2200BC and 2000BC, with their bodies thrown into a deep natural shaft at Charterhouse Warren, near Cheddar Gorge.

The first major scientific study since the bones were unearthed in the 1970s has now concluded that after their violent deaths, the individuals were dismembered and butchered, and at least some were eaten.

Many of the victims’ skulls were shattered by the blows that killed them, and leg and arm bones had been cut away after death to extract the bone marrow. Hand and feet bones show evidence of having been chewed by human molars.

Nothing on this scale of violence has previously been found in early bronze age Britain or any other time in British prehistory, according to Rick Schulting, the lead author and a professor of scientific and prehistoric archaeology at the University of Oxford. This was likely to make the Charterhouse Warren massacre an exceptional event, even in its time, he told the Guardian.

“For the early bronze age in Britain, we have very little evidence for violence. Our understanding of the period is mostly focused on trade and exchange: how people made pottery, how they farmed, how they buried their dead,” he said. “There have been no real discussions of warfare or large-scale violence in that period, purely through lack of evidence.”

Cannibalism on this scale was not usual, either, Schulting said. “If this was any in any way ‘normal’, you would expect to find some evidence for this in other sites. We have hundreds of skeletons from this period, and you just don’t see things like this.”

The bones were discovered by cavers near the bottom of a 15-metre natural shaft. They were recorded briefly, placed in boxes and largely overlooked for five decades.

Schulting said that, when he and his Oxford colleagues started to re-examine them, they “very quickly realised that this was a much larger assemblage than anyone had really clocked”.

Almost half of the bones were those of children, suggesting an entire community had been wiped out in a single, immensely brutal event.

The full circumstances will never be known, but Schulting and his co-authors speculated this may have been an example of “violence as performance”, with the perpetrators intending to terrify and warn the wider community. Scalping, butchering and eating the victims would have had a similar chilling effect.

“Whoever did this would have been feared: this would have resonated, I think, through time and space in that particular region, probably for generations, as something horrible that happened here.” It may have been retaliation for an earlier mass killing, or have provoked later acts of revenge – events for which there is not yet evidence, he said.

He added: “Charterhouse Warren is one of those rare archaeological sites that challenges the way we think about the past. It is a stark reminder that people in prehistory could match more recent atrocities and shines a light on a dark side of human behaviour. That it is unlikely to have been a one-off event makes it even more important that its story is told.”

The research is published in Antiquity.