The Archaeology of Violence: Interdisciplinary Approaches (SUNY Series, The Institute for European and Mediterranean Archaeology Distinguished Monograph Series) 9781438444413, 1438444419

Citation preview

The Archaeology of Violence

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the institute for european and mediterranean archaeology distinguished monograph series

Peter F. Biehl, Sarunas Milisauskas, and Stephen L. Dyson, editors The Magdalenian Household: Unraveling Domesticity Ezra Zubrow, Françoise Audouze, and James Enloe, editors Eventful Archaeologies: New Approaches to Social Transformation in the Archaeological Record Douglas J. Bolender, editor The Archaeology of Violence: Interdisciplinary Approaches Sarah Ralph, editor

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the archaeology of violence Interdisciplinary Approaches IEMA Proceedings, Volume 2 edited by

Sarah Ralph

s tat e u n i v e r s i t y o f new york press

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Logo and cover/interior art credit: A vessel with wagon motifs from Bronocice, Poland, 3400 B.C. Courtesy of Sarunas Milisauskas and Janusz Kruk, 1982, Die Wagendarstellung auf einem Trichterbecher au Bronocice, Polen, Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt 12:141–144. Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2012 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu Production by Eileen Meehan Marketing by Michael Campochiaro Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The archaeology of violence : interdisciplinary approaches / edited by Sarah Ralph. p. cm.—(IEMA proceedings ; volume 2) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4384-4441-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Violence. 2.  Social archaeology. 3.  Anthropology, Prehistoric. I.  Ralph, Sarah. GN495.2.P37 2012 303.6—dc23 2011052140

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Contents

Illustrations Tables

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Chapter One Introduction: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Study of Violence Section I The Contexts of Violence Introduction

Sarah Ralph 1

16 Sarunas Milisauskas

Chapter Two War Without Warriors?: The Nature of Interpersonal Conflict before the Emergence of Formalized Warrior Elites

Rick J. Schulting

Chapter Three Warfare in Northern European Bronze Age Societies: Twentieth-Century Presentations and Recent Archaeological Research Inquiries

Helle Vandkilde

Chapter Four Violence as an Aspect of the Durotriges Female Life Course

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37 Rebecca C. Redfern 63

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Chapter Five Facing the Sword: Confronting the Realities of Martial Violence and Other Mayhem, Present and Past Section II The Politics and Identities of Violence Introduction Chapter Six Violent Discourses: Visual Cannibalism and the Portraits of Rome’s “Bad” Emperors

98

118 Bradley A. Ault Eric R. Varner 121

Chapter Seven “An Offense to Honor Is Never Forgiven…”: Violence and Landscape Archaeology in Highland Northern Albania

Michael L. Galaty

Chapter Eight “Persuade the People”: Violence and Roman Spectacle Entertainment in the Greek World

Michael J. Carter

Chapter Nine Past War and European Identity: Making Conflict Archaeology Useful Section III Sanctified Violence Introduction Chapter Ten The State of Sacrifice: Divine Power and Political Aspiration in Third Millennium Mesopotamia and Beyond Chapter Eleven The Violent Ways of Galatian Gordion Chapter Twelve An Archaeological Interpretation of Irish Iron Age Bog Bodies

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Simon T. James

143

158 John Carman 169

182 Peter F. Biehl Anne Porter 185 Mary M. Voigt 203 Eamonn P. Kelly 232

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Chapter Thirteen The Archaeology of Destruction: Christians, Images of Classical Antiquity, and Some Problems of Interpretation Section IV Epilogue

John Pollini 241 271 Keith F.Otterbein

Contributors 283 Index

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Illustrations

Figure 2.1 Figure 2.2 Figure 2.3

Figure 2.4

Figure 2.5 Figure 3.1

Figure 3.2

Figure 4.1 Figure 4.2 Figure 4.3 Figure 6.1

Map showing locations of some key sites mentioned in the text.  21 Pictograph panel from Les Dogues in the Spanish Levant, depicting two groups of archers engaged in conflict (after Nash 2000).  23 Middle Bronze Age adult (female?) cranium (1370-1120 cal B.C.) from Walthamstow Reservoir, London, showing massive unhealed blunt force trauma to the right frontoparietal (Natural History Museum, London, 1957.20.9.3). 28 Subadult cranium from the earlier Neolithic (ca. 3700-3600 cal B.C.) chambered tomb of Belas Knap, Glos., England, showing massive unhealed blunt force trauma to the right frontal (Duckworth Laboratory, Cambridge, Eu.1.5.9).  30 Posited nature of relationship between social substitution, socio-political organization, and the nature of warriorhood.  31 Phallic warrior with horned helmet and holding two swords. He is ­surrounded by comb, mirror, brooch, spear, bow and arrow and round shield in addition to a four-wheeled cart pulled by two horses; a stallion and a mare accompanied by her foal (after Harrison 2004).  48 Warrior hero clad in his corselet and helmet and surrounded by the ­panoply of sword, round shield, spear, fibula, comb, and chariot in ­addition to dead enemies, a mourning wife (?), and lowest down ­possibly the companions holding hands (after Harrison 2004).  48 Location map of Dorset in the United Kingdom.  65 The regional demography of late Iron Age Dorset: subadult and female individuals. 77 Regional demography of late Iron Age Dorset showing the age ­distribution of individuals with trauma.  77 Caracalla (and Geta), Bronze coin, Stratonicea (after Varner 2000: cat. 46).  123

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x Illustrations

Figure 6.2 Figure 6.3 Figure 6.4 Figure 6.5 Figure 6.6 Figure 6.7 Figure 6.8 Figure 6.9 Figure 7.1 Figure 7.2 Figure 7.3 Figure 7.4

Figure 7.5 Figure 7.6 Figure 10.1 Figure 10.2 Figure 11.1 Figure 11.2

Figure 11.3

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Macrinus, Rome, Centrale Montemartini, inv. 1757: Photo Author.  125 Statue Base of Diadumenianus, Ostia, Barrack of the Vigiles, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 14.4393: Photo Author.  127 Maximinus Thrax, Museo Palatino, inv. 52681: Photo Author.  128 Caligula/Claudius, Rome, Centrale Montemartini, inv. 2443: Photo Author. 132 Nero/Vespasian, Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, inv. 53: Photo Author.  134 Domitian/Nerva, Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, inv. 106538: Photo Author.  135 Domitian/Nerva, Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum, Villa, 83.AA.43: Photo Author.  137 Domitian/Nerva, Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum, Villa, 83.AA.43: Photo Author.  138 Map of Albania showing the location of the Shala Valley: Author.  145 Satellite photo of the Shala Valley showing the locations of places ­mentioned in the text: IKONOS, Author.  146 Aerial view of the Ulaj and Kolaj neighborhoods of Theth, Shala: Photo Author.  148 Last bajraktar of the Shala surrendering his gun to state authorities in 1922. He receives a copy of the new constitution in return. Photo used courtesy of the Fototekë Marubi, Shkodër, Albania.  152 Old style frengji window next to a much larger, modern window: Photo Author.  153 Map and aerial photo of the Iron Age site of Grunas in Theth, Shala: Photo Author.  154 Map of ancient Near East.  188 Patterns in the deposition of human remains on top of Arslantepe Tomb 1 (after Frangipane et al. 2001).  189 Aerial View of the Citadel Mound and Lower Town at Gordion, 1989. Photo by Will and Eleanor Meyers.  206 Plan of the earliest Later Hellenistic (YHSS 3A:1) buildings in the ­Northwest Zone of the Gordion Citadel Mound. A monumental wall built of ashlar blocks separates this complex from the rest of the settlement which lies to the east. To the west of the wall is a large ashlar building with tile roof (Building 1). Built up against the monumental wall was a workshop used by a potter, with a small kiln and other pyrotechnic features preserved to the north.  207 View of excavated areas within the southern Lower Town from the Citadel Mound. To the left (east) lies Area A, while to the right (west) lies Area B. The large mound in the center was formed by a fortress built in

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Illustrations xi

Middle Phrygian/YHSS 5 times, and by a Persian siege mound built ca. 540 BC. To either side of this fortress (the Küçükhöyük) extend massive walls standing since the 8th century BCE.  209 Figure 11.4 Bone Cluster 4, found within Area B, consists of the skull of a young adult with the first two cervical vertebrae still intact, placed above dog bones and a pelvic bone from an old adult.  211 Figure 11.5 Bone Cluster 1 (Area B) includes the remains of three humans plus disarticulated animal bone. At the top of the deposit was the body of a young woman with the mandible of an old male where her skull should have been. Below the young woman was the body of an old woman with the young woman’s skull set in place of her own.  212 Figure 11.6 Detail of the lower layer of Bone Cluster 1 showing the old woman’s torso with the young woman’s skull placed at the top of the old woman’s spine. 213 Figure 11.7 A plan of the mass of human and animal bone that makes up Bone ­Cluster 3.  214 Figure 11.8 Detail of Bone Cluster 3. Two human pelvic bones are clearly visible as is the mandible of a child at the upper left.  215 Figure 11.9 In Area A, articulated human skeletons lay on an ancient land surface. Here a 30-45 year old male (Individual 2) is shown with his head lying in a shallow pit. The twists in his spinal column and dislocation of the neck are quite clear.  216 Figure 11.10 Individual 3 in Area A is a 15 to 20 year old female whose cervical ­vertebrae are dislocated indicating hanging or garroting.  216 Figure 11.11 Within Area A was found a large and deep pit with the remains of four people, two adult women and two children. In this photograph the two women are shown. The upper body has an angled spine as well as skull fractures. The lower body has been weighted down with two large grinding stones.  217 Figure 11.12 At the feet of the two women shown in Figure 11.11 lay most of the skeleton of a child of two to four. Placed with this child’s skull, in approximate anatomical position, is the mandible of a child of four to eight.  218 Figure 12.1 Clonycavan Man, Co. Meath found in the debris of a peat-screening machine in February 2003.  233 Figure 12.2 The head of Clonycavan Man was intact with a clearly distinguishable face and a very distinctive hairstyle.  234 Figure 12.3 Oldcroghan, Co. Offaly was found during the digging of a bog drain in May 2003.  235 Figure 12.4 Oldcroghan Man had superbly preserved hands.  235 Figure 12.5 On the left arm Oldcroghan Man wore a plaited leather armband with metal mounts decorated in the Celtic La Tène style.  236 Figure 12.6 Oldcroghan Man had his nipples partially cut, but whether this was done before death is unknown.  237

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xii Illustrations

Figure 12.7 Withies inserted through cuts made in the upper arms of Oldcroghan Man may be the remains of a spancel.  238 Figure 12.8 Stylized representations of breasts and nipples occur on the terminals of Late Bronze Age gold gorgets that were worn on the breast.  239 Figure 13.1 Medieval fresco of St. Nicholas and followers destroying an image of ­Aphrodite, Boyana Church near Sofia, Bulgaria: From Ševcˇenko 1983, 10.14. 245 Figure 13.2 One of the mutilated metopes from the Tholos at Delphi, Delphi Archaeological Museum: Photo Author.  246 Figure 13.3a Remains of a hacked at column shaft from the Temple of Zeus at Nemea: Photo Author.  247 Figure 13.3b Outward radiating pattern of fallen columns around the Temple of Zeus at Nemea: Photo author based on photo didactic in the Archaeological Museum at Nemea.  248 Figure 13.4a Line drawing of cult statue of the goddess Nemesis with base from Rhamnous: From Ehrhardt 1997: Figure 1.  250 Figure 13.4b Remains of smashed base of cult statue of Nemesis from Rhamnous: Photo Author.  251 Figure 13.5 Mutilated North Metope no. 25 of Eros, Aphrodite, and Helen with cult image of Athena: From Brommer 1979: Plate 21.  252 Figure 13.6 Detail of the mutilated and weathered face of Hera from the central east block of the Parthenon frieze: Photo Author.  253 Figure 13.7 Detail of the heads of the “Elders” on north block 10 of the Parthenon frieze: Photo Author.  254 Figure 13.8 Votive relief of Asklepios and worshipers, Athens National Archaeological Museum: Photo Author.  255 Figure 13.9a Omega House relief, Agora Museum, Athens: Photo Author.  256 Figure 13.9b Detail of Omega House relief, Agora Museum, Athens: Photo Author. 256 Figure 13.10 Grave stele with mutilated heads and hands, British School of ­Archaeology, Athens: Photo Author.  257 Figure 13.11 Head of L. Antonius Claudius Dometeinos Diogenes from Aphrodisias, Aphrodisias Archaeological Museum: Photo Author.  258 Figure 13.12a Statue of Herakles, Palatine Antiquarium, Rome: Photo Author.  261 Figure 13.12b Detail of mutilated genitals of statue of Herakles, Palatine Antiquarium, Rome: Photo Author.  261 Figure 13.13 Statue of Aphrodite from the Faustina Baths at Miletos with mutilated breasts and pubic area, Archaeological Museum, Istanbul: Photo Author. 262 Figure 13.14 Mutilated statue of Aphrodite from Aphrodisias, Aphrodisias ­Archaeological Museum: From Erim 1967: 285.  263

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Tables

Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 4.3 Table 4.4 Table 4.5 Table 4.6 Table 4.7 Table 4.8 Table 4.9 Table 10.1 Table 11.1

Samples used in the study by date, type, and number of females and ­subadults.  74 Distribution of subadult trauma presented at the crude prevalence rate (CPR%) by age group affected.  78 Distribution of young adult female fractures presented at the crude prevalence rate (CPR%).  79 Distribution of peri-mortem post-cranial weapon injuries in young adult females presented at the crude prevalence rate (CPR%).  80 Types of cranial trauma observed in young adult females presented at the crude prevalence rate (CPR%).  80 Distribution of middle adult female fractures presented at the crude prevalence rate (CPR%).  81 Distribution of post-cranial weapon injuries in middle adult females presented at the crude prevalence rate (CPR%).  81 Types of skull trauma observed in middle adult females presented at the crude prevalence rate (CPR%).  82 Distribution of older adult female fractures presented at the crude ­prevalence rate (CPR%).  82 Patterns in the biographies and depositions of Arslantepe Tomb 1.  191 The Yassıhöyük Stratigraphic Sequence (YHSS).  205

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Chapter One

Introduction

An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Study of Violence Sarah Ralph

A

s a modern society, we are continuously reminded of the threat, action, and ­consequences of violence. Global news and media coverage means violence can be experienced closer in space and time, and in some instances people may decide to visit places associated with death and violence to experience for themselves the locations where such acts occurred (Lennon and Foley 2002; Sharpley and Stone 2009). In modern day contexts, perhaps as a result of a growing concern with our own mortality, violence has become a product to be consumed by society and plays an increasingly significant role in the formation of social and political relations. However, can the same be said for the past? Perpetuated through the notion of primitivism and the idea of the “noble savage,” the past was considered a peaceful time where humans were at one with nature and did not want for anything. The romanticism of the noble savage and the belief that primitivism brought with it peace, equality, and harmony with nature was reinforced by the works of philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Writing in the eighteenth century, Rousseau noted, “nothing is more peaceable than man in his primitive state” (1984 [1755]:115). Civilization, it was perceived, threatened to alter our “primitive and natural state,” and bring with it ­disharmony, war, and inequality. This was, of course, written in response to Hobbes’s observation that “during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which called Warre; and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man” (Hobbes 1996 [1651]:88). For Hobbes, life in its natural state (without government), would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (ibid.:88–89). Lawrence H. Keeley has most prominently challenged this view of a peaceful past in his publication, War before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage (1996). This led to numerous archaeological studies that have served to reinforce the notion that violence was present in past societies (Guilance and Zammit 2005; LeBlanc 2003; Martin and 1

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2 Introduction

Frayer 1997b). While its presence is now recognized, the evidence for violence in past ­societies should not be overemphasized by researchers. Data certainly suggest that violence was (and is) an integral part of culture and society (Martin and Frayer 1997a:xx), but its frequency and permanency requires careful consideration. An increased interest in the study of violence, particularly from an archaeological perspective, cannot go unnoticed. Anthropological studies have a well-established heritage in this subject area (e.g., Chagnon 1983; Ember and Ember 1997; Ferguson 1984, 1995; Gardner and Heider 1968; Haas 1990; Otterbein 2004; Riches 1986; Schmidt and Schröder 2001; Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois 2004; Sillitoe 1978), and archaeological research has drawn heavily from this literature base. Many studies of violence are defined either by their subject specialism, or by a specific temporal or geographical focus (e.g., Chacon and Mendoza 2007; Koontz and Orr 2009; Parker Pearson and Thorpe 2005; Tiesler and Cucina 2007; Turner and Turner 1999). In addition, scholarly attention has primarily been directed toward the study of warfare, through studies of its associated material culture (such as weaponry), as well as its motivations and consequences (e.g., Arkush and Allen 2006; Carman and Harding 1999; Dillon and Welch 2006; Kelly 2000; Nielsen and Walker 2009; Otto et al. 2006). Sometimes, this focus on warfare has been to the detriment of our understanding of other forms of “non-warfare” violence. As James notes (this volume) the term violence has become synonymous with warfare, and vice versa, in many archaeological studies. This lack of clarity and distinction has the potential to affect the ways in which “violence” is recognized and discussed by scholars, and ultimately has repercussions for understanding its role in society: an issue addressed in part by Martin and Frayer (1997b). Their edited volume evaluated evidence for non-warfare violence from hunter-gatherer to state societies in the New and Old Worlds, with particular emphasis on osteological data. The difficulties of producing an acceptable definition of violence have been discussed in the literature (e.g., Walker 2001; Carman 1997a). It is recognized that the creation of a single definition of violence is impractical for its meaning is relative to the society or culture being studied (Guilaine and Zammit 2005:233). Violence, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED 2010) is: The exercise of physical force so as to inflict injury on, or cause damage to, persons or property; action or conduct characterized by this; treatment or usage tending to cause bodily injury or forcibly interfering with personal freedom.

Representing a modern-day view of violence, this cannot take into account the potential for multiple interpretations and meanings, nor variation based on cultural and social contexts, and specific disciplinary approaches. As a result, violence could include any action that intends to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something (Martin and Frayer 1997a:xiv). This only further highlights the problems in establishing a wide-ranging definition of violence so that it can be applied to a multitude of cultures that vary in both time and space (Krohn-Hansen 1994:368). Approaching the subject of violence from the perspective of one single discipline does not allow for sufficient interaction with multitemporal, spatial, and cultural datasets. The adoption of an interdisciplinary approach to violence can provide the opportunity to ­consider this subject from a cross-cultural perspective. This volume1 represents an

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Introduction 3

opportunity to address some of these issues by presenting the work of scholars from a number of disciplines, including archaeology, anthropology, classics, and art history, all of whom have an interest in understanding the role of violence in their respective specialist fields in the Mediterranean and Europe. This interdisciplinary approach to the study of violence provides a forum in which to compare evidence for violence; and highlights the need, and importance, of cross-disciplinary interactions if we are to understand the causes and consequences of violence in its broader social and cultural contexts. The papers in this volume consider both non-warfare violence and warfare through a study of skeletal remains, iconography, literature, landscapes, and ritual behavior. Violence played an important role in the development of past sociopolitical systems, and therefore its archaeological, anthropological, literary, and iconographic identification is an essential part of our understanding of social change, both on a micro- as well as the macro-scale. Studying the materiality of violence (in this particular case skeletal remains, architecture and landscapes, iconography, objects, or written sources) allows us to consider the multiplicity of meanings afforded to violence, and to develop a more comprehensive appreciation and understanding of both its cause(s), consequence(s), and impact(s) upon society. In order to develop such an approach this volume focuses on, and is structured around, three themes: the contexts of violence; the politics and identities of violence; and sanctified violence.

Contexts of Violence Any research concerned with the past has with it a potential inherent source of bias, namely, a contemporary perspective of the past. It is only when these contemporary views and agendas are projected onto past societies, and past peoples are ascribed contemporary motivations, that analysis and interpretation can become flawed and misrepresentative. The semantics of violence have been shown to be incredibly difficult (see above, and Krohn-Hansen 1994). Meanings differ across time and space, but also from discipline to discipline (Guilaine and Zammit 2005:233; Walker 2001:575). Opinions on the definition of violence can vary between different cultures, but also from person to person within a particular cultural group (Krohn-Hansen 1994:367–368; Walker 2001:575). Robb’s (2008) work on the Huron torture of Iroquois prisoners and its misunderstanding by Jesuit missionaries emphasizes the need to identify cultural-specific attitudes toward violence. Although both parties tortured individuals, the Jesuits were unable to comprehend what they had witnessed and the motives behind the Huron torturing of prisoners. “The French did not object to torturing people to death per se, but it had to be on their own terms” (ibid.:96). The recognition and study of context is of vital importance, for events or activities do not take place in a blank space devoid of meaning. As Carman notes, “[V]iolent acts…are directed against people or things by other people and arise in each case out of a particular set of circumstances” (1997b:225). Therefore, much like archaeological excavations, the interpretation of artifacts and their contribution to our understanding of the society that produced them become worthless once they are removed from their context. As a result context provides the means in which to interpret evidence, and to develop a fuller understanding of the data and the reasons behind why an event took place, who was involved, and where it took place.

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4 Introduction

This section considers the variety of manifestations of violent interactions and their identification by archaeologists. Four papers are presented, each of which is concerned with a particular time period and specific set of archaeological data. Schulting addresses the apparent disparity between an absence of specialized weapons and the wealth of skeletal ­evidence for interpersonal violence during the European Neolithic. The paper highlights the important relationship between violence and social identity (to be discussed in greater detail in the volume), and how the nature and context of violence changes during this period from one that is more informal to one where material culture emphasizes a more formally recognized form of conflict with the introduction of specialized weaponry and the image and identity of the male warrior elite in the Bronze Age. Vandkilde builds upon this issue in her paper by examining the influence of presentday current affairs on our interpretation of the past, in particular Northern European Bronze Age societies. The paper discusses how our understanding of violence during this period varies according to our own political climate, and how warfare and violence undoubtedly had a significant role to play in Bronze Age society, yet was not endemic. Vandkilde shows that both violence and nonviolence were integral parts of social life, and were intimately linked to cosmology, funerary rituals, iconography, and heroic tales. While Schulting and Vandkilde have discussed the emergence, and role, of the male warrior elite in early prehistory, Redfern’s paper investigates the evidence for trauma in females during the Iron Age, particularly in southern England. Focused primarily on the bioarchaeological evidence of violence, supplemented with clinical and sociological data, Redfern discusses the nature of trauma identified on female skeletons from one regional sample set (county of Dorset). Her findings suggest that very few females actively participated in violence on a regular basis, with ante-mortem injuries being more ­consistent with accidental injury associated with an agrarian lifestyle. However, the peri-mortem ­evidence for injuries was particularly great for young and middle adult females. Redfern proposes that this may represent a “call to arms” by the local community during a crisis e­ pisode that unexpectedly required their participation, potentially during the period associated with the Roman conquest of Britain. James concludes this section with a discussion of how the issues of violence have been approached and interpreted in Roman archaeology. James presents the argument that although violent acts can have immediate and detrimental effects on people, communities, and landscapes, in certain cases something constructive can come of using violence. In presenting the evidence from the Roman Empire, James considers the role violence played in Roman ­society and its effects on both itself and others.

Politics and Identities of Violence The use of violence as a political tool has long been r­ecognized. Blok (2000) noted that violence is considered a political right used by the state for specific purposes, which include maintaining social order. As a result, sanctioned violence becomes an accepted and approved way of inflicting harm in society. Max Weber (1991 [1921]:78) famously considered the use of sanctioned violence as an integral element of statecraft:

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Introduction 5 [A] state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory…. The state is considered the sole source of the “right” to use violence.

As a political tool to maintain order, sanctioned violence can manifest itself in many forms. However, at its core is the concept of domination; the control or power over ­others either directly through the use of sanctioned violence, or “more subtly, through the ­construction and reproduction of ideologies that may mask the real nature of social relations” (Orser 2002:179). Domination achieved through the use of sanctioned violence is certainly not a concept reserved for the past. We need only switch on the television or look at the Internet to see that this is still a powerful tool used by political regimes to suppress perceived threats to the order of society. With domination, one may find resistance too. Just as domination need not always be physically expressed, the same can be true for resistance. Both are behaviors that can be expressed actively and passively. Most discussion concerning domination and resistance is focused on the investigation of colonial expansion, cultural encounters, and enslavement (e.g., Orser and Funari 2001; Stein 2005; Carr 2010; Liebmann and Murphy 2010). Within these contexts, violence can have a powerful role to play for those wishing to dominate through political, economic, and cultural expansion. Equally, violence may be used as a means to assert independence and resist suppression. The relationship between identity and violence is an important aspect of this field of study with there being two interconnected research trajectories concerning identity and violence. The first involves the creation of identities through the use of, or association with, violence, for example the emergence of a specialized warrior class and the notion of a warrior identity. Secondly, violence can act as a means through which to define “the other” and to distinguish between “us” and “them.” There are many examples that illustrate how identity (and ethnicity) has been manipulated for what have eventually become violent purposes. Examples include warfare and genocide, where ethnic and identity tensions have, in some cases, been intentionally managed in order to justify violent actions, or have subsequently led to conflict. For the prosecution of war crimes, or crimes against humanity, the establishment of personal identity may not be the “starting point to the investigation” (Haglund 2002:258). Those killed are not killed because of their personal qualities, but are targeted due to the attributed quality of “otherness” and their affiliation with a particular group of people (Haglund 2002; Juhl 2005:23). This motivation of “otherness” may have been particularly significant for individuals and groups in Central Europe during the Mesolithic and early Neolithic. The “skull nests” from the late Mesolithic site of Ofnet (Bavaria) in Germany are believed to represent the deliberate massacre of an entire community (Frayer 1997). In total, the heads of 34 individuals were deposited in two pits (Orschiedt 2005:67) a high proportion of which were female (n = 9) and children (n = 20) (Orschiedt 2005:68, Table 1). Many of these skulls displayed signs of trauma. The injuries that had proved fatal were located to the back of the head, which suggests that they died as the result of a surprise attack (Orschiedt 2005:70). This is also thought to be the case for the Linearbandkeramik (LBK) mass grave at Talheim (Wahl and König 1987:184, in Orschiedt 2005:70). Characteristic evidence of surprise attacks,

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6 Introduction

or raids, is the presence of a high proportion of female and subadult victims in the skeletal assemblage (Meyer et al. 2009:421). This scenario has also been used to explain the skeletal assemblages from the late Neolithic site of Eulau (Saxony-Anhalt) (Meyer et al. 2009). In addition, the LBK site of Talheim is believed to be the location of a massacre. Odontological and osteological analyses of the remains of 34 individuals (Alt et al. 1995) revealed that the assemblage represented a “homogenous and isolated population” (Bentley et al. 2008:291). This interpretation was further supported by recent stable isotope analysis (ibid.). In addition to being socially divisive, violence can bring people together. Freud (1961:61) noted, “It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness.” This is discussed further in the work of Girard (1977, 1986), who argues that conflict arises between those driven by mimetic desire and that social order can only be restored by the removal of a “scapegoat,” often by violent means such as sacrifice. “Society is seeking to deflect upon a relatively indifferent victim, a ‘sacrificeable’ victim, the violence that would otherwise be vented on its own members, the people it most desires to protect” (Girard 1977:4). How can we investigate this intricate relationship between politics, identity, and violence? In this volume, Varner approaches this question from an art historical perspective, and discusses the deliberate political violence inflicted upon the images of Rome’s “Bad” Emperors. The paper emphasizes the intimate relationship between politics and violence in the Roman Empire, and explains how mutilated and reconfigured images of particular emperors can offer an opportunity to trace the political upheavals and transitions that occurred in ancient Rome. Visual depictions could be attacked and left on display as a reminder of an individual’s downfall, or their presence on the political map of Rome could be erased by re-carving their images into likenesses of their victorious predecessors. Varner emphasizes how these violent acts of “visual cannibalism” represented an ongoing fight for legitimacy by both living and dead emperors. Both Varner and James have shown that violence was an important tool that was used and manipulated throughout the Roman Empire. Carter discusses its use in the context of Roman-style spectacles in the conquered Greek world. The paper is concerned specifically with the importance of spectator participation at the martyrdom of Polycarp in Smyrna. It is the performance of these essentially Roman cultural events in a Greek context that is of interest in understanding “Greek” attitudes and involvement in Roman, bloody, spectacles. The use of spectacles as a political tool in the Romanization of conquered lands is important, but more enlightening, as Carter notes, is the response of the conquered to this quintessentially Roman, violent, pastime. The rich textual evidence affords an insight into the effects of violence upon the general population, the victims, and the elite of society. While both Varner’s and Carter’s papers discuss the use of violence in the context of empires, Galaty allows for reflection on the role of violence in tribal communities in Albania. Approaching the subject from a landscape perspective, Galaty analyzes the ways in which the Shala tribal system, in particular, and their settlement and built environment, adapted and changed over time as a physical response to inter- and intratribal feuds, raiding, and warfare. As Varner shows too, the desire for social and political power by individuals

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and clans is likely the primary instigator of violence between Albanian tribal communities, something that has had lasting effects upon their landscape and built environment. Finally, Carman, building on the discussion by Vandkilde regarding the influence of twentieth-century thought on archaeological interpretations of the past, explains how the emergence of the European Union and new political thought has helped to create a surge in interest in conflict archaeology. Carman’s paper explains how the formation of a new research group (ESTOC) has set out to research the role of conflict in Europe in order to approach the subject from a multiregional and cross-cultural perspective. The key objective is to promote the study of all of Europe’s past conflicts, as opposed to just those events that are deemed suitable. Carman clearly shows that conflict archaeology is a growing subject whose research agenda highlights the importance of adopting a “bottom up” approach to studying violence and conflict. After all, violence can affect all strata of society. More often than not it is the masses that are affected the most, yet it is their stories that go untold in favor of the political leaders who, most likely, instigated such events.

Sanctified Violence As has been previously noted, violence, and its recognition as such, is culturally specific. It is an action that opens itself up to multi-interpretations whereby one individual may view it as abhorrent and another as acceptable. These differences in understanding are perhaps more important when considering sanctified violence. The relationship between violence and religion (and ritual) has become an increasingly significant subject for discussion, and one that can take many forms. A number of researchers have focused on the t­ ransformative qualities of ritual violence (e.g., Swenson 2003; Duncan 2005), particularly the power of sacrifice in sociopolitical contexts and how its control and manipulation could provide a means in which to obtain dominance. It is important to explore the ways in which people operating within distinct religious and ritual traditions, or belief systems, thought about, and in some cases participated in, acts of violence. Were these actions perceived as violent? Toward whom were they directed and why? Maurice Bloch’s work on ritual is particularly informative when considering the role of violence in such contexts. Bloch identifies similarities in a number of societies where human life is represented as “occurring within a permanent framework which transcends the natural transformative process of birth, growth, reproduction, ageing and death” (1992:3). He argues that this same structural pattern is present in ritual and religious representations too. Defined as a transformative process, ritual representations involve participants undergoing a three-stage process, which requires the use of two acts of violence to move people between the various stages. The first form of violence moves participants into a liminal phase. Here, an individual (or group) takes on a transcendental vitality that detaches them from the everyday. The process ends with “rebounding violence,” whereby the participant exits the liminal phase and returns to the everyday, but “the transcendental is not left behind but continues to be attached to those who made the initial move in its direction” (Bloch 1992:5). Although Bloch recognizes similarities in this model with those of Van Gennep (1960) and Turner (1967, 1969), it is the second stage of violence that differentiates his

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8 Introduction

work from theirs. For Bloch, a second more dramatic use of violence is required in order to consume a new, different, and external source of vitality that replaces the “native vitality” driven out during the first stage of the ritual (Bloch 1992:6). He notes that violence is necessary during the return to the mundane to ensure the demonstration of the “subordination of vitality” (ibid.). Bloch (1982:228) discusses how this model can be applied to funerary practices and how such practices, negate individual life and death, and replace it by a notion of continual life, of which ­individuals are only temporary recipients, and which is taken away from them during the funeral in order that the vitality may be recycled within the group.

Veneration becomes the means in which to triumph over death by holding funerals and commemorating the deceased, thus ensuring continual life. On the other hand, continual life can be denied through violation of the deceased and depriving them of appropriate funerary rituals (Duncan 2005). The latter is considered “predation” by Bloch (1982: 228–229) and can be both negative and positive. Negative predation involves denying the deceased appropriate funeral rites and is usually accompanied by some sort of disfigurement. There is then positive predation, which is “not a matter of depriving your enemies of their substance by denying them their corpses and the possibility of a funeral. It is rather a matter of taking over their corpses and allocating to yourself the vitality which they hold” (Bloch 1982:229). Bloch argues that headhunting best exemplifies this form of predation, using the Jivaro and the Iban to illustrate this point. Within a religious or ritual context, the act of violence can become a necessary and acceptable component of a transformative process. The importance of killing as part of a sacrifice highlights the significance of the relationship between ritual, religious beliefs, and violence. As previously noted, Girard (1977, 1986) argues that violence played a crucial role in religion whereby a “scapegoat” is sacrificed to diffuse the potentially destructive behavior of a society. “In essence, [t]he sacrifice serves to protect the entire community from its own violence; it prompts the entire community to choose victims outside itself ” (Girard 1977:8). Bloch, on the other hand, argues violence is “a result of the attempt to create the transcendental in religion and politics”, rather than as an outlet to express or release “an innate propensity to violence” (1992:7). Sanctified violence and ritual can offer justification to an individual, or a group, that their victims are morally and spiritually inferior, or antithetical to society, thereby making the violence more acceptable. As Bloch argues, “creativity is not the product of human action, but is due to a transcendental force that is mediated by authorities, and this fact legitimates, even demands, the violent conquest of inferiors by superiors who are closer to the transcendental ancestors” (1986:189). Serving as a means to maintain social relations, rituals, particularly those that utilize violence, can reinforce cultural messages and are key tools in maintaining power. In the final section of this volume, four authors discuss the use of violence in the ­context of ritual and religion. Porter investigates the role of violence during sanctified ­sacrifice in third millennium Mesopotamia. The paper analyzes the establishment of divine kinship and the role of sacrifice in linking the living world with that of the divine. Violence becomes a means in which to establish kin relations, especially divine kinship, with the creation of

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blood becoming the essence of these relationships. The notion of sovereignty and kingship is an issue addressed by Kelly in his paper on the recent discovery of a number of Iron Age bog bodies in Ireland. His paper discusses the importance of location in the deposition of these individuals, in addition to the violent manner in which they met their death. In conjunction with historical sources, Kelly has suggested that these ritual killings were deliberately placed on territorial boundaries as a statement of the king’s sovereignty during inauguration rites. The use of humans as sacrifices is echoed by Voigt, whose paper details the skeletal remains uncovered at Galatian Gordion. The victims found at this Iron Age site in Anatolia suggest their use in possible divinatory and sacrificial rites. Adults (male and female) and children were found in deposits that exhibited signs of trauma consistent with decapitation and strangulation. Some of the remains were carefully rearranged, or incorporated, into deposits with domestic animals. What is more intriguing is the manner in which they were “deposited.” As Voigt explains, most of the human remains were left on the surface, only later being buried by silt washing off a nearby enclosure wall. Of course, not all sanctified violence involves the physical harm of humans themselves. As has been shown by Varner, visual imagery has the power to incite violence, and thus become the target of destruction. Pollini’s paper analyzes this “archaeology of destruction” with particular focus on the Christian destruction and desecration of images of ­classical antiquity that took place in Late Antique times. In an effort to “Christianize” the polytheists of the fourth to sixth centuries A.D., the latter’s architecture, symbolism, and sculpture became the target of violent destruction. Pollini’s work, alongside Porter’s, Voigt’s, and Kelly’s, highlights this powerful relationship between ritual/religious beliefs and violence; a relationship that endures today.

Interdisciplinary Understandings of Violence An interdisciplinary approach to violence can bring with it many challenges. Definitions and modes of identification can vary significantly, and this is in part due to the multidimensional nature of violence; thus reinforcing the need to consider this subject from a number of disciplinary perspectives. With case studies focused on Europe and the Mediterranean, this volume highlights the importance of an interdisciplinary methodology in creating a greater and fuller understanding of the often complex subject of violence. By adopting such an approach, we are afforded the opportunity to study this complex and polysemic subject from a fresh point of view. It is a view not often seen when working within the framework of one’s own specialist field and brings with it a new perspective on such an important subject. Moving beyond a purely descriptive analysis of the physical evidence for violence, this volume considers the evidence within its social and cultural context. By doing so we are able to better comprehend the causes and consequences, both short and long term, of such interactions, as well as the implications for all those involved. This volume was conceived as a result of the Second Visiting Scholar Conference for the Institute of European and Mediterranean Archaeology (IEMA), University at Buffalo, New York. The Institute itself actively promotes the integration of multidisciplinary-led research, and it is hoped that this volume will only further encourage such collaborative

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10 Introduction

works. The conference, and subsequent publication, has provided an opportunity to bring scholars together from subjects who paths very rarely cross. The outcome has been very fruitful, and generated extremely promising ideas for future discussion and research.

Acknowledgments I am very grateful to the IEMA board for all their support and guidance during my time at Buffalo. In particular Ted Peña, Tina Thurston, Peter Biehl, and Stephen Dyson for their advice and support during the preparation of both the conference and subsequent publication. More importantly, I am greatly appreciative of the research presented by all fourteen speakers who graciously accepted IEMA’s invitation, and without whom promising steps toward a greater understanding of human interactions would not have been possible.

Note 1.

These papers were originally presented at the Second Institute for Mediterranean and European Archaeology Visiting Scholar Conference 2008, University at Buffalo SUNY.

References Cited Alt, Kurt W., W. Vach, and Joachim Wahl 1995 Verwandtschaftsanalyse der Skelettreste aus dem bandkeramischen Massengrab von Talheim, Kreis Heilbronn. Fundberichte aus ­Baden-Württemberg 20:195–217. Arkush, Elizabeth N., and Mark W. Allen (editors) 2006 The Archaeology of Warfare: Prehistories of raiding and conquest. University of Florida Press, Gainesville. Bentley, R. Alexander, Joachim Wahl, T. Douglas Price, and Tim C. Atkinson 2008 Isotopic Signatures and Hereditary Traits: Snapshot of a Neolithic Community in Germany. Antiquity 82:290–304. Bloch, Maurice 1982 Death, Women, and Power. In Death and the Regeneration of Life, edited by Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry, pp. 211–230. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Bloch, Maurice 1986 From Blessing to Violence: History and Ideology in the Circumcision Ritual of the Merina of Madagascar. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Bloch, Maurice 1992 Prey into Hunter: The Politics of Religious Experience. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Blok, Anton 2000 The Enigma of Senseless Violence. In Meanings of Violence: a Cross-cultural Perspective, edited by Göran Aijmer and Jon Abbink, pp. 23–37. Berg, Oxford. Carman, John 1997a Approaches to Violence. In Material Harm: Archaeological Studies of War and Violence, edited by John Carman, pp. 1–23. Cruithne Press, Glasgow. Carman, John 1997b Giving Archaeology a Moral Voice. In Material Harm: Archaeological Studies of War and Violence, edited by John Carman, pp. 220–239. Cruithne Press, Glasgow. Carman, John, and Anthony Harding (editors) 1999 Ancient Warfare: Archaeological Perspectives. Sutton, Stroud. Carr, Gillian 2010 The Archaeology of Occupation and the V-sign Campaign in the Occupied British Channel Island. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 14(4):575–592.

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Chacon, Richard J., and Rubén G. Mendoza (editors) 2007 North American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Chagnon, Napoleon A. 1983 Yanomamö: The Fierce People. 3rd Edition. Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York. Dillon, Sheila, and Katherine E. Welch (editors) 2006 Representations of War in Ancient Rome. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Duncan, William N. 2005 Understanding Veneration and Violation in the Archaeological Record. In Interacting with the Dead: Perspectives on Mortuary Archaeology for the New Millennium, edited by Gordon F. M. Rakita, Jane Buikstra, Lane A. Beck, and Sloan R. Williams, pp. 207–227. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. Ember, Carol R., and Melvin Ember 1997 Violence in the Ethnographic Record: Results of Crosscultural Research on War and Aggression. In Troubled Times: Violence and Warfare in the Past, edited by Debra L. Martin and David W Frayer, pp. 1–20. Gordon and Breach, Amsterdam. Ferguson, R. Brian 1984. Warfare, Culture, and Environment. Academic Press, Orlando. Ferguson, R. Brian. 1995. Yanomami Warfare: A Political History. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Frayer, David W. 1997 Ofnet: Evidence for a Mesolithic Massacre. In Troubled Times: Violence and Warfare in the Past, edited by Debra L. Martin and David W. Frayer, pp. 181–216. Gordon and Breach, Amsterdam. Freud, Sigmund 1961 Civilization and Its Discontents, translated and edited by James Strachey. W. W. Norton, New York. Futrell, Alison 1997 Blood in the Arena: The Spectacle of Roman Power. University of Texas Press, Austin. Gardner, Robert, and Karl G. Heider 1968 Gardens of War; Life and Death in the New Guinea Stone Age. Random House, New York. Girard, René 1977 Violence and the Sacred. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. Girard, René 1986 The Scapegoat. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. Green, Miranda 1998 Humans as Ritual Victims in the Later Prehistory of Western Europe. Oxford Journalof Archaeology 17(2):169–189. Guilaine, Jean, and Jean Zammit 2005 The Origins of War: Violence in Prehistory. Trans. M. Hersey. Blackwell, Oxford. Haas, Jonathan (editor) 1990 The Anthropology of War. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Haglund, William D. 2002 Recent Mass Graves, An Introduction. In Advances in Forensic Taphonomy: Method, Theory, and Archaeological Perspectives, edited by William D. Haglund and Marcella H. Sorg, pp. 243–261. CRC Press, Boca Raton. Hobbes, Thomas 1996 [1651] Leviathan. Edited by Richard Tuck. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge/New York. Juhl, Kirsten 2005 The Contribution by (Forensic) Archaeologists to Human Rights Investigations of Mass Graves. Stavanger. No. 5. Museum of Archaeology, Stavanger. Keeley, Lawrence H. 1996 War before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Kelly, Raymond C. 2000 Warless Societies and the Origin of War. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.

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12 Introduction Koontz, Rex, and Heather Orr 2009 Blood and Beauty: Organized Violence in the Art and Archaeology of Mesoamerica and Central America. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA, Los Angeles. Krohn-Hansen, Christian 1994 The Anthropology of Violent Interaction. Journal of Anthropological Research 50(4):367–381. LeBlanc, Steven A. 2003 Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage (with Katherine E. Register). St. Martin’s Press, New York. Lennon, John, and Malcolm Foley 2002 Dark Tourism. Continuum, London. Liebmann, Matthew, and Melissa S. Murphy (editors) 2010 Enduring Conquests: Rethinking the Archaeology of Resistance to Spanish Colonialism in the Americas. School for Advanced Research Press, Sante Fe. Martin, Debra L., and David W. Frayer 1997a. Introduction. In Troubled Times: Violence and Warfare in the Past, edited by Debra L. Martin and David W. Frayer, pp. xiii–xxi. Gordon and Breach, Amsterdam. Martin, Debra L., and David W. Frayer 1997b (editors) Troubled Times: Violence and Warfare in the Past. Gordon and Breach, Amsterdam. Meyer, Christian, Guido Brandt, Wolfgang Haak, Robert A. Ganslmeier, Harald Meller, and Kurt W. Alt. 2009 The Eulau Eulogy: Bioarchaeological Interpretation of Lethal Violence in Corded Ware Multiple Burials from Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 28:412–423. Nielsen, Axel E., and William H. Walker (editors) 2009 Warfare in Cultural Context: Practice, Agency and the Archaeology of Violence. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Orschiedt, Jörg 2005 The Head Burials from Ofnet Cave: An Example of Warlike Conflict in the Mesolithic. In Warfare, Violence and Slavery in Prehistory, edited by Mike Parker Pearson and I. J. N. Thorpe, pp. 67–73. BAR International Series 1374. Archaeopress, Oxford. Orser, Charles E. 2002 Encyclopedia of Historical Archaeology. Routledge, London. Orser, Charles E., and Pedro P. A. Funari 2001 Archaeology and Slave Resistance and Rebellion. World Archaeology 33(1):61–72. Otterbein, Keith F. 2004 How War Began. Texas A&M University Press, College Station. Otto, Ton, Henrik Thrane, and Helle Vandkilde (editors) 2006 Warfare and Society: Archaeological and Social Anthropological Perspectives. Aarhus University Press, Aarhus. Oxford English Dictionary 2010 www.oed.com. Accessed August 10, 2010. Parker Pearson, Mike, and I. J. N. Thorpe (editors) 2005 Warfare, Violence and Slavery in Prehistory. BAR International Series 1374. Archaeopress, Oxford. Riches, David 1986 The Anthropology of Violence. Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Robb, John 2008 Meaningless Violence and the Lived Body: The Huron-Jesuit Collision of World Orders. In Past Bodies: Body-Centred Research in Archaeology, edited by Dušan Boric´ and John Robb, pp. 89–99. Oxford, Oxbow. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 1984 [1755] A Discourse on Inequality. Translated by Maurice Cranston. Penguin Books, London. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, and Philippe Bourgois (editors) 2004 Violence in War and Peace: (An Anthology). Blackwell, Oxford.

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Schmidt, Bettina E., and Ingo W. Schröder (editors) 2001 Anthropology of Violence and Conflict. Routledge, London. Sharpley, Richard, and Philip R. Stone (editors) 2009 The Darker Side of Travel: The Theory and Practice of Dark Tourism. Channel View Publications, Bristol. Sillitoe, Paul 1978 Big Men and War in New Guinea. Man (N.S.) 13:252–271. Stein, Gil J. (editor) 2005 The Archaeology of Colonial Encounters: Comparative Perspectives. School of American Research Press, Sante Fe. Swenson, Edward R. 2003 Cities of Violence: Sacrifice, Power and Urbanization in the Andes. Journal of Social Archaeology 3(2):256–296. Tiesler, Vera, and Andrea Cucina (editors) 2007 New Perspectives on Human Sacrifice and Ritual Body Treatments in Ancient Maya Society. Springer, New York. Turner II, Christy G., and Jacqueline A. Turner 1999 Man Corn: Cannibalism and Violence in the Prehistoric American Southwest. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City. Turner, Victor W. 1967 The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Cornell University Press, Ithaca. Van Gennep, Arnold 1960 The Rites of Passage, translated by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Wahl, J., and H. G. König 1987 Anthropologisch-Traumatologische Untersuchung der ­menschlichen Skelettreste aus dem bandkeramischen Massengrab bei Talheim, Kreis Heilbronn. Fundberichte aus Baden-Württemberg 12:65–186. Walker, Philip L. 2001. A Bioarchaeological Perspective on the History of Violence. Annual Review of Anthropology 30:573–596. Weber, Max 1991 [1921] From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, translated and edited by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. Routledge, London.

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SECTION I

The Contexts of Violence

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Introduction

Sarunas Milisauskas

S

everal papers in this section focus on the importance of warfare in the past. These are Rick Schulting’s paper on Neolithic conflict and Vandkilde’s discussion of Bronze Age warfare. Two other papers—Simon James’s “Facing the Sword: Confronting the Realities of Martial Violence and Other Mayhem, Present and Past” and Rebecca Redfern’s “Violence as an Aspect of the Durotriges Female Life Course”—deal with various forms of violence and the difficulties of archaeologically identifying such events in the past. Historians have written about warfare since ancient times, and the rise and fall of many states and empires in Europe is associated with various wars. We have numerous examples, but it suffices to mention the destruction of the Athenian Empire: as pointed out by Donald Kagan (2003:XXIII) in his book The Peloponnesian War, “For almost three decades at the end of the fifth century B.C. the Athenian Empire fought the Spartan Alliance in a terrible war that changed the Greek world and its civilization forever.” More recently, most of the contemporary boundaries of European states were determined by World Wars I and II. Many archaeologists have ignored the importance of warfare in the human past. The horrible conflicts of twentieth-century Europe have brought so much pain and suffering that many archaeologists have preferred to the avoid this topic and, furthermore, as Helle Vandkilde (2003) has noted, some distinguished European archaeologists were political leftists and pacifists who preferred not to emphasize conflict in the remote past. Finally, there is the difficulty of demonstrating warfare with archaeological data in pre-state societies. Warfare in the past must be studied by archaeologists for several reasons. Whether we like it or not, warfare plays and has played a significant role in human history. Many changes in political, economic, and social systems have resulted from warfare. As John Carman (this volume) notes, “To deny the importance of past warfare in Europe is inevitably to deny us access to an important part of that past.” Naturally, warfare went through various stages of 16

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development, and it would be unrealistic to compare a Neolithic conflict of two villages to the modern massive conflicts of states or empires. What evidence is there for warfare during the Mesolithic and the Neolithic? What type of archaeological data would indicate intercommunity conflict? How can a weapon be distinguished from a plain tool? What were some of the causes for warfare during those periods? These are some of the questions that Rick Schulting raises in his paper. His evidence for conflict in the European Mesolithic consists of bone and stone arrowheads and cranial trauma. Neolithic evidence for warfare consists of skeletal trauma and the presence of enclosures. Although there are numerous interpretations about the functions of these structures, there is evidence that some enclosures were subjected to attacks, for example, Hambledon Hill, Crickley Hill, and Carn Brea in England. As Schulting points out, “Some 400 projectiles were found at the entrance into the Crickley Hill promontory enclosure.” Skeletal evidence is best exemplified by the Linear Pottery mass grave at Talheim in Germany, but it is doubtful that events at Talheim are applicable to what was happening everywhere else. For example, the Linear Pottery data from southeastern Poland suggests a more peaceful society. More than 42,000 flint artifacts were found in the excavated units at Olszanica in Poland; however, only two or three were projectile points (Milisauskas 1986). Schulting notes that “we do not see a specialized warrior identity in the Mesolithic or Neolithic and that every able-bodied male would be expected to perform this role alongside his other roles hunter, farmer, herder, fisher, weaver, potter, etc.” Helle Vandkilde also stresses that “[t]hroughout the history of archaeology, war and violence have largely been ignored as relevant for our understanding of prehistoric societies.” Only since the mid-nineties was there a great increase of publications dealing with warfare. She points out that we have excellent data from the European Bronze Age for the presence of warfare, the weaponry itself, weapon technology, weaponry in burials and votive deposits, fortification, skeletal trauma, and iconographic presentations. Swords are especially critical for various interpretations of Bronze Age warfare, and Vandkilde uses these data to illustrate the presence of warfare in pre-state societies. However, we should not imagine that warfare was continuous among Bronze Age societies. Most archaeologists consider warfare to be a male activity during the Bronze Age, but both sexes take casualties. It would not have been surprising that the defense of Bronze Age fortified sites involved both males and females. Simon James stresses that violence of past cultures is commonly ignored or not studied by archaeologists. He presents numerous examples about various forms of violence in the Roman world. Archaeologists and other scholars have tended to concentrate on the so-called Roman peace and ignore the presence of violence such as slave revolts, working slaves to death, gladiatorial combats, and the imperialistic wars at the peripheries of the Empire. That said, if we did not have the written records of Tacitus, Suetonius, and others the archaeological evidence for violence would be meager. Amazingly there is very little evidence of weaponry and burials, even at battlefields, for instance, at Kalkriese in Germany where Arminius-led Germans annihilated the three Roman legions of Varus. Thus, James’s observation that “[p]ervasive violence and fear may simply not be directly detectable from archaeology alone,” can somewhat account for the lack of attention to violence by ­archaeologists in the past.

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The Contexts of Violence

Rebecca Redfern studied the skeletal data of females for the evidence of violence ­during the late Iron Age of the Durotriges tribe in England. As she points out, women are vulnerable to “interpersonal and collective violence, where the former is committed by family and community, and the latter by groups of people with a particular identity.” Domestic violence against women is common in many societies, and although there are always some cases of women’s violence against males most victims are female. The recent, and still presently occurring, conflicts in Bosnia and Congo resulted in thousands of women being raped by armies and various militias. In “War’s Overlooked Victims,” published in The Economist (January 15, 2011, p. 63), it is observed: “Rape in war is as old as war itself. Saint Augustine called rape in wartime as an ‘ancient and customary evil.’” However, this type of common violence against women is very difficult to demonstrate archaeologically. It is interesting that even if the Durotriges females did not have weaponry in their burials, they participated in combat at certain, critical times. However, only women from Maiden Castle hillfort had evidence of weapons injuries. Perhaps they died in fighting during the Roman conquest. References Cited Kagan, Donald 2003 The Peloponnesian War. Viking, New York. Milisauskas, Sarunas 1986 Early Neolithic Settlement and Society at Olszanica. Memoirs of the Museum of Anthropology No. 19, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Vandkilde, Helle 2003 Commemorative Tales: Archaeological Responses to Modern Myth, Politics, and War. World Archaeology 35(1):126–144.

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Chapter Two

War Without Warriors?

The Nature of Interpersonal Conflict before the Emergence of Formalized Warrior Elites Rick J. Schulting Abstract  Despite the apparent absence of formal and specialized weaponry, there is considerable skeletal evidence for interpersonal violence in the European Neolithic (ca. 5500–2500 cal B.C.). The nature and contexts of these episodes of violence can be shown to vary, and seem to have much in common with conflict as seen in smallscale societies ethnographically, in which most or all adult males act as “warriors” as and when the situation requires. This observation, together with Raymond Kelly’s notion of social substitution and the central role of revenge, provides a useful way of understanding some aspects of intergroup conflict, linking violence to wider social identities. These ideas are developed here, and extended to the changing roles and nature of conflict in the Late Neolithic, and more particularly in the Bronze Age, marked by the first appearance of specialized weaponry and an ideology centered around the image of a male warrior élite.

Introduction

T

he European Neolithic provides a rich resource for the study of interpersonal violence in prehistory. The lack of written records means that the only surviving evidence comes from material culture (including architecture), settlement patterns, rare iconography, and, as emphasized here, skeletal remains. In contrast to other lines of evidence, which are often more ambiguous (fortifications and weapons may be as much about status as conflict; representations may be symbolic, etc.), trauma recorded on the human skeleton is, when properly identified, the indisputable result of real incidents, though understanding the contexts in which they occurred is often less straightforward.

19

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The Contexts of Violence

Much discussion on prehistoric violence has focused on the question of the point at which it becomes legitimate to speak of “warfare” (e.g., Beyneix 2007). In some respects, this overly restricts the use of the evidence, which can inform on a variety of contexts for interpersonal violence, including those occurring within the household or the community. At the same time, identifying and distinguishing between these contexts is often a very difficult, if not impossible, task. “Warfare” here refers to armed conflict of lethal intent between two or more autonomous sociopolitical groups. This is distinct from feud, which occurs within a single group, or homicide, which can occur between individuals either within or between sociopolitical groups (though more often the former, through simple physical proximity; the latter situation, unless quickly resolved, almost invariably escalates into feud or warfare). The definition of “warrior identity” in its fully developed form, can be seen as a specialized identity, often, though not always, associated with young/middle adult males, and carrying with it the expectation that these are the individuals primarily responsible for a group’s defense and offense directed against other groups. This status will often be accompanied by a distinct material culture, including first and foremost specialized weaponry, which may not be generally available to other members of the group; it may also include other insignia. But warfare appears long before formal weaponry. The earliest known example with evidence for multiple injuries that can be reasonably attributed to large-scale, intergroup conflict comes from the oft-cited Epipalaeolithic cemetery 117 at Jebel Sahaba in Sudan, dating from ca. 13,000 years ago (Judd 2006; Wendorf 1968). A sufficient number of Mesolithic skeletons are found across Europe with embedded projectile points, and blows to the head, to strongly suggest more than occasional violence (Bennike 1985; Grünberg 1996; Orschiedt 1998; Roksandic 2006; Vencl 1984). For much of Europe, the frequency and scale of conflict may increase further with the appearance of the Neolithic, though the comparison is not a straightforward one, and is greatly hampered by the relative paucity and uneven distribution of Mesolithic human remains. But, with the exception of the late Neolithic, in neither period is there unequivocal evidence for the emergence of a specialized warrior identity: there are few indications of formal weapons that could not equally serve other purposes (Chapman 1999), iconographic portrayals are rare, and there are few if any contenders for distinct warrior graves. This paper addresses the nature of “war without warriors” from the perspective of Neolithic Europe. Ethnographic cases of band and tribal conflict are drawn upon to help elucidate the nature of warfare in these small-scale societies. Discussion ends with a consideration of the appearance of formal weaponry in the Bronze Age, and how this might affect the nature and scale of interpersonal violence.

Evidence for Interpersonal Conflict in the Neolithic The timing of the appearance of the Neolithic varies across Europe, following a general trend from southeast (ca. 7000 cal B.C.) to northwest (ca. 4000 cal B.C.). Evidence for conflict takes two main forms, skeletal trauma and architecture, the latter in the form of enclosures. Though there is much debate concerning the roles of Neolithic enclosures—itself a varied category—there is good evidence that at least some were subjected to l­arge-scale attacks,

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War Without Warriors? 21

even if they were not necessarily intended as defensive structures when first conceived and built. The enclosures of Darion, Oleye, and Longchamps in Belgium, on the westernmost fringes of the Linearbandkeramik Culture (LBK, ca. 5500–4900 cal B.C.), have deep, V-shaped ditches backed by palisades, and may have been constructed with defense in mind (Golitko and Keeley 2007; Keeley and Cahen 1989) (Figure 2.1). ­Examples from Britain include the earlier Neolithic sites of Hambledon Hill, Crickley Hill and Carn Brea (ca. 3700–3400 cal B.C.) (Mercer 1999). The large-scale conflicts implied by attacks on these sites must qualify as warfare by any definition: the events are simply on too large a scale to represent in-group fighting. Some 400 projectiles were found concentrated at the entrance into the Crickley Hill promontory enclosure. Undoubtedly this represents only a fraction of the missiles fired at and from the enclosure, as many would have been retrieved at the time, and many others would have been lost in the intervening 5,500 years since this event— and, from a recent radiocarbon dating program, it does seem to be a single event (Dixon et al. 2011). Similar considerations would apply to the even more impressive figure of 800 arrowheads found at Carn Brea (Mercer 1981). Given the many unknowns, any attempt

Sund

Crickley Tormarton Wassenaar Weltzin Carn Brea Hambledon Hill Walthamstow Oleye Darion Eulau Longchamps Ofnet

San Juan Ante Portam Latinam

0

Talheim Asparn/Schletz

Roaix

1000 km

figure 2.1 Map showing locations of some key sites mentioned in the text.

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to estimate the number of people involved in such conflicts on the basis of the number of recovered arrowheads is highly speculative, but it does not seem unreasonable to suggest the involvement of ­hundreds of antagonists. Skeletal evidence is on occasion equally dramatic, best exemplified by the ­paradigm-shifting late LBK (ca. 5000 cal B.C.) mass grave at Talheim in southwest ­Germany. ­Thirty-four men, women, and children were found here, unceremoniously thrown into a large pit, with many showing peri-mortem cranial injuries (Wahl and König 1987). ­Evidence for even larger-scale violence comes from the late LBK enclosure at Asparn-Schletz in Austria, where more than 120 individuals were found in the ditches, many with peri-mortem injuries (Teschler-Nicola et al. 1996). Talheim is perhaps slightly more ambiguous than the British enclosures discussed above, in terms of whether it can be said to relate to “warfare”; it could conceivably represent a feud between, for example, lineages within a larger sociopolitical group, though this would imply a degree of suprahousehold or supra-village organization beyond what is usually attributed to the LBK. This is harder to argue for Asparn-Schletz, if the skeletons in the ditches relate to a single episode, which is not inconsistent with the available 14C dates and stratigraphy. The relative dearth of young women here compared to an expected normal demographic profile has been used to suggest their removal as captives (Teschler-Nicola et al. 1996). Then there are numerous other sites with a small number of individuals showing skeletal injuries attributable to interpersonal violence. In many cases these are yet more ambiguous, and it cannot be said with any certainty whether they reflect in-group or outgroup conflict. The overall pattern that emerges, however, is intriguing. With very few exceptions, projectile injuries affect males, while both males and females, sometimes in equal proportions, are more often affected by healed as well as unhealed cranial injuries. This pattern demonstrably applies to the Mesolithic and the Neolithic (Schulting 2006), continuing into the Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic (Guilaine and Zammit 2001; Vegas 2007) (and probably beyond). This implies at least two different contexts for violence, one involving predominantly males fighting at a distance with bows, and the other involving close quarters conflict affecting both males and females more equally. While it is perhaps tempting to infer that this marks the distinction between out-group and in-group conflict (including “domestic” violence), this is probably too simplistic a reading of what was a more complex and varied situation, particularly in the case of the incidents leading to cranial trauma. Healed cranial injuries are usually in the majority, which may very well indicate a different context for violence: an element of ritualized dispute resolution is often inferred when faced with similar cases in other parts of the world (e.g., Lambert 1997; Standen and Arriaza 2000; Walker 1989). However, the notion that projectile injuries do relate for the most part to organized conflict between primarily men from different groups appears to be a reasonable one. What little iconographic evidence there is for conflict in the European Mesolithic/Neolithic comes from a number of well-known rock art sites in the Spanish Levant, and appears to support the role of bow conflict (Nash 2000). The dating of these sites as either Mesolithic or N ­ eolithic is controversial, but for our purposes here this distinction does not really matter. The panels are interesting for a number of reasons, one being that some appear to depict

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War Without Warriors? 23

small groups of archers in battle line arrangements that are not dissimilar to those known from a number of ethnographic tribal contexts (Figure 2.2), such as seen for the Dani of New Guinea in the film Dead Birds (Gardner and Heider 1974). From the above discussion, it is clear that the weapon of choice for long-range conflict in earlier prehistory was the bow and arrow, and probably most men, and young boys, would own a bow and have some level of proficiency. Of course, the bow can also be used to hunt. But for the British Neolithic at least, the large numbers of leaf-shaped arrowheads that have been found seem to be incommensurate with the paucity of hunted game known from contemporary faunal assemblages (Mercer 1999). Indeed, there are no known examples of embedded projectile injuries in wild fauna from the earlier Neolithic in ­Britain, though, oddly, embedded point fragments are known from domestic cattle and pig at the Late ­Neolithic (ca. 2800 cal B.C.) site of Durrington Walls (Albarella and Serjeantson 2002). Yet four cases of directly embedded projectile fragments are known from human remains in chambered tombs (Ascott-under-Wychwood, Tulloch of Assery B, Penywyrlod, and, most recently, Wayland’s Smithy), with another case from Poulnabrone in Ireland (Schulting and Wysocki 2005; Whittle et al. 2007). The existence of many other examples is suggested through the close association of projectile points with the skeleton, often with broken tips (e.g., Hambledon Hill, Cat’s Water, and two further examples from Wayland’s Smithy; a recent study of a Beaker skeleton from Feizor Nick Cave presents a rare example of a female exhibiting an arrow injury—Smith et al. 2007). Even if wild game are underrepresented because of the “ceremonial” nature of many—though by no means all—of the sites, it

figure 2.2 Pictograph panel from Les Dogues in the Spanish Levant, depicting two groups of archers engaged in conflict (after Nash 2000).

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is unlikely that hunting played more than a minor economic role in Britain and Ireland (Schulting 2008). What it might do, however, is serve to train young men in proficiency with the bow. This training of boys from a young age in both shooting and dodging arrows is a common feature of the ethnographic literature for tribal societies (e.g., Heider 1970). It begins as a game, but is in deadly earnest in later life, though sometimes retaining some of the qualities of a “sport.”

Small-Scale Conflict and War without Warriors Another important consideration here is the general nature of conflict in small-scale societies. Based largely on ethnographic accounts of warfare, but informed where possible by the archaeological record of Neolithic Europe, some suggestions in this direction can be made. One of the most common themes to emerge is that in band and tribal conflict the first choice of encounter is almost invariably ambush, preferably against an unarmed opponent (e.g., Bishop and Lytwyn 2007; Elwin 1969; Gat 1999; Maschner and Maschner 1998). The nighttime or early dawn raid features prominently, maximizing the likelihood of killing the enemy while minimizing the danger to one’s own group. Indeed, the enterprise would often be abandoned if the alarm were raised. Open battles would sometimes be fought by some groups, and indeed might even be arranged beforehand, but ambush and deception are found more often, and were probably more deadly in the long run (Keeley 1996; Otterbein 1999). One result of such climates of uncertainty seen ethnographically is that during times of unrest, people would sharply curtail their travel, and men would go about their days and nights fully armed, even within their own communities (e.g., Burch 2007; see also Ember and Ember [1994] on “socialization for mistrust” as a predictor of warfare in small-scale societies cross-culturally). Overtly economic motivations are often more evident in expansionist chiefdoms and states. Nevertheless, it is clear historically that some tribal groups were very expansionist, such as the segmentary house societies of the Iban of Borneo, who pursued an explicit policy of expanding into new territory by force (Freeman 1970; Vayda 1961). Many additional examples could be found among African cattle pastoralists. Then there are also many different kinds of economic motives that can operate at a smaller scale (Ember and Ember 1994; Ferguson 1997). The question is who decides that they are worth pursuing in a society lacking strong central leadership, and how this ambition is realized. One of the features of bands and tribes is that the constituent social units are relatively small, though in the case of tribes they can amount to large numbers of individuals in aggregate. And, in both bands and tribes, one of the main structuring principles is kinship. These two points taken together— small numbers of people, often closely related, whether fictitiously or not—mean that any economic advantage would be easily perceived as beneficial both to specific individuals and to the overall group. Counterbalancing this are the cross-cutting, extended kin networks that permeate intergroup relations. Carrying out the action, then, becomes a matter of convincing enough individuals; for example, to participate in a raid against another group. One of the strategies available is to draw upon memories—real or created—of past conflicts and injustices, employing what Schröder and Schmidt (2001) refer to as the “violent imaginary” to invoke revenge as a motivation (see below).

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War Without Warriors? 25

For Neolithic Europe, stored grain would present one possible economic target, but undoubtedly more enticing, and more mobile, would be domestic animals, and in particular cattle. The economic and cultural value attributed to cattle in the Neolithic of northwest Europe emerges fairly clearly from multiple lines of evidence. Under such conditions, as has been argued elsewhere, they make particularly attractive targets for raiding (Mercer 1999; Schulting and Wysocki 2005). And such raids can be carried out by a small number of individuals; again, stealth and ambush are the ideals. The preference for this kind of conflict itself may militate against elaborate and showy weaponry. It might also be argued to provide little incentive for the development of an élite warrior ideology, though this is less clear, since success in raiding would be one route to accruing social prestige, as seen in early Irish history (Patterson 1994). In addition to the preference for ambush, a critical factor is the combination of a high degree of both autonomy and responsibility placed on the individual in small-scale societies. The relevance of this here relates to the central importance of revenge, which emerges again and again as one of the strongest motivators for both within-group feuding and between-group warfare (Keeley 1996; Kelly 2000; Otterbein 2000). The duty of vengeance falls most directly on close kin, and next, in the case of between-group conflict, on the aggrieved community and its allies as a whole. While help would certainly be sought, neither the means nor the responsibility for revenge are delegated to any authority. One of the consequences of this is that it is very difficult to cease hostilities once begun—no one has the clear and binding authority to do so, though attempts might be made (Strathern 1971:92). In societies with more centralized authority, the personal/family responsibility for vengeance is less emphasized, with the decision for, and means of, retribution coming under firmer control by the central authority, where it may be more likely to take the form of compensation payments. Thus, the reason that we do not see a specialized warrior identity in the Mesolithic or Neolithic is that every able-bodied male would be expected to perform this role alongside his other roles: hunter, farmer, herder, fisher, knapper, leatherworker, etc. This is part of the autonomy and responsibility of small-scale, acephalous societies. And, while ambush and raiding have been emphasized above, it is probable that larger-scale battles were also arranged on occasion, or arose spontaneously, as suggested by the Spanish Levant rock art and by some enclosures. On such occasions, fielding as many fighters as possible would be of crucial importance, since any marked inequality in the strength of one group over another could lead to the collapse of the battle line and a rout. Even though partly ritualized, arranged encounters were also an opportunity for groups to test one another’s strength and resolve. The weapons used in raiding and warfare were ostensibly the same as those used in day-to-day tasks, and required no specialized training. This is not to say that all would be equally proficient in their use, and no doubt some would display a greater aptitude and become recognized as leaders, though if the ethnographic accounts are anything to go by, such leadership roles would often be restricted to the duration of the immediate conflict at hand, and would not necessarily extend into other fields of activity. Nevertheless, it is likely that success here, as with any important endeavor, would offer one avenue to elevated status and influence, particularly when it presented the opportunity to add to the group’s valuable

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The Contexts of Violence

cattle herds. The ability to obtain the necessary support and organize a retaliation or raiding party against another group would, whatever the ideal, probably not be an option open to all. If this describes the situation in earlier prehistory, what of later prehistory?

A Paradox? It is with the Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic (ca. 3200–2500 cal B.C.) that we first seem to see the image of a specialized male warrior, for example on carved stelae in the Alpine forelands (Casini et al. 1995), and, with the widespread “Corded Ware Culture,” the first appearance of specialized weaponry in the form of stone battle-axes and stone and antler maceheads (Vandkilde 2006; 2007:79–82)—while some would see these as primarily symbolic (Heyd 2004), this seems improbable (see below). Then, from ca. 2500 cal B.C., Beaker “warrior graves” appear across large parts of western Europe, with fine barbed-andtanged arrowheads, stone wristguards, copper or flint daggers, and the Beaker drinking vessel itself: the stereotypical, hard-fighting, hard-drinking male warrior (Sherratt 1987; Vandkilde 2006). Both Corded Ware and Beaker burials are strongly gendered: as well as differences in grave offerings, the bodies are typically placed lying on opposite sides, and facing opposite directions. Of course, as has been often emphasized, this is an image, one constructed in death by those doing the burying, and is undoubtedly an idealized one (Treherne 1995). But, regardless of its reality in individual cases, the simple fact that the identity of (some) adult males is being constructed and portrayed in this way indicates the importance of the warrior ideal: there is little point in alluding to such an image if it does not have some foundation and continuing resonance in reality. This is precisely what is lacking in the earlier Neolithic. It could be argued that the emphasis on communal burial in monuments that dominates the Early/Middle Neolithic of northwest Europe precludes any kind of particular identification in death other than an overall community membership. Aside from the fact that this in itself says something about the structure of society at this time, the same consideration does not apply to the single flat graves that predominate in the preceding LBK of central Europe. Male graves here do tend to be associated with stone axes and projectile points, but because of the ambiguous nature of these implements these are not seen as warrior graves. Given the clear evidence for the use of stone axes to inflict horrific head injuries at Talheim and other sites, and the finds of flint points embedded in human bone, it may be time to reconsider this. Perhaps part of the male identity being marked in death here does relate to roles in warfare, as much as to woodworking, exchange, and hunting. All this begs the question, then, of whether the appearance of more formal and unambiguous weaponry, seen firstly with stone battle-axes, and then with the advent of first copper but more particularly bronze metallurgy, is associated with an increase in actual levels of violence. As is so often the case, the issue is not a straightforward one, partly because the skeletal evidence has not yet been systematically reviewed on a sufficiently wide scale. Experience with the Neolithic evidence suggests that many early published accounts of injuries are unreliable in both directions; that is, claimed injuries are often not sustained when reviewed with modern forensic criteria, while many real injuries are missed (Schulting and Wysocki 2005). Yet, on present data, it seems that there may actually be less skeletal

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War Without Warriors? 27

evidence for interpersonal violence in the Beaker period and Early Bronze Age, at least in Britain (Mercer 2007). Robb (1997) has drawn attention to a comparable phenomenon in Italian prehistory, where periods with greater material elaboration of conflict imagery actually show a lower prevalence of skeletal injuries than periods lacking such imagery. Similar arguments for a reduction in actual levels of violence compared to the Neolithic have been made for southern France and Iberia (Oosterbeek 1997; Vander Linden 2006). How is this to be interpreted? One possibility is that intergroup conflict shifts from the many to the few. This might be expected to apply particularly with the appearance of the sword in the Middle Bronze Age (Harding 1999; 2007). The weapon itself would be difficult to acquire, presenting obvious possibilities for élite control and, equally importantly, would require considerable training to master (Molloy 2007). Thus, unlike previous periods, the means of making war would be restricted to the few. This suggests a scenario of “heroic” combat between champions, well attested in the Classical literature (Vandkilde 2007:152). But how valid is this? Unless the nature of warfare changed significantly from earlier periods, projectile weapons would remain the most effective long-distance weapon, and it would matter relatively little whether these were stone- or metal-tipped. For closerange fighting, the ethnographic preference is almost invariably for surprise attack rather than individual combat or melee, and again wood, antler, and stone clubs would arguably be as effective for this purpose as early metal weapons. Or does the appearance of formalized weaponry only mark the emergence of élite leaders, with other adult males still participating in warfare, but continuing to use more mundane forms of weaponry—bows and arrows, wooden clubs, etc.? But even if restricted to an élite, there is little doubt that bronze weapons saw use in combat, given the edge damage they often exhibit (Bridgeford 1997; ­Harding 2007; Kristiansen 2002). In addition, experimental archaeology shows that objects such as Early Bronze Age halberds previously thought to be unwieldy and ineffective, actually function very well as offensive weapons (O’Flaherty 2007). There is also change through time to consider, with swords becoming more common in the Late Bronze Age, and so presumably more widely available, in turn affecting the nature and potential scale of conflict. An obvious means of taking the discussion forward is with a systematic analysis of trauma on Bronze Age human skeletal remains across Europe. Does the overall proportion of the population show higher, lower, or similar levels of trauma, which age/sex group is most affected, and what is the nature of the injuries (in particular, sharp or blunt force)? There is insufficient space here to undertake a thorough review of the published evidence, but some brief observations can be made. For Britain and Ireland, there is an immediate problem, in that the dominant funerary rite through much of the period was cremation, although inhumations are also known. Two Middle/Late Bronze Age sites that immediately stand out are Tormarton and Dorchester-on-Thames, with three adult males in the first instance, and one in the second, exhibiting unhealed spear injuries (Osgood 2005). A handful of other cases of adult males (where sex is identified) with spear injuries are known from elsewhere in the European Bronze Age (Osgood et al. 2000). This is not inconsistent with a scenario of male warriors wielding bronze weapons, though in this case the presumably more widely available (and easier to use) spears rather than swords. But there are many other examples that do not fit this pattern well.

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A survey of injuries on crania dredged from the River Thames during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries identified a number of examples of blunt force trauma, that, when AMS 14C dated, proved to belong to the Middle and Late Bronze Age (Figure 2.3) (Schulting and Bradley 2010). At Weltzin, in northern Germany, the remains of more than 50 individuals, mainly adult males, have been recovered in a wetland, with a number showing injuries, raising the possibility that this was the site of a battle (Jantzen et al. 2011). Yet, while preliminary dating places the remains in the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 1300 cal B.C.), the principal injuries so far identified are by flint arrowhead and blunt force trauma (though analysis is not yet complete). The excellent preservation through waterlogging allowed the recovery of a long-handled wooden mallet that provides a very good match for an unhealed cranial injury (Jantzen et al. 2008:Figures 7 and 8). In a similar vein, Aranda-Jiménez et al. (2009) have recently drawn attention to an apparent discrepancy between the high archaeological visibility of warfare in the Bronze Age of the southeast Iberian peninsula, in the form of hilltop fortifications and weaponry, and the absence of sharp force trauma on the skeletons of the period. While there does seem to be an increase in violence compared to the preceding Chalcolithic period, predominantly affecting males, the identified cranial injuries are all caused by blunt implements rather

figure 2.3 Middle Bronze Age adult (female?) cranium (1370–1120 cal BC) from Walthamstow Reservoir, London, showing massive unhealed blunt force trauma to the right frontoparietal (Natural History Museum, London, 1957.20.9.3).

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War Without Warriors? 29

than spears, axes, or swords, and all are healed (Jiménez-Brobeil et al. 2009), though the fragmentary state of much of the material must be taken into account here, as this would increase the difficulty of recognizing unhealed trauma. Moreover, this study, as well as that of the Thames material, concerned only crania. Sharp-edged and pointed metal weapons, whether daggers, spears, or swords, would arguably be more commonly used against the body than the head; clubs, conversely, would be more effectively used against the head rather than the body. Thus, these comparisons are problematic. Nevertheless, they do indicate the continued use of less elaborate, nonmetal weapons throughout the Bronze Age. Other examples make the point that not only adult males are affected. At the Late Neolithic Corded Ware site of Eulau in central Germany (ca. 2600 B.C.), four graves were found containing the remains of 13 men, women, and children, five of which exhibited peri-mortem injuries. The graves were apparently contemporary, and it has been argued that all these individuals were killed in a single event (Meyer et al. 2009), presenting a scenario already familiar from Talheim, more than two millennia earlier (with the difference being that the dead at Eulau were formally buried with care). This does not suggest warriors dying in battle, but rather raiding and surprise attack, targeting all members of the community. Possible “war graves” with large numbers of men, women, and children dating to the Late Neolithic/Chalcolithic have been identified at Roaix in southern France (Beyneix 2007; Sauzade 1983) and at San Juan Ante Portam Latinam in northern Spain (Vegas 2007); while violent trauma in the form of embedded stone arrowheads is found on a number of skeletons at both sites, there are questions over the contemporaneity of the deposits, and hence over their interpretation. This uncertainty does not apply to the Early Bronze Age (ca. 1700 cal B.C.) site of Wassenaar in the Netherlands, consisting of an unmarked mass grave not near any known contemporary settlement. The grave contained the carefully laid out bodies of six men, but also two women and four children. One projectile point was found in situ between an individual’s ribs, with unhealed cranial trauma to three individuals, and one possible decapitation (Louwe Kooijmans 1993). A mass grave at Sund, Norway, dating to ca. 1300 B.C., has been interpreted as the slaughter of some of 20–30 individuals, half of which were children, though actual injuries are limited to a small number of adult individuals in the fragmentary material available for analysis (Fylligen 2003). Again, this pattern would seem to have much in common with that seen in the Neolithic. While there may have been specialized, sword-wielding warriors at this time, they were not the only ones fighting, and dying.

Social substitution A useful concept that can be introduced—though not fully explored—here is Raymond Kelly’s (2000) notion of social substitution. In a wider sense, social substitution simply refers to the ability of an individual to “stand for” the larger group, be that the family, village, or tribe. This occurs when a certain threshold is crossed, and identity becomes more firmly embedded in the group. Warfare, then, exists when group identity is such that one individual can be made to substitute for another in situations when blood vengeance is demanded. Thus, in the case of revenge for a killing, rather than seeking the killer

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him- or herself, any member of the killer’s group is seen as an appropriate target, satisfying the requirements of revenge. Indeed, this may go some way toward explaining the occurrence of lethal cranial injuries on women and children in the Neolithic (Figure 2.4). There is also a strong element of mutual reinforcement here, since intergroup conflict promotes, or even necessitates, the taking of sides, which further encourages the use of material culture to demarcate those sides, in turn strengthening the creation and perpetuation of distinct identities. Those wearing certain clothes, carrying or using certain artifacts, are immediately identifiable as belonging to a particular group; such differences can be drawn upon to create the “other” as a legitimate target of violence. The notion of social substitution was developed in the context of understanding the origins of war (Kelly 2000), but it may perhaps be extended to shed light on the changing nature of conflict in later periods. To present the argument briefly, social substitution will fail when social inequality becomes institutionalized: one individual is no longer interchangeable with others in the group (though just when and where, and to what extent, social inequality becomes institutionalized remains a contentious issue in European prehistory) (Figure 2.5). If blood vengeance is sought, the death of a member of the social élite will require the death of someone from the offending party of equal standing for the debt to be

figure 2.4 Subadult cranium from the earlier Neolithic (ca 3700–3600 cal BC) ­chambered tomb of Belas Knap, Glos., England, showing massive unhealed blunt force trauma to the right frontal (Duckworth Laboratory, Cambridge, Eu.1.5.9).

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War Without Warriors? 31

Social substitution

warfare endemic; most/all adult males act as warriors as need arises

limited social substitution warfare endemic; specialised élite warrior status

presence of homicide; ~absence of warfare/warriors Band societies

Segmentary (’tribal’) societies

Chiefdoms

figure 2.5 Posited nature of relationship between social substitution, socio-political organization, and the nature of warriorhood.

paid. Conversely, the killing of a person of low status may be unlikely to engage the interests of the élite sufficiently to organize a revenge party. The kin of such an individual are unlikely to be able to undertake this task on their own, at least at the scale of engaging the entire group, or a substantial part of it. They may choose to undertake vengeance more privately, but this is more likely to be targeted against the specific offender or their immediate kin: this is, of course, the origin of the feud. Thus, social substitution may still be in effect, but is restricted in scope. Identifying the ramifications of this archaeologically will be a challenge, one that warrants further exploration: as always, the reality may be too complex to comply with the model. An intriguing possibility comes from the sites of the Early Bronze Age Nitra culture of Slovakia and Moravia, where there seems to be an association between skeletal trauma and what Hårde (2005:103) refers to as high-status hunter-warrior graves. Many of the injuries are again depressed cranial fractures caused by blunt implements, though this is less surprising for at least the early, copper-using phases of the culture, when clubs and stone battle-axes would still provide the most effective close-quarters weapons.

Conclusion Neither violence in general nor warfare specifically are marked by the appearance of specialized, formal weaponry in the European Bronze Age. Abundant and compelling archaeological evidence demonstrates that warfare was a feature of human societies long before this. The nature of small-scale societies—their small size, the paucity of specialized roles, and, perhaps most importantly, the generally high degree of autonomy and personal responsibility—is such that most men (and perhaps some women) were “warriors” as the need arose, in addition to all

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their other roles. This flexibility and lack of specialization extends to the weapons of this time, which are for the most part indistinguishable from tools used for other purposes. An interesting question is whether the emergence of formalized weaponry is accompanied by an increase or decrease in the actual prevalence of violence, or changes in the forms it takes. Intriguingly, studies from at least some parts of Europe suggest are that the two may be inversely correlated. Fortifications also need to be brought into the picture, as well as changing settlement patterns of dispersal and agglomeration, which can be related to the intensity and kinds of conflict being experienced by a society. Another important point that is clearly emerging is that many of the injuries on Bronze Age skeletons, or at least those on crania, were not caused by edged weapons, but rather by similar implements to those used in the Neolithic, probably clubs made of hardwoods. But further work is required, both on use-traces on the weapons themselves, and on the skeletons that bear the brunt of human violence.

Acknowledgments Many thanks to the organizers of the IEMA conference for hosting a most stimulating meeting. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Sixth World Archaeological Congress in Dublin, 2008. References Cited Albarella, Umberto, and Dale Serjeantson 2002 A Passion for Pork: Meat Consumption at the British Late Neolithic Site of Durrington Walls. In Consuming Passions and Patterns of Consumption, edited by Preston Miracle and Nicky Milner, pp. 33–49. McDonald Institute for Archaeology, Cambridge. Aranda-Jiménez, Gonzalo, Sandra Montón-Subías, and Silvia Jiménez-Brobeil 2009 ­Conflicting Evidence? Weapons and Skeletons in the Bronze Age of South-East Iberia. Antiquity ­ 83:1038–1051. Bennike, Pia 1985 Palaeopathology of Danish Skeletons. Akademisk Forlag, Copenhagen. Beyneix, Alain 2007 Réflexions sur les Débuts de la Guerre au Néolithique en Europe Occidentale. L'Anthropologie 111(1):79–95. Bishop, Charles A., and Victor P. Lytwyn 2007 “Barbarism and ardour of war from the tenderest years”: Cree-Inuit Warfare in the Hudson Bay Region. In North American Indigenous ­Warfare and Ritual Violence, edited by Richard J. Chacon and Rubén G. Mendoza. University of ­Arizona Press, Tucson. Bridgeford, Sue D. 1997 Mightier than the Pen? (An Edgewise Look at Irish Bronze Age Swords). In Material Harm: Archaeological Studies of War and Violence, edited by John Carman, pp. 95–115. Cruithne Press, Glasgow. Burch, Ernest S., Jr. 2007 Traditional Native Warfare in Western Alaska. In North American ­Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence, edited by Richard J. Chacon and Rubén G. Mendoza. U ­ niversity of Arizona Press, Tucson. Casini, S., R. De Marinis, and A. Pedrotti (editors) 1995. Statue-stele e Massi Incisi nell'Europa dell'Età del Rame. Notizie Archeologiche Bergomensi, Civico Museo Archeologico, Bergamo.

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Chapman, John 1999 The Origins of Warfare in the Prehistory of Central and Eastern Europe. In Ancient Warfare: Archaeological Perspectives, edited by John Carman and Anthony Harding, pp. 101–142. Sutton Publishing, Stroud. Dixon, Philip, Alex Bayliss, Frances Healy, Alasdair Whittle, and Timothy Darvill 2011 The Cotswolds. In Gathering Time: Dating the Early Neolithic Enclosures of Southern Britain and Ireland, edited by Alasdair Whittle, Frances Healy, and Alex Bayliss, pp. 434–475. Oxbow, Oxford. Elwin, Verrier 1969 The Nagas in the Nineteenth Century. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Ember, Melvin, and Carol R. Ember 1994 Cross-Cultural Studies of War and Peace: Recent Achievements and Future Possibilities. In Studying War: Anthropological Perspectives, edited by S. P. Reyna and R. E. Downs, pp. 185–208. Gordon and Breach, Reading. Ferguson, R. Brian 1997 Violence and War in Prehistory. In Troubled Times: Violence and Warfare in the Past, edited by Debra L. Martin and David W. Frayer, pp. 321–355. Gordon and Breach, Amsterdam. Freeman, Derek 1970 Report on the Iban. Athlone Press, London. Fyllingen, Hilde 2003 Society and Violence in the Early Bronze Age: An Analysis of Human ­Skeletons from Nord-Trøndelag, Norway. Norwegian Archaeological Review 36(1):27–43. Gardner, Robert, and Karl G. Heider 1974. Gardens of War. Penguin, Harmondsworth. Gat, Azar 1999 The Pattern of Fighting in Simple, Small-Scale, Prestate Societies. Journal of ­Anthropological Research 55:563–583. Golitko, Mark, and Lawrence H. Keeley 2007 Beating Ploughshares back into Swords: Warfare in the Linearbandkeramik. Antiquity 81:332–342. Grünberg, Judith M. 1996 Mesolithische Bestattungen in Europa: Ein Beitrag zur Vergleichenden ­Gräbderkunde. Unpublished PhD thesis, Department of Archaeology, University of Münster. Guilaine, Jean, and Jean Zammit 2001 Le Sentiér de la Guerre: Visages de la Violence Préhistorique. Éditions du Seuil, Paris. Hårde, Andreas 2005 The Emergence of Warfare in the Early Bronze Age: The Nitra group in ­Slovakia and Moravia, 2200–1800 BC. In Warfare, Violence and Slavery in Prehistory, edited by Mike Parker Pearson and I. J. N. Thorpe, pp. 87–105. BAR International Series 1374. Archaeopress, Oxford. Harding, Anthony 1999 Warfare: A Defining Characteristic of Bronze Age Europe? In Ancient ­Warfare: Archaeological Perspectives, edited by John Carman and Anthony Harding, pp. 157 173. Sutton Publishing, Stroud. Harding, Anthony 2007 Warriors and Weapons in Bronze Age Europe. Archaeolingua, Budapest. Heider, Karl G. 1970 The Dugum Dani: A Papuan Culture in the Highlands of West New Guinea. Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research 49, New York. Heyd, Volker 2004 Soziale Organisation im 3. Jahrtausend c. Chr. entlang der oberen Donau: der Fall Schnurkeramik und Glockenbecher. Das Alterum 49:183–215. Jantzen, Christine, Detlef Jantzen, and Thomas Terberger 2008 Der Fundplatz Weltzin, Lkr. Demmin—ein Zeugnis bronzezeitlicher Konflikte? In Traumatologische und Pathologische ­ Veränderungen an Prähistorischen und Historischen Skelettresten—Diagnose, Ursachen und ­Kontext, edited by J. Piek and T. Terberger. Marie Verlag, Archäologie und Geschichte im Ostseeraum 3, Rahden.

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Jantzen, Detlef, Ute Brinker, Jörg Orschiedt, Jan Heinemeier, Jürgen Piek, Karlheinz Hauenstein, Joachim Kruger, Gundula Lidke, Harald Lübke, Reinhard Lampe, Sebastian Lorenz, Manuela Schult Thomas Terberger 2011 A Bronze Age battlefield? Weapons and trauma in the Tollense Valley, north-eastern Germany. Antiquity 85(328):417–433. Jiménez-Brobeil, S. A., Ph. du Souich, and I. Al Oumaoui 2009 Possible Relationship of Cranial Traumatic Injuries with Violence in the South-east Iberian Peninsula from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age American Journal of Physical Anthropology 140:465–75. Judd, Margaret A. 2006 Jebel Sahaba revisited. In Archaeology of Early Northeastern Africa, edited by Karla Kroeper, Marek Chlodnicki and Michal Kobusiewicz, pp. 153–166. Poznan´ ­A rchaeological Museum, Poznan´ . Keeley, Lawrence H. 1996 War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Keeley, Lawrence H., and Daniel Cahen 1989 Early Neolithic Forts and Villages in NE Belgium: A Preliminary Report. Journal of Field Archaeology 16:157–176. Kelly, Raymond C. 2000 Warless Societies and the Origins of War. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. Kristiansen, Kristian 2002 The Tale of the Sword—Swords and Swordfighters in Bronze Age Europe. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 21:319–332. Lambert, Patricia M. 1997 Patterns of Violence in Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherer Societies of coastal Southern California. In Troubled Times: Violence and Warfare in the Past, edited by Debra L. Martin and David W. Frayer, pp. 77–109. Gordon and Breach, Amsterdam. Louwe Kooijmans, Leendert P. 1993 An Early-Middle Bronze Age Multiple Burial at Wassenaar, the Netherlands. Analecta Præhistorica Leidensia 26:1–20. Maschner, Herbert D. G., and Katherine L. Reedy-Maschner 1998 Raid, Retreat, Defend (Repeat): The Archaeology and Ethnohistory of Warfare on the North Pacific Rim. Journal of ­Anthropological Archaeology 17(1):19–51. Mercer, Roger J. 1981 Excavations at Carn Brea, Illogan, Cornwall, 1970–1973: A Neolithic F ­ ortified Complex of the Third Millennium BC. Cornish Archaeology 20. Mercer, Roger J. 1999 The Origins of Warfare in the British Isles. In Ancient Warfare: Archaeological Perspectives, edited by John Carman and Anthony Harding, pp. 143–156. Sutton Publishing, Stroud. Mercer, Roger J. 2007 By Other Means? The Development of Warfare in the British Isles 3000– 500 BC. In War and Sacrifice, edited by Tony Pollard and Iain Banks, pp. 119–151. Brill, Leiden. Meyer, Christian, Wolfgang Haak, Robert A. Ganslmeier, Guido Brandt, Harald Meller, and Kurt W. Alt 2009 The Eulau Eulogy: Bioarchaeological Interpretation of Lethal Violence in Corded Ware Multiple Burials from Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 28(4):412–423. Molloy, Barry 2007 Martial Arts and Materiality: A Combat Archaeology Perspective on Aegean Swords of the Fifteenth and Fourteenth Centuries BC. World Archaeology 40(1):116–34. Nash, George 2000 The Power and Violence of the Archers: All Is not Well down in Ambridge. Archaeological Review from Cambridge 17:81–98.

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O’Flaherty, Ronan 2007 A weapon of choice—Experiments with a Replica Irish Early Bronze Age Halberd. Antiquity 81:423–434. Oosterbeek, Luiz 1997 War in the Chalcolithic? The Meaning of Western Mediterranean ­Chalcolithic Hillforts. In Material Harm: Archaeological Studies of War and Violence, edited by John C ­ arman, pp. 116–132. Cruithne Press, Glasgow. Orschiedt, Jörg 1998 Ergebnisse einer neuen Untersuchung der Spätmesolithischen ­Kopfbestattungen aus Süddeutschland. Urgeschichtliche Materialhefte 12:147–160. Osgood, Richard 2005 The Dead of Tormarton—Middle Bronze Age Combat Victims? In W ­ arfare, Violence and Slavery in Prehistory, edited by Mike Parker Pearson and I. J. N. Thorpe, pp. 139–144. BAR International Series 1374. Archaeopress, Oxford. Osgood, Richard, Sarah Monks, and Judith Toms 2000 Bronze Age Warfare. Sutton, Stroud. Otterbein, Keith F. 1999 A History of Research on Warfare in Anthropology. American ­Anthropologist 101:794–805. Otterbein, Keith F. 2000 Killing of Captured Enemies: A Cross-Cultural Study. Current Anthropology 41:439–443. Patterson, Nerys 1994 Cattle Lords and Clansmen. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana. Robb, John 1997 Violence and Gender in Italy. In Troubled Times: Violence and Warfare in the Past, edited by Debra L. Martin and David W. Frayer, pp. 111–144. Gordon and Breach, ­Amsterdam. Roksandic, Mirjana 2006 Warfare in Segmented, Small-scale Archaeological Groups: An H ­ istorical Approach to Archaeological Data from the Iron Gates Gorge Mesolithic. Documenta ­Prehistorica 32:574–591. Sauzade, Gérard 1983 Les Sépultures du Vaucluse de Néolithique à l'Âge du Bronze. Editions du ­Laboratoire de Paléontologie Humaine et de Préhistoire, Memoire 6, Paris. Schröder, Ingo W., and Bettina E. Schmidt 2001 Introduction: Violent Imaginaries and Violent Practices. In Anthropology of Violence and Conflict, edited by Bettina E. Schmidt and Ingo W. Schröder. Routledge, London. Schulting, Rick J. 2006 Skeletal Evidence and Contexts of Violence in the European Mesolithic and Neolithic. In The Social Archaeology of Funerary Remains, edited by Rebecca Gowland and Christopher Knüsel. Oxbow, Oxford. Schulting, Rick J. 2008 Foodways and Social Ecologies from the Early Mesolithic to the Early Bronze Age. In Prehistoric Britain, edited by Joshua Pollard. Blackwell, London. Schulting, Rick J., and Richard Bradley 2010 Trauma from the Thames: New Dates on Human Cranial Remains. Paper presented at the Prehistoric Society conference “The Bronze Age of the Thames Valley: New Research, New Thoughts, New Agendas.” London, 6 Feb 2010. Schulting, Rick J., and Michael Wysocki 2005 “In this chambered tumulus were found cleft skulls…”: An Assessment of the Evidence for Cranial Trauma in the British Neolithic. P ­ roceedings of the Prehistoric Society 71:107–138. Sherratt, Andrew 1987 Cups That Cheered: The Introduction of Alcohol to Prehistoric Europe. In Bell Beakers of the Western Mediterranean, edited by W. Waldren and R. Kennard, pp. 81–114. BAR International Series 331, Oxford.

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Smith, Martin J., Megan B. Brickley, and Stephanie L. Leach 2007 Experimental Evidence for Lithic Projectile Injuries: Improving Recognition of an Under-Recognised Phenomenon. Journal of Archaeological Science 34:540–553. Standen, Vivien G., and Bernardo T. Arriaza 2000 Trauma in the Preceramic Coastal Populations of Northern Chile: Violence or Occupational Hazards? American Journal of Physical Anthropology 112:239–249. Strathern, Andrew 1971 The Rope of Moka. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Teschler-Nicola, Maria, Friederike Gerold, Fabian Kanz, Karin Lindenbauer, and Michaela ­Spannagl 1996 Anthropologische Spurensicherung: Die Traumatischen und Postmortalen ­Veränderungen an den Linearbandkeramischen Skelettresten von Asparn/Schletz. Archäologie Österreich 7(1):4–12. Treherne, Paul 1995 The Warrior’s Beauty: The Masculine Body and Self-Identity in Bronze-Age Europe. Journal of European Archaeology 3:105–144. Vander Linden, Marc 2006 For Whom the Bell Tolls: Social Hierarchy vs. Social Integration in the Bell Beaker Culture of Southern France (Third Millennium BC). Cambridge Archaeological Journal 16(3):317–332. Vandkilde, Helle 2006 Warriors and Warrior Institutions in Copper Age Europe. In Warfare and Society: Archaeological and Social Anthropological Perspectives, edited by Ton Otto, Henrik Thrane, and Helle Vandkilde, pp. 393–422. Aarhus University Press, Aarhus. Vandkilde, Helle 2007 Culture and Change in Central European Prehistory: 6th to 1st Millennium BC. Aarhus University Press, Aarhus. Vayda, Andrew P. 1961 Expansion and Warfare among Swidden Agriculturalists. American ­Anthropologist 63:346–358. Vegas, Jose Ignacio (editor) 2007 San Juan Ante Portam Latinam. Una Inhumacion Colectiva ­Prehistorica en al Valle Medio del Ebro. Fundacion Jose Miguel de Barandiaran, Atuan. Vencl, Slavomil L. 1984 War and Warfare in Archaeology. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 3:116–132. Wahl, Joachim, and H. König 1987 Anthropologisch-Traumologische Untersuchung der Menschlichen Skelettreste aus dem Bandkeramischen Massengrab bei Talheim, Kreis ­ ­Heilbronn. Fundberichte aus Baden-Württemberg 12:65–193. Walker, Phillip L. 1989. Cranial Injuries as Evidence of Violence in Prehistoric Southern California. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 80:313–323. Wendorf, Fred 1968 Site 117: A Nubian Final Paleolithic Graveyard near Jebel Sahaba, Sudan. In The Prehistory of Nubia, edited by F. Wendorf. Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas. Whittle, Alasdair, Alex Bayliss, and Michael Wysocki 2007 Once in a Lifetime: The Date of the Wayland’s Smithy Long Barrow. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 17:103–121.

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Chapter Three

Warfare in Northern European Bronze Age Societies

Twentieth-Century Presentations and Recent Archaeological Research Inquiries Helle Vandkilde Abstract  This paper first reviews the archaeological discourse on prehistoric warfare in Europe and particularly Scandinavia. Two opposing and bloodless tales of the prehistoric Other have long been prevalent—either noble warriors in contradictionfilled and changing societies or peaceful peasants in harmonious and static societies. It was only after 1995 that warfare became an established field of research; the many contemporary wars, and the media coverage, probably playing a decisive role. It is suggested that both the ideal and real sides of war and warriors in prehistory should be studied, and that interpretative stereotypes can be avoided by using theories that view human agents as interacting both routinely and strategically in the world. The paper proceeds to examine selected Bronze Age data from such a perspective: weaponry in itself, weapon technology, weaponry in burials and in votive deposits, fortifications, skeletal trauma, and iconographic representations. It is tentatively concluded that war was variably present in the Bronze Age. Even if war was often present, it was not endemic in the Hobbesian sense.

Introduction

W

hat was the nature, scale and significance of warfare in European pre-state societies of the Bronze Age? In order to provide some possible answers to this broad question this article employs two main strategies. First, it will explore how and why warfare and warriors have been omitted, or incorporated, in archaeological discourses of the early metal ages in temperate Europe. There are historical and ideological reasons for the prevailing neglect of warfare prior to ca. 1995 and for the recent “discovery” of violent aspects of human

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prehistoric existence and culture. This meta-archaeological analysis elaborates on previous publications (Vandkilde 2003, 2006a) and draws on examples from Scandinavian research.1 Second, archaeological sources from the period ca. 2500–700 B.C. will be consulted, in a noncomprehensive manner, in an attempt to reveal the actual position and significance of warfare and warriorhood in temperate Europe before the emergence of state societies. The archaeological analysis will then, based on the discourse analysis of war and warriors in the twentieth century and using a theoretically informed approach, explore the existing knowledge base, as this has considerable potential in this area of study.

Analysis of the “Archaeology of War” Discourse Two opposing tales have long characterized archaeology—one of them regarding prehistory as being populated with potentially violent warriors who repeatedly changed society, and the other presenting prehistory as being populated with peaceful peasants in harmonious and static societies. Remarkably, war and warfare did not become an established area of study until the last decade or so (from ca. 1995), and it must be assumed that recent wars played a decisive role along with the increasing recognition among professionals that the discipline can provide new insights on a number of issues that concern us today. The factual horrors of war and political violence are now analyzed in a growing body of social anthropological studies (e.g., Löfving 2006; Nordström 1997), whereas it might be claimed that archaeological studies still do not portray prehistoric war realistically enough, probably because the discourse is still influenced by persuasive myths of the Other. A Tale of Warriors without War This tale visualizes societies of the European Stone Age and the Bronze Age as antagonistic entities under radical change. Shifts in material culture are explained with reference to migration or revolution, often with ferocious warriors as front figures. Gordon Childe was a prominent proponent of this standpoint in a long series of articles and books written during the period 1926–1957, including the groundbreaking concepts of the Neolithic Revolution and the Urban Revolution (e.g., Childe 1936/1951). The same attitude was expressed by his Danish contemporaries, notably P.V. Glob who, in an influential study from 1945, portrayed an invading Corded Ware people, the Single Grave folk, as axe-wielding warrior nomads on horseback. Glob’s colleague Johannes Brøndsted presented a similar picture in his great narrative of prehistoric Denmark published prior to and after World War II (Brøndsted 1957–1958). Here, the Nordic Bronze Age is depicted as a class society with an aristocratic upper class and an oppressed peasant class. The same trend recurred in structural Marxist archaeology of the 1970s and 1980s (e.g. Kristian Kristiansen 1984a and Michael Rowlands 1980), and in the overlapping and ensuing postmodern archaeology. Here, power, dominance, and conflict were firmly written into prehistory in studies by, for instance, Christopher Tilley (e.g., 1984) and Charlotte Damm (e.g., 1993). Considering the emphasis placed upon such phenomena as warriors, underlying social tensions, immigration, and revolution, it is surprising how little warfare and violence

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formed part of the interpretations of archaeological data patterns. In the few studies actually approaching the topic of warfare (Hedeager and Kristiansen 1985; Nordbladh 1989), this happened in a rationalizing manner underlining the social functions of war and introducing the idea of ritual warfare; a bloodless theatrical kind of warfare. This absent realism, I suggest, can be traced to contemporary history shaping scholars’ preconceptions of the past. The group of researchers behind the warrior tale can be loosely attached to twentiethcentury left-wing European politics. The political left wing was deeply influenced by pacifist movements, which might explain the absence of violence in the dissemination of the past. An additional reason could have been idealistic attitudes to rebellion and social change with a tendency to suppress the violent aspects. A Tale of Peaceful Peasants The other tale had its breakthrough during and especially after World War II. Societies of the Stone Age and the Bronze Age in temperate Europe were presented as harmonious, egalitarian, and peaceful entities with a static and tradition-bound character and thus without latent conflicts. The populations are typically described as skillful hunters, enterprising traders, and especially as hard-working peasants. The agrarian, technological, and economic foundations of prehistoric society were emphasized, not least in the British archaeologist Grahame Clark’s influential studies (e.g., Clark 1952). Through the Cambridge Chair, Clark’s academic strategy was to resist the hitherto predominant Childean interpretations, and the emphasis therefore shifted toward societal adaptations to nature and toward cultural function rather than cultural change. This trend recurs among Scandinavian archaeologists, notably C. J. Becker (e.g., 1954), H. C. Broholm (e.g., 1943–1944), Mats P. Malmer (e.g., 1962, 1989), and Søren H. Andersen (e.g., 1972). Stone and Bronze Age people were, according to these authors, occupied with day-to-day work of the forest, the field, or the marketplace; peaceful and laborious societies in full harmony with each other and with nature. Trauma on skeletons is assessed as nondeadly and occasional. Weaponry is categorized as working tools or as status symbols. Interestingly, several of this generation of Danish archaeologists were inspired by contemporary cultural anthropology that typically mediated the contemporary “savage” as an utterly peaceful being, preoccupied with his daily doings. In the 1960s and 1970s, New Archaeology renewed the discipline’s scientific practices, among other things, inspired by the Neo-Evolutionism of contemporary anthropology. Modernization, however, happened without warfare and warriors, and the focus continued to be upon the economic foundations of society. The durative trends in history were highlighted, in which societies developed from hunter-gatherers through tribes to chiefdoms, which were argued to have resulted from ecological crises and demographic pressures. In Scandinavia, Jørgen Jensen’s books (e.g., 1982) exemplify such a combined position of NeoEvolutionism and New Archaeology. Even if many tribal societies known from ethnography are notoriously warlike, this insight did not impact upon the archaeological interpretations. Weapons were considered mere symbols of social rank with key functions in the exchange of gifts between high-ranking persons.

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Prehistoric societies were thus disseminated as peaceful, socially balanced, and prosperous, undergoing imperceptible evolutionary change. This understanding of prehistory echoes the prevailing ideal of post–World War II Western societies, which were strategically aiming at technological development, peace, and wealth; an optimistic attitude to life that was surely a reaction to preceding years of war, deprivation, and genocide.

Two Stereotypes of the Other The aforementioned presentations of the prehistoric past rely on negations and idealized accounts of contemporary Western societies. Their origin can, I will suggest, be traced to two opposed myths of the primitive Other, both supposedly unaffected by Civilization, and henceforth reproduced in the wake of colonialist endeavors and through the exotic mediations of early travelers and explorers. These myths, at the very least, go back to the seventeenth century. The bellicose and aggressive savage relates to Hobbes’s visions in Leviathan (1651/1958) featuring human beginnings as chaotic and brutal, and later transforms into Marx’s antagonistic and latently violent society. By contrast, the noble and peaceful savage in Rousseau’s romantic writings portraying humans as peaceful by nature, arguably reemerges much later in Weber’s consensus-society. These stereotypes seem to have lived almost their own life being confirmed and reconfirmed as each other’s opposites over the years, through material, written, and spoken discourse. The archaeological warrior tale with its emphasis on disharmony, immigration, and revolution, notably allowing much less brutality than its Hobbesian prototype, took form at the onset of the twentieth century. The peasant tale with its focus on harmony, tradition, and gradual change became more prominent after World War II, but gradually lost ground after ca. 1975 with the reemergence of Marxist archaeology and the advent of postmodern debates. Neither of the two tales, however, really agrees with the archaeological source situation, as we shall see, and it may be claimed that empirical data have mostly been ignored, moderated, or rationalized. Warfare is minimized in the warrior tale, while it is utterly ignored in the peasant tale. In effect, prehistory becomes pacified and populated with idealized figures of male identity, especially warriors and peasants, whereas other identities are widely absent. A Tale of War Chiefs, and More Warfare In the last couple of decennia the warrior tale has grown to become predominant, and additions have occurred. The social categories of warrior elites, warrior societies, and warrior aristocracy are increasingly being employed in representations of Europe’s prehistory. The Bronze Age is often presented from the perspective of such an elitist and heroic stereotype independently of period and place in Europe, and a modern project of Europeanization is thereby hinted at. In its core, this tale is a continuation of the warrior tale, which most recently has been feminized. A significant change compared to previous research is that warfare is now increasingly attributed active roles in prehistoric society. The keen interest in warrior elites coincides with

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the first appearance of specific archaeological studies of war and violence in prehistory. From around 1995 there has been a veritable eruption in the number of publications about warfare in the past. This may well connect to the many ethnic wars and genocides of the 1990s in dysfunctional nation states; not least the massive media coverage of atrocities had made it difficult to continue neglecting or idealizing archaeological data about violence in the past. Then, at the threshold to the twenty-first century war finally entered the archaeological agenda, and henceforth interpretations compare better with the archaeological sources, as we shall see. Although this IEMA conference certainly showed improvements, the horrors of war—as universally experienced by combatants, civilians, and victims (Kolind 2006; Scarry 1988)—have still not been written firmly into the prehistory of Europe. This calls to mind the rationalizations of war that have characterized science in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From Clausewitz (1832) to Otterbein (2000) and Keeley (1996)—icons of warfare studies in the disciplines of philosophy, anthropology, and archaeology—war has systematically been reduced to facts, rules, procedures, functions, causes, and effects in a modern political project (Pick 1993); the outcome and purpose of which, one might claim, have been a legitimization of the slaughter and human suffering on and outside the battlefield. Analytical distance is necessary in all scientific practice. The question should nevertheless be tentatively posed if this rational approach underlying the recently increasing body of archaeological war studies should, or could, be supplemented by an intuitive empathy toward those who suffered from violence in the past.

Theorizing Warfare and Warriorhood Throughout most of the history of archaeology, war has been ignored as relevant for our understanding of prehistoric societies, but the many recent studies of prehistoric war (e.g., Hårde 2006; Harding 2007; Harrison 2004; Jockenhövel 2004–2005; Keeley 1996; ­LeBlanc 2003; Peter-Röcher 2007; Schulting 2006; Weinberger 2008) now turn the tide, hence tending through outspoken argumentation, or through the sheer focus upon warfare, to pinpoint prehistory as an innately violent place. The body of data on war-related violence has grown noticeably, as the Bronze Age examples provided below amply testify. Does this, however, mean that the Hobbesian stance of bellum omnium contra omnes (Hobbes 1651/1958) has been right all along? The availability of a rich dataset is not the only prerequisite of “striving to see the past as it was” (Trigger 1989:411); to reflect theoretically on warfare and its agents is equally important. Ethnographical cases, though excellent to think with, should not overrule the archaeological sources as happened with the so-called tribal zone theory (Ferguson and Whitehead 1992). Stereotypic understandings of the past, such as those discussed above, can possibly best be counteracted through the use of those theories that commence from the basic view that human agents interact both routinely and strategically in the world. Hence, warfare can be defined as collective, violent social interaction, which is built upon a cultural logic and waged against other groups. Historically, war has been waged predominantly by men, but women may often be seen to orally and effectively defend the family’s and society’s honor. They may contribute by rousing to war and by assisting in the actions of war.

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Actions of war vary from raiding to large-scale military actions; its precise form and content depending on the specific societal setting. Categorization of warfare as sport or ritual practice sometimes occurs when it is supposed that societies without centralized political power are mostly peaceful as opposed to more complex societal developments. The earlier Bronze Age is, for example, often described in terms of person-to-person combat—a prestigious and theatrical kind of warfare—opposed to the later Bronze Age with arguably a much sharper military profile (Harding 1999, 2007; Osgood 1998). While we may accept that war can be sometimes ritualized and sport-like, such “ritual war” will merely be one facet of a broader warlike reality that also implies violence and death. Conversely, war in itself often relates to various rituals carried out before, during, and after interactions of violence. Quite possibly, sacrificial depositions in watery places of weapons and of people in prehistory can be regarded as part of a series of actions that includes war. If war is always synonymous with (varying degrees of ) deadliness and human suffering, the question may arise, How precisely does warfare in non-state societies differ from warfare in state societies? We tend to put great emphasis on distinguishing between state and stateless societies, but with regard to war and its relative frequency and social organization, the difference is not necessarily very great (Vandkilde 2006c). In state societies the military sector is always a major source of social power that can be readily employed to back up the state apparatus. In stateless societies—our main concern here—power (leadership) and warfare may occur quite separate from each other, or they may go hand in hand. Stateless warfare in a cross-cultural perspective can deliver many examples of both these scenarios. Since war inspires identification, warriorhood can be considered an adjacent social identity; a double being and boundary crosser engaging in violent encounters with other groups while also holding representational roles in rituals and everyday sociality. These real and ideal sides are very much motivated by cultural myths of men and war. Cross-culturally, warriors do not necessarily create organizations, but when they do, they organize in a limited number of ways. This insight can be used to further theorize warriorhood, with particular relevance for prehistory. Warrior clubs may have several social objectives, a primary one being of military character, and their members are usually of male gender. Such warrior institutions occur in three varieties (Vandkilde 2006b) based upon whether access to them is regulated through the criterion of age, of status/prestige, or of social rank. All three categories contain elements of Gefolgschaft, defined as reciprocal relations between a war leader and the group of warrior-followers. This relationship of mutual dependence in a band is defined by economics, in addition to a number of ethical, social, and moral rules uniting the warriors. Gender is a relevant element to study, since warriorhood like any other identity is relational as well as changeable. The border between soldier and warrior is hard to define, but the latter of these is characterized by a more individualistic mode of organization and belief. Warrior bands can live their life on the periphery of society, or alternatively can place themselves at the very center of power and authority (Steuer 2006; Vandkilde 2006b). Material culture mediates, translates, and transforms distinctions in society: age, ­gender, social status, profession, and so forth. Warriorhood combines such distinctions in various culture-specific ways. Objects, and indeed bodily appearances, are intricately used in

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strategies of identification among these warrior identities as they exist in many prehistoric, historical, and ethnographic contexts (Otto et al. 2006). Weapons, particular dresses, and bodily postures can materialize and manipulate the image of the warrior as identity and ideal within the warrior group, between warrior groups, and in respect to the outside world, but at the same time have an effect on the individual warrior by stimulating in turn selfunderstanding and personhood (Vandkilde 2006b). In addition, advances in warfare and weapon technologies can escalate conflicts and perhaps (e.g., through horses and swords) enable societal change. Weaponry makes warfare and warriors, in a manner of speaking. Weapons, just like the warrior, have several potential uses that are violent and social in character. They are implements of war while also having potential applications in the greater domain of identification, prestige enhancement, and rituals. This firm material link makes it realistic to study warfare and warriors from archaeological sources. Interpretations must take into consideration that function is widely independent of material form and potentially changeable within the broad range of being an active weapon and an object with other or additional uses. While in all likelihood produced to serve warlike purposes, a sword, for instance, can become a token of social position and conclude its life cycle as an heirloom. Material culture can nevertheless be summarized as a substantial ingredient in our understanding of prehistoric war and warriors; weapons in particular take key roles in both the real and the ideal sides of bellicose interaction and identification.

Materialities of Warfare and Warriors in the Bronze Age Selected archaeological data from the European Bronze Age, in particular southern Scandinavia in the period 2000–500 B.C., are examined below from an interpretive perspective concentrating on the following contextual groupings: the weaponry in itself, weaponry in burials and votive deposits, weapon combinations and technology, fortifications, skeletal trauma, and iconographic presentations. The intention is more broadly to clarify the significance of war and associated identities in the Bronze Age of temperate Europe. Weaponry as Itself Weaponry may be divided, somewhat arbitrarily, into implements with a warlike potential and genuine weapons made for offensive and/or defensive purposes (e.g., Chapman 1999). Bows and arrows, points, axe blades, knives, daggers, etc. of organic or nonorganic materials, belong to the first category whereas the second category comprises mainly swords, spearheads, shields, and body armor, but also mace heads and battle-axes. The typology roughly suggests that most weapons have potential uses outside warfare, notably hunting. Bone assemblages from Final Neolithic and Bronze Age settlements normally show little inclusion of wild animals, and it can thus be presumed that hunting in these periods, and most certainly in the Bronze Age, was more a matter of prestige than economic necessity for at least the privileged part of the population (Arnold 2010). The boundary between prestigehunter and warrior can be blurred, as famously illustrated by the lion-hunt dagger from

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Shaft Grave IV at Mycenae. Dating to ca. 1600–1500 B.C., it shows warfare against the lion. This is likely a metaphor for bravery in combat and for the princely warrior chieftain in early Mycenaean society. In the thirteenth century B.C. this symbol was appropriated by the royal house of Mycenae as their “coat of arms,” visualized so vividly by the Lion Gate to the citadel. North of the Alps, in the Final Neolithic (Copper Age) and particularly in the Bronze Age, the group of genuine weapons grew markedly in numbers and in technical and ornamental elaboration. This seems tied to the general inventiveness of the period, but almost certainly also to the formation of institutions of war and new ideologies to support them. Although the presence of warrior clubs is rather strongly indicated from around 2800 B.C. (Vandkilde 2006b), their more precise position, central or marginal, in the societal meshwork is unknown, but could have varied enormously in the period 3000–500 B.C. From the Bronze Age of temperate Europe numerous weapons exist; the sheer quantity being ample testimony to warfare as an option that could be acted upon, and indeed to the presence of warriorhood as an identity (cf. Treherne 1995) feeding from bellicose interaction. Macro- and microwear analyses of swords confirm that many have indeed been put to use (e.g., Kristiansen 1984b, Bridgford 1997; Kristiansen 2002). Likewise, spiraldecorated and finely shaped weapon-palstaves, often accompanying the sword in Danish burials of privileged males 1500–1300 B.C., show a use pattern similar to that found on swords. These wear patterns and damages are clearly different from those occurring on mass-produced coarse work-palstaves, which like many flanged axes appear to have been used for woodwork (cf. Adam 2011; Aner and Kersten 1973ff; Kienlin and Ottaway 1998). It is often maintained that some of the most spectacular weaponry: shields, helmets, giant axes, and body armor—for reasons of construction—cannot have been very suitable for warfare. Such weapons may have had ritual functions in funerary games, religious performances and/or were parade armor that should impress and scare. This may be supported by the pictorial slabs from the Kivik tomb, rock-carving scenes, and Patroklos’s funeral in Homer’s Iliad. By contrast, a substantial series of other weapons exists that were surely meant to wound and kill other human beings: spears and arrows definitely belong here, as do the swords. Especially the swords are central to our understanding of the Bronze Age as a phenomenon and era. The exquisite and highly specialized craftsmanship of many of these weapons ­further supports the suggestion of organized warriorhood. It would also support the suggestion that such warrior groups in Scandinavia and elsewhere in Bronze Age Europe were recruited and organized internally according to hierarchical principles, and thus not unlike the ­system that can be deduced from the Iliad, from Tacitus’s Germania, and from a large number of ethnographically studied cases (cf. also Schweizer 1990; Vandkilde 2006b, 2006d). A material hierarchy of weapons arguably existed, which was differentially constituted in different periods; in the later Bronze Age likely with metal-hilted swords and body armor in the top part, followed by organic-hilted swords, axes, spearheads, and archery equipment lower down, and wooden clubs and similar items in the bottom part. Such hierarchies of weaponry may be suggested to faintly reflect social divisions within the ­warrior institutions.

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Weapons can be highly individualized objects—swords usually are—and thus invested with personalized names and meanings while simultaneously mediating in variable measure gender, status, rank, kinship, ethnicity, profession, etc. Weapons may have whole biographies and stories attached to them, which could have been invoked on special occasions. The famed boar’s tusk helmet that Odysseus puts on for a nightly spying expedition is a case in point (cf. Vandkilde 2006d), which could very well generally apply when looking at the finest weapons from the Bronze Age. Such particular weapons are perhaps likely to be inalienable possessions kept in the family as tokens of memory and inheritance or ritually exchanged with the gods in sacred places or with very particular ancestors in monumental tombs. The potential multifunctionality of material culture thus implies that weapons cannot be reduced merely to being war implements, as also suggested by contextual evidence. In later European prehistory the cultural biographies of weapons typically ended with a ritual deposition either in burials or in votive offerings. Such depositions may comprise one item or a combination of several items depending on cultural and social factors. The archaeologist thus obtains intimate knowledge mostly of the concluding activities, the ritual death of things, which may have had several very active lives prior to the final deposition. These final destinations of weaponry, however, may still be able to deliver information about the living society (Hansen 2009, 2010). Weaponry in Burials Numerous graves with weapons are known, but their direct or indirect relationship with warriorhood is still not well studied. From the Final Neolithic—the Corded Ware and Bell Beaker periods—good cases can be made for warrior identities and institutions, although allowing for cultural variations (Vandkilde 2006b). From the Bronze Age one can easily identify conspicuous individual graves with rich weaponry attached to mature males, such as at Gemeinlebarn F in Austria from the seventeenth century B.C. (Neugebauer 1991: grave 7) or at Hagenau and Asenkofen in Alsace and Bavaria from the thirteenth century B.C. (Demakopoulou et al. 1998; Schauer 1971). Similar weapon graves occur all over Europe throughout the Bronze Age although not equally frequently, but it seems clear— and still allowing for cultural variations across time and space—that the dead warrior was commemorated in the Bronze Age by kin and community in the same way that warriors and soldiers have been celebrated and remembered throughout history and in our own time. Such presentations are always strongly ideologically colored, even persuasive, especially contrasted with the knowledge that the warrior is an identity also maintained by violence. Grooming items such as razors, combs, awls, and tweezers, in addition to ornaments for dress and body, very often accompany elaborate weaponry in so-called warrior burials (Treherne 1995), hence tallying with a cross-cultural inclination of warriors to be almost obsessed with their personal appearance. Clear-cut visual presentations of warrior identities are normally rooted in myths and narratives of war and its heroes, but are also underpinned by social strategies of distancing “us” from “them.” As argued above, based on weapons alone, warriors of the Bronze Age were ­organized in warrior institutions consisting of members recruited on the basis of rank, age, and ­gender.

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This may seem in general harmony with the funerary evidence, which is, however, also a very complex data source. Weapons and dress accessories in burials may be a specific metonymic statement of the roles played by the dead individual in life. Swords seem in the Bronze Age very rarely associated with child or female interments, and sword-burials would then be generally suggestive of male warriorhood. However, weapons and dress accessories may additionally be used to make more general metaphoric statements, and thus have a less direct bearing on the lived identities of the deceased. If a small, exclusive group of mature males are interred with rich weaponry, this is likely to reflect symbolic warriorhood in the sense of an earlier warrior identity, heroic status or ambition, political authority or high social rank; all of it possibly in combination. Likewise, weapons accompanying small male children and young adolescents, such as those found in some Corded Ware communities (Vandkilde 2006b), are likely to be metaphors originating in warrior values rather than signs of active warriorhood. The newly discovered inhumation cemetery at Neckarsulm in Baden-Württemberg dating to the earliest Urnfield period, ca. 1300 B.C. (Br. D) is very interesting in this respect due to its unequivocal association with warriorhood per se. The majority of the 51 bodies turned out to be adult males of excellent health and physique, most of them with standard equipment of fine pottery and body accessories, however, surpassed materially by three sword-graves situated close together at the eastern margin of the cemetery. Many burials contained several interments of males who apparently died on the same occasion (Neth 2001). It is fairly clear from this case that the cemetery was for warriors, that is, that the buried males were active warriors who died and were buried companion-wise, and, finally, that the warrior institution(s) had an internal ranking defined by those with swords and those without swords. In future studies based on burial practices, warriorhood in the Bronze Age should preferably be analyzed as a relational and changeable social identity, incorporating the fact that objects can be deposited in burials for a variety of overlapping reasons. These reasons are dependent on culture and society, such as emotion, social ambition, social rivalry and social identity, cultural values and norms, and religion; a series of parameters not necessarily related to warfare.

Weaponry in Votive Deposits A large number of weapons are known from sacrificial deposits all over northern and central Europe, and many of them have been retrieved from wetlands. This specific ritual practice has been explained with reference to several overall purposes: rites of passage, commemorating the past, gifts to the gods, and “potlatches” to promote the importance of particular persons or social institutions and to legitimize or question power and authority (Bradley 1990; ­Hansen 2009; Vandkilde 1996, 1999). These social and religious motives need not exclude each other, but can warfare possibly also be involved? A proportion of Neolithic and Bronze Age ritual depositions of weaponry might, at least hypothetically, be considered the commencement, culmination, or conclusion of warfare, which even today is intertwined with rituals.

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Neolithic depositions contain mainly implements with the potential for war, while the more mono-functional weapons in depositions from the Bronze Age make an association with warfare more obvious. War booty offerings, a generally accepted find category in Iron Age Europe sustained by written sources, could well be rooted in the Neolithic and especially the Bronze Age (Randsborg 1995). Three or more sites in a swampy river valley at Altentreptow-Tollensetal in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern have reportedly since 1996 yielded bronze and wooden weapons, dress and body accessories, and a number of traumatized skeletons of mainly young adult males, apparently datable to between 1300–1200 B.C. at the transition to the Urnfield period. Is this a huge war booty offering, leftovers at the battlefield, or maybe both? (Krüger 2009; Ulrich 2008; Jantzen et al. 2010). Whichever the correct explanation, the association with warfare is in this case unequivocal. As warfare is definable as a flow of social interactions, it needs to be somehow initiated and concluded, and rituals on individual and group level present themselves as obvious choices. Depositions of bronze weapons in watery places could then in general be seen from such a perspective of war. Weapon offerings, such as those from Fårdrup and Valsømagle (Vandkilde 1996), may then be interpreted as metonymic statements of concluded warfare, in terms of victory, peacemaking, and alliance maintenance, or perhaps as an offering made by the warrior band or the war leader to ensure luck in an impending war. Hypothetically, then, the number of weapon offerings would increase in periods with intensified warfare. Weapon offerings may, however, also be metaphoric statements that more distantly relate to the waging of war. It can be argued that the institutionalization of warriors and war—arguably an increasing trend during the Bronze Age—implies that these two scenarios of metaphor and metonym were carried more symbolically into other social fields of the Bronze Age world, as part of processes of signification and legitimation. Finally, a wide variety of other bronze objects than weapons occur in votive depositions (cf. Aner and Kersten 1973ff; Vandkilde 1996). These are pervaded by other intentions, indirectly or not at all, associated with war-related violence. Weapon Combinations Weapon combinations in wetland depositions and in cemeteries can, used with caution, inform about the internal organization of the warrior bands and the equipment and fighting methods of the Bronze Age warrior (Thrane 2006). It is, however, necessary to note—and this tallies with what has already been noted above—that the warrior may not be interred with his full equipment but rather only those parts of the equipment that had a certain symbolic meaning. Particular weapons may have been curated, rather than deposited, for any number of reasons; perhaps kept as inalienable objects to be used on special occasions or transmitted from father to son as insignia of rank and warrior status. Close combat armament predominates in burials and hoarded depositions, which should not let us conclude that archery was unimportant during fighting, as the continued occurrence of arrows of flint and metal shows.

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The social presentation of the warrior in funerary contexts varied systematically through time, indicating that fighting methods also changed. In the mid-third millennium B.C. the battle-axe-wielding warrior gave way to the dagger-carrying archer, who in the mid-second millennium at the threshold to the Tumulus culture of the Middle Bronze Age became a sword, axe, and spear fighter with several fine toilet articles to groom hair and body. Battleaxes and other axes of potential use in war were still available, especially in the earlier Bronze Age, and it is possible that body armor and shields of organic materials were in use. Wheeled horse-pulled vehicles were also present. In the Urnfield Period of the Late Bronze Age, from around 1300 B.C., weapons look increasingly effective and standardized, with elite warrior equipment consisting of the whole suite: sheet bronze armor, helmet, round shield, sword, and spear (Figures 3.1 and 3.2). This was in addition to toilet implements for grooming and now more often a four-wheeled cart or a two-wheeled chariot. The wheeled vehicle was to bring the war chieftain to and from battle and to present him as a superior being on social and religious occasions. This impressive assortment of weaponry showed developments over time from the beginning of the Urnfield period around 1300 B.C. to its conclusion prior to 700 B.C., as well as regional differences (Harrison 2004; Schauer 1975).

figure 3.1 Phallic warrior with horned helmet and holding two swords. He is surrounded by comb, mirror, brooch, spear, bow and arrow and round shield in addition to a four-wheeled cart pulled by two horses; a stallion and a mare accompanied by her foal (after Harrison 2004).

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figure 3.2 Warrior hero clad in his corselet and helmet and surrounded by the panoply of sword, round shield, spear, fibula, comb, and chariot in addition to dead enemies, a mourning wife (?), and lowest down possibly the companions holding hands (after H ­ arrison 2004).

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Recent studies often identify the sword wearer as the aristocratic war chieftain, who had a particular territory under his command from which the companions were assumedly recruited, at least in the Late Bronze Age (Sperber 1999; cf. Kristiansen 1984b, 1998, 2002, 2010; also Neth 2001). In the Tyrolean cemetery of Volders the sword wearer of that region, presumably the war chieftain, can be followed through as many as thirteen generations, according to Sperber (1999). It is not always clear however, whether it was only the leader of the warrior band, all of the companions, or only some of them who carried a sword. Some hoards hold several swords, several spearheads, or several shields—perhaps the collective offerings of a whole warrior band? In Clausing’s recent examinations (2005) of weapon burials of the Urnfield period north of the Alps both sword and spear occur alone, in combination with each other and sometimes with arrowheads. This may reflect fighting methods, status differences and division of labor among the companions of warrior clubs, and even cultural differences in funerary ­consumption. Weapon Technologies A comparison of weapons over time can give clues to significant changes in weapon technology, understood as styles of fighting and the functionality of weapons in warfare, but also in transport or other technologies that improved the logistics of bellicose interactions. Weapon technology is certainly not unimportant for the outcome of war, and improvements have been known to escalate the extent and viciousness of warfare in numerous ethnographic cases, and even cause radical social change, such as was documented among the Grand Chaco Abipón in South America during the eighteenth century, when horses were adopted for riding (Lacroix 1990). Consequently, it is possible that innovations in the technology of war could have increased the speed of social change in the Bronze Age. Some of the great turning points in central and northern Europe are associated, quite possibly in a quasi-causal manner, with new arrivals in weaponry and with evidence of increased warfare such as trauma and fortifications. A case in point is the change from the Early to the Middle Bronze Age. The appearance of bronze spearheads around 1700 B.C., and slightly later the first swords, is likely to have had considerable social, physical, and cognitive impact upon conventional warfare, ways of socially interacting with others, and thus the entire societal habitat. The contemporaneous introduction of chariots and carts with four-spoked wheels and horses as draught animals could have further contributed to changing the conditions of interaction. Shortly after 1600 B.C. and as a possible result of previous events, a new macro-regional “culture of contact,” the so-called Tumulus culture, had its breakthrough over large parts of central and northern Europe (Vandkilde 2007). This introduced and dispersed new forms and frames of socializing violently and nonviolently (Kristiansen 1999). Warriorhood now occurred in a transformed form equally suitable for warfare and social representation. Change on an even larger scale took place between 1300 and 1200 B.C. with the emergence of a new European “culture of contact,” namely, the Urnfield culture, also associated with improved weaponry and seemingly intensified warfare. The above-mentioned recently discovered sites

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of Altentreptow (Krüger 2009; Ulrich 2008) and Neckarsulm from the earliest Urnfield period (Br. D) (Neth 2001) point in this direction, together with an increase in the number of fortifications. Fortifications In central Europe, including the Alpine region and the Balkans, fortified settlements occur early on and progressively more frequently (Czebreszuk et al. 2008), while in southern Scandinavia and elsewhere they remain more or less absent throughout prehistory. Bronze Age Scandinavians were hardly more peaceful than central Europeans during this period, as also suggested by the large number of deposited weapons. Clearly, the presence or absence of fortified settlements cannot be used as evidence of war and peace, but might be rooted in different cultural ways of handling hostilities and of presenting power. Cultural tradition, topography of the landscape, settlement organization, and social and intersocietal structure are factors that might be relevant in pursuing the question why settlements are sometimes fortified in central Europe and rarely so in southern Scandinavia. Fortified sites demonstrate considerable variation in size, permanency, landscape setting, period of use, and construction of defense works. Independently of their date, most sites are comparatively moderate in size while others are larger and some are really huge, encircling 30–70 ha or more. The techniques of ramparts, ditches, and palisades also vary over time and geographical space (cf. Nowacki 2008: Figure 9; Vandkilde 2007: Figure 49B). Utilization of the potentials present in the local terrain for defense and surveillance is universal, hence accounting for the frequent association between fortifications and hilltops. Fortifications and territorial marking go well together, but distinct territoriality can exist without fortifications. Although many sites are practically unexplored and thus not easily datable, many do seem to belong to a broad time zone between the Early and Middle Bronze Age while the majority are of Urnfield date. Early examples are Nitriansky Hradok in Slovakia, the huge and high-lying Spissky Sprtok also in Slovakia (Nowacki 2008), Bruszczewo on low ground in central Poland (Czebreszuk and Müller 2004), and the stone-walled citadel of Monkodonja at the Adriatic coast of Istria (Teržan et al. 1999). Many fortified tell sites in the C ­ arpathian Basin are roughly of the same date, for instance Otomani and Sãlacea ­(Czebreszuk et al. 2008). Later examples include the Czech site of Blucˇina, and the enormous southern G ­ erman hillforts of Houbirg and Bullenheimer Berg, and many others (e.g., Czebreszuk et al. 2008; Harding 2007; Jockenhövel 1990; Primas 2002). The largest of these hillforts in both the earlier and the later group suggest that the military sector at these particular points in time was a social source of power that could supplement other power sources, be it economy, ideology, or even politics (cf. Mann 1986; Vandkilde 2007: Figures 30, 49). Fortifications such as the above-mentioned may have had several functions, depending on their cultural context: providing defense and daily security for the inhabitants in addition to being centers of trade, of crafts, and of rituals. Of course, fortified sites may in certain cases also be or become a visualization of authority, and some fortifications were

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evidently also the residential sites of one or more leading families. Territoriality is a related aspect that has been studied over the last decades based on the regular spacing of fortified sites in many regions (e.g., Jockenhövel 1990; Primas 2002), and it can quite often be shown that each fortified site was in a relationship of interdependence with a surrounding territory. This may well have included aspects of control and power. In the Late Bronze Age, larger, sometimes proto-urban, sites emerged more systematically enclosed by complex systems of ramparts, palisades, and ditches, each one amidst a well-defined territory, and many of them constituting nodal points in a superregional network of commerce. Undefended villages and hamlets tend to be attached as satellites to the fortified central site, perhaps particularly in times of peace (Ivanova 2008). In other cases, fortifications are marginal phenomena placed at the boundaries of settled areas to scare off the enemy and to protect against intruders. These may not have been permanently settled, or perhaps only with certain specialized personnel serving as a potential refuge site should the need arise (cf. Primas 2002). It may stand as a hypothesis that the construction of defense work intensified in periods of social transition, notably from the Early to the Middle Bronze Age ca. 1800–1500 B.C., and from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age ca. 1300–1200 B.C. It is not surprising that people in times of war fled to protected ground and/or made efforts to protect their settlement by fortifying it. Some of these sites, however, continued in use for generations and attracted additional and much less war-related functions. Iconographic Images Scandinavian rock art images are oral tales carved in stone. The stories on rock are comparable to orally recited epics in that certain easily recognizable traits recur, that the actions of mortals, gods, and other unworldly creatures occur intertwined, and that the narrative and its interpretation easily diverge into new versions. The Homeric poems are narratives of an ideal and heroic nature maintaining the interests and ideology of a particular social group; the long life of the epics beginning in an elitist Late Bronze Age setting with a continued development within aristocratic circles until ca. 700–600 B.C., when writing was reestablished in the early Greek city-state (Vandkilde 2006d with references). The rock carvings could well have had a similar background. It is worthy of note, and depressing, that images and words can enrich and depend on each other to such a degree that if the epic narrative is lost, understanding of the images will henceforth be partial. The rock carvings nevertheless reveal—in contrast to the thematic focus upon men and war in Homer’s Iliad—that warfare and warriorhood were rarely at the very center of the depicted narratives. Instead, ships and maritime travel are the key issues of the rock carvings (Ling 2008), hence actually making them much more in line with Homer’s Odyssey. The religious-ritual component (Kaul 1998, 2004), moreover, seems stronger in the Scandinavian epic imagery than in the roughly contemporaneous Greek oral epics. Rock carvings with warlike motives are in fact notably few in numbers measured against the considerable number of known carvings from Scandinavia. The whole series with warlike, less warlike, and nonwarlike motivation are relevant to the interpretation

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of Bronze Age warfare, its ideal forms and broader societal significance. Jarl Nordbladh (1989) has analyzed patterns of fighting at the rock art site of Kville in Bohuslän. Personto-person combat predominates, the combatants being of equal size and weapons never touching. When fighting occurs on ships, only a few crew members, made larger than the rest, carry weapons, and some ships have more than 135 crew members. Nordbladh finds this number much overrated, and therefore hints at the idealized character of the narrative. This agrees with what is suggested above, but he continues to suggest that the images of combat at Kville provide a fairly accurate description of how fighting was actually carried out in Bronze Age society. Richard Osgood presents a similar view (1998; Osgood et al. 2000:34). Fighting supposedly took place as heavily ritualized action or performances of a sport-like character (Osgood et al. 2000:34)—that is, as a rule with a nondeadly outcome. Exquisite weaponry inserted into the specialized ritual settings of outstanding burials and votive offerings—like heroic poetry—overemphasizes the ideals of war combat, leadership, and companionship and underrate the violence also involved; Scandinavian rock carvings with bellicose motives hold some of the same idealistic qualities. In a comparative vein, the Iliad is about the Trojan War, obviously a militaristic affair, but the narration nevertheless highlights fighting as sporting duels between high-ranking warrior heroes. War scenes in rock carvings similarly reduce fighting to the demonstration of potency among high-ranking warrior heroes, who fight as equals and according to certain aristocratic rules and ethics. The scene from Fossum in Sweden of two men fighting on a boat from the ­fifteenth century, and a series of similar pictures, illustrates this point clearly. While the Iliad has traces of other kinds of warfare, much more vicious and much less heroic, such as raids on settlements to obtain slaves, women, and portable wealth (van Wees 1992, 1997; ­Vandkilde 2006d), this more real face of war is completely absent from the rock carvings; likely because the words that should accompany the imagery are lost to us. However, sufficient cases of skeletal trauma (see below), damages and sharpening traces on swords (­Bridgford 1997; Kristiansen 1984b), and other evidence demonstrate that Bronze Age warfare in pre-state temperate Europe included more violent and deadly forms. It is probably significant that rock carvings with warlike motives are rare. The vast majority have other motives, particularly fleets of ships but also religiously motivated images related to sun-rituals (Kaul 1998, 2004; Ling 2008). Although this iconographic choice might also be ideologically colored, it does hint at aspects of Bronze Age life little concerned with war, warfare, and warriors. Skeletal Trauma Traumata on skeletons are caused by various forms of interpersonal violence such as warfare, homicide, gang aggression, intra-family fights, feuding among fraternal interest groups, and forceful kinds of sport. The boundaries between these forms of violence can be quite subtle, but ethnographic examples suggest that a high occurrence of interpersonal violence other than strictly warfare quite often coincides with periods of intensified war (e.g., C ­ hagnon 1968). Abnormal mass graves with several injured individuals as well as normal single

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i­nterments with an injured individual occur throughout the Neolithic and the Bronze Age all over Europe (Peter-Röcher 2007). The injuries vary from projectile wounds to head and limb injuries with marks and cuts from weapons. Some wounds have healed, while other wounds were fatal. Skeletal traumas are, in fact, relatively frequent in European prehistory when it is taken into account that in some areas skeletons are not well preserved, that they are not routinely examined for marks of violence, and that much physical violence does not leave visible traces on the skeleton. Looking at the known examples it is probably significant that spears and arrows are often involved. This is exemplified by the burial at Over-Vindinge on Sealand dating to ca. 1600 B.C. This individual was a 50-year-old man who had been hit from behind with a bronze spearhead; the tip still sits in his pelvis (Kjær 1912; ­Vandkilde 2000). There are several other examples, such as the contemporaneous mass burial at ­Wassenaar in the Netherlands where a flint arrowhead was found embedded in one of the victims of a raid on a small community (Louwe Kooijmans 1993), and the Middle Bronze Age dead at Tomarton in England, also with spearheads involved (Osgood 2006; see ­Peter-Röcher 2007 for a long list). In studies of warfare, skeletal trauma is a valuable source of additional information, which should also remind us that war produces victims. A number of mass graves shed light on the more sinister sides of Bronze Age communities, but the circumstances that created these particular graves varied quite a lot. A small number of anomalous graves with several individuals exist from eastern central Europe, and studies of forensic data indicate a succession of ritual killings, each immediately followed by abnormal interment in a storage pit on, or adjacent to, a settlement area (Hårde 2006; cf. also Harding 2007; Rittershofer 1997). These Early Bronze Age cases may especially exemplify the political potential of ritual violence and victimization, and it may be argued that it was the political elite who used public humiliation of defeated enemies to maintain their power (Aldhouse-Green 2006; Hårde 2006). At the two Czech fortified sites of Blucˇina and Velim from a later period, ca. 1400– 1300 B.C., human skeletons and skeletal parts were frequent in ditches and pits. It remains unclear whether they were the remains of ritual killings or from hostile attacks, or maybe both (Harding 2007:87ff ), but there is otherwise clear evidence that the two sites suffered several instances of attack (Harding 2007:87ff ). Quite another scenario is apparent at the above-mentioned site of Wassenaar from ca. 1700–1600 B.C. (Louwe Kooijmans 1993). Twelve individuals of all ages, some with trauma, were carefully placed side by side in the mass grave, obviously put there by surviving kin who cared for their dead relatives, thus communicating to us the empathy and emotions involved (cf. Harris and Sørensen 2010). By comparison, a mass grave from Sund in Norway illustrates a much more chaotic and uncaring situation. Swords had undoubtedly been in action killing a number of people in a small local community around 1400 B.C., and afterward the dead were only very provisionally cared for (Fyllingen 2006). It seems to the present reviewer that skeletal trauma occurs in most periods, although with a variable frequency (Peter-Röcher 2007:Abb. 40a), and that the transitional periods to the Middle and to the Late Bronze Age have an especially large number of cases. The new

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battlefield or war booty offering site of Altentreptow in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, ­dating from 1300–1200 B.C. (Krüger 2009; Ulrich 2008; Jantzen et al. 2010), confirms this emerging pattern.

Conclusions and Perspectives The above examination has explored both the ideal and real faces of Bronze Age warfare and warriors and has also pointed to areas of life little affected by violence and war. This result deviates from previous research prior to 1995, which roughly followed two opposing and stereotypical myths of the Other; both of them neglecting archaeological sources that attested to violence and war. Since 1995, scholarly interest in prehistoric warfare has literally exploded, revealing a clear and increasing tendency to make prehistoric societies militaristic and violent at their very foundations. Above, this latter view has been challenged and nuanced. Warfare and warriors undoubtedly formed a significant part of Bronze Age social life, with everything this implied in terms of culture-relative meanings, heroic tales, violent interaction, victims, and human suffering. This conclusion is in accord with the existing archaeological evidence, which simultaneously indicates that peaceful activities also formed part of life at home and at public events (e.g., Earle and Kristiansen 2010; Sofaer 2010; Sørensen 2010). Both violent and nonviolent interactions appear firmly sustained by cosmologies and religion, as suggested by votive offerings, funerary rituals, and iconographies. Societies of the Bronze Age probably experienced—like the Neolithic societies before them—a variable presence of war. War never seems to have had a genuinely permanent character in the Hobbesian sense of bellum omnium contra omnes, everybody’s war against everybody (Otto et al. 2006). Rather, the sources for final Neolithic and Bronze Age warfare in temperate Europe suggest that war occurred most frequently in periods with macroregional sociocultural shifts. Conjunctural change with the emergence of a new “­culture of contact” occurred at the transition to the Middle Bronze Age around 1700–1600 B.C.—ending with the establishment of the Tumulus culture—and again at the transition to the Late Bronze Age, between 1300 and 1200 B.C.—concluding with the formation of the Urnfield culture (Vandkilde 2007). Both these time zones of transition, in their broadest sense, had rather intense data on warfare and warriorhood, both ideal and very real. Interestingly, this variable occurrence of warfare (see also Robb 1997; Thorpe 2006) may confirm that war-related violence is culturally constructed much more than it is rooted in human psychology and biology. A challenging aspect for the future is, of course, to pursue the question of the more precise role of war, warfare, and warrior organizations in bringing about sociocultural change of a macro-regional magnitude. The relationship between war and social change has historically and sociologically been argued to be of a complex, often indirect nature. War is waged with particular purposes in mind, but tends to produce unintentional effects, notably more war (Otto et al. 2006). At least it seems beyond debate that war inspires new forms and frames of identification, and this is in accordance with the above o­ bservations of

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an increased cultural and social spotlight on warriorhood and warfare in periods of radical transition. As other authors have noted (e.g., Harding 2007), a quantitative and qualitative development in the culture of war seems to take place from the earlier to the later Bronze Age. Early examples of military-based authority can be pinpointed, but the tendency through time clearly is that the relationship between leadership and warfare as a potential power source grew tighter. Warrior bands may earlier have lived their lives mostly on the margins of societal leadership, whereas in the Urnfield period they made themselves available to the centers of power and authority. Warfare was a fairly widespread form of social interaction in the Bronze Age, just as it continues to be today. One reason for this remarkable consistency through time may be that war easily constitutes a particular social environment to which actors and local groups have to adapt for the sake of survival. Warfare is not usually a form of interaction people engage in because they cannot be without it; rather, people in non-state settings wage war because it is a less risky strategy than peace, inasmuch as allies can never be fully trusted (Helbling 2006). Another reason is the persistency and persuasiveness of heroic tales of war as inspirational material in strategies of identification, and still another reason is the fact that warfare and warrior bands hold a vast potential for the maintenance and expansion of political power. The realization of this potential in the context of the non-state is normally effectively countered by the norms and rules of society (Steuer 2006), but in the general chaos and challenges of social transition this constraint may be overcome.

Note 1.

The research leading to these results received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no. [PITN-GA-212402].

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Chapter Four

Violence as an Aspect of the Durotriges Female Life Course

Rebecca C. Redfern

Abstract  This study sought to understand the bioarchaeological evidence for trauma in the late Iron Age female life course, by examining a regional sample of subadult (N = 72) and adult females (N = 53) from Dorset in southwest England. The inhumed sample dates to the mid-to-late Iron Age (fifth century B.C. to the early first century A.D.) and were macroscopically studied for skeletal evidence of trauma. The bioarchaeological data were united with funerary evidence for age and genderroles, clinical data on trauma, and sociological research on violence. The majority of trauma was identified in adults. The female results showed that young and middle adults had the highest mortality rates but middle adults had the highest crude prevalence rates for trauma. A small number of females in these age groups also have evidence for peri-mortem sharp weapon and projectile injuries. It is suggested that these members of the Durotriges tribe show us two views of late Iron Age life. Firstly, the ante-mortem injuries caused by accidental mechanisms conform to the wider evidence for agrarian lifeways, with only a minority of females actively participating in or exposed to violent events. The demographic results, and peri-mortem trauma data, suggest that some of the young and middle adult females in the sample had died during a conflict. It is considered that one such episode may have been the Claudian conquest of Britain (A.D. 43), which involved hillfort ­battles in the southwest.

Introduction: Violence in the Durotriges Female Life Course

T

his paper seeks to examine the skeletal evidence for violence in the Durotriges female life course. It provides an overview of the approaches used in the study, highlights why female perceptions and risk of violence differ from males, and aims to provide a more 63

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nuanced understanding of the bioarchaeological evidence for violence and conflict in late Iron Age Dorset and during the Roman conquest. An Overview of a Life Course Approach The process of aging in past communities is now most frequently analyzed within a life course approach (Buikstra and Scott 2009; Elder and Giele 2009). This has allowed ­discourses to shift from adults and adult activities—usually male—to a view that examines life from birth to death within specific cultural and social frameworks. A life course approach recognizes that gender affects the timing of age transitions, some of which may bear no relation to biological changes, and importantly, that women and men experience different chronologies (Arber and Ginn 1995). For example, how old they are when they get married or have their first child (Furstenberg 1999:662). A life course perspective recognizes that three types of aging exist: chronological, physiological, and biological, which may not occur simultaneously (Harlow and Laurence 2002:3). These three forms of aging are influenced by status, gender, wealth, and personal choice (Harlow and Laurence 2002:3), all factors that have been shown to influence health (Steckel and Rose 2002). Sofaer (2006: 56–57) reminds us that the body is not in stasis; it changes in response to skeletal development, hormones, and everyday activities. Furthermore, each culture and period has a specific life course, which is used to organize a society (Harlow and Laurence 2002:3). Therefore, in this study, an individual’s age at death is recognized as being more than a biological process, in that it provides a base from which to explore female lives. Iron Age Dorset Archaeological evidence suggests that the Durotriges had inhabited Dorset from the early Iron Age (ninth to seventh centuries B.C.), and by the late Iron Age had developed into a close-knit tribal confederacy centered on modern Dorset (Cunliffe 2005; Gale 2003) (­Figure 4.1), a period that saw the development of large hillforts and increase in craft specialization and trade (Sharples 2010:124–173). The Durotriges were formed of ethnically similar groups who utilized a hillfort(s) that served as centers for trade and manufacturing, storage, and defense (Cunliffe 2005; Gale 2003). These communities also had extensive regional and export trade connections for items of Durotrigian manufacture, such as pottery and metalwork, and used a common currency (Cunliffe 2005; Sharples 2010). Sharples (2010:172) raises the possibility that some individuals from neighboring communities in Britain and Gaul may have lived in Dorset during this period, such as at the trading port of Hengistbury Head. Current stable isotopic evidence for Dorset has not identified any nonlocal individuals (Redfern et al. 2010; Richards et al. 1998), which conforms to results elsewhere in Britain (Jay and Richards 2007). However, it should be noted that short p ­ eriods of migration/travel might not be picked up isotopically (Katzenberg 2008). The landscape during this period consisted of grass and heath lands, woods and fields, within which the Durotriges inhabited wattle-and-daub roundhouses in small settlements

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Violence as an Aspect of the Durotriges Female Life Course 65

SHETLAND ISLANDS AREA

WESTERN ISLES ISLANDS AREA

HIGHLAND REGION

GRAMPIAN REGION

ORKNEY ISLANDS AREA

TAYSIDE REGION

FIFE REGION

CENTRAL REGION

LOTHIAN REGION STRATHCLYDE REGION

© Crown copyright 1999

BORDERS REGION

NORTHUMBERLAND DUMFRIES AND GALLOWAY REGION

TYNE & WEAR

County boundaries 1995 (prior to the introduction of unitary authorities)

DURHAM CUMBRIA

CLEVELAND

NORTH YORKSHIRE

LANCASHIRE

HUMBERSIDE

WEST YORKSHIRE GREATER MANCHESTER

RB

CHESHIRE

G HA M

DE

S HIR E

SOUTH YORKSHIRE

MERSEYSIDE

YS

CLWYD

LINCOLNSHIRE

IR

TTIN

H

GWYNEDD

NO

E

STAFFORDSHIRE

NORFOLK

LEICESTERSHIRE

SHROPSHIRE

HEREFORD AND WORCESTER

S ON PT M

DYFED B UC AM GH

GWENT

OXFORDSHIRE

S

MID GLAMORGAN SOUTH GLAMORGAN

AVON

CAMBRIDGESHIRE

K IN

GLOUCESTERSHIRE WEST GLAMORGAN

E HIR

SUFFOLK

HIR E

WARWICKSHIRE

BE DF OR DS

POWYS

NO RT HA

WEST MIDLANDS

HE R TF

OR

IR E DS H

ESSEX

HI RE

GREATER LONDON

BERKSHIRE WILTSHIRE

SURREY

KENT

HAMPSHIRE

SOMERSET

EAST SUSSEX

WEST SUSSEX DEVON

DORSET ISLE OF WIGHT

CORNWALL

0

50

100 km

ISLES OF SCILLY

figure 4.1 Location map of Dorset in the United Kingdom.

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or in hillforts and practiced a mixed agricultural economy (Cunliffe 2005; Dark and Dark 1998). Faunal evidence from this period is strongly biased toward terrestrial domesticated animals—chickens, pigs, cattle, and sheep—with wild resources forming a small proportion of people’s diet (Albarella 2007; Hambleton 1999). This evidence is supported by stable isotope analyses of late Iron Age diet, which display a lack of aquatic resources (i.e., fish) and show no adult differences in terms of age and sex in dietary contributions (Redfern et al. 2010; Richards et al. 1998). These results conform to those observed elsewhere in Britain during this period (Jay and Richards 2007). The development of an inhumation burial rite is one of the defining characteristics of the Durotriges in the late Iron Age (Cunliffe 2005). The use of burial for disposing of the dead developed from the middle Iron Age practice of pit burials, but in both the middle and late Iron Age, it seems that not all individuals were afforded this rite (Hamlin 2007; Whimster 1981). The practice of inhumation appears to have only been employed by communities living in southern Dorset, with flat-grave cemeteries located near ­settlements (Sharples 2010:277; Whimster 1981). Despite the lack of a homogenous burial rite within the territory, individuals were buried with a “standard” range of grave-goods which included pottery, utilitarian items, jewelry, and cuts of meat (Hamlin 2007; Whimster 1981). A minority of individuals, including females were afforded “elite” burials, which included prestige items such as mirrors (Hamlin 2007; Sharples 2010). Archaeological Insights into the Durotriges Female Life Course Understanding social and cultural relationships in British Iron Age societies is highly ­complex, as our knowledge must be derived from studies of material culture, funerary practices, domestic spaces, and human remains, as we lack indigenous primary source information (Pope and Ralston 2011). Focusing on Dorset, gender and life course studies of non-funerary material culture and domestic space are lacking, although Sharples’s (2010:235) review of the use of roundhouses in Wessex (of which Dorset forms a part) suggests that the alignment of the hearth and entrance, “provided metaphors that clarified the individual’s role within their family and in relation to other groups.” Hamlin’s (2007) funerary analysis of gender and status in late Iron Age and Roman Dorset, England, is the first study of its kind and allows us to have a status, age and gender framework with which to understand Durotriges female life-ways. This research has shown that the majority of funerary variables (e.g., artifact classes and materials) did not exhibit significant levels of gender bias but task-related differences were present. There was no statistically significant difference between subadults (18 years old) in grave-good types, as both had personal ornaments, animal inclusions, utilitarian items, and containers. Exclusive to subadults were a projectile point, stylus, gaming pieces, stud/ clothing fasteners, and botanical remains. It should be noted that each of these items was recovered in isolation (i.e., only with one individual). Adult females had similar grave-goods to males, such as pottery vessels, jewelry, and animal inclusions; and there were no statistically significant differences between the sexes in the mean number of items in each burial. Females did not have evidence for weaponry,

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Violence as an Aspect of the Durotriges Female Life Course 67

but were often buried with knives—equipment of this kind was a minority male rite and only identified in two cemeteries (Whitcombe Farm and Maiden Castle hillfort). However, absence of martial material in female burials does not mean that women’s gender roles were necessarily static throughout the late Iron Age and early Roman period (see Joyce 2008: 72–77); particularly as gender studies of funerary practices and European Iron Age ­communities suggest that status could be more of a determining factor than gender in response to changing cultural and political events (Arnold 1996, 2002, 2006). Hamlin (2007:324) observes that in post-Conquest Dorset there is archaeological evidence for females undertaking formerly “male” activities, as based on the greater range of artifact types recovered with females in the Romano-British period. Hamlin (2007:324) suggests that this evidence does not support the loss of preconquest labor roles for rural women who appear to have been engaging in more activities and/or roles, and believes it possible that they may have done so in other crisis situations in Dorset’s history (Christine Hamlin, personal ­communication 2009). Overall, the Durotriges tribe does not show strong status differences in funerary rites, which correlates to bioarchaeological and stable isotope evidence for diet and health. Stable isotope analysis of diet in this population has not identified dietary differences between burial locations, funerary status, and in adult age and sex groups (Redfern et al. 2010). ­Statistical examination of age and sex differences in mortality risk using demographic models has shown that sex did not affect mortality risk, and age differences were within normal expectations, with infants and older adults having a higher mortality risk (Redfern and DeWitte 2011). In conclusion, the dietary and health data support the funerary evidence for parity between the sexes over the life course. It should be noted that these data support primary textual information about females in Iron Age communities in Europe, which show that women were active social agents, able to own property and goods, and were able to hold positions of authority (Green 1997). In summary, there does not seem to have been a clear gender difference throughout the life course as reflected in the funerary record, as only a minority of adults were buried with unique inclusions, for example a mirror or a sword (Hamlin 2007), that could be argued as having sex-specific associations (Crass 2001). Potentially, this could suggest that this stage of the life course was not regarded as socially significant within the tribe; but it is proposed that this might not be a “real” result, as cross-cultural studies in anthropology (e.g., Weisfeld 1997) and archaeological research show that adolescence is a key stage in the life course, and is frequently marked in the prehistoric funerary record (e.g., van ­Rossenberg 2008). Therefore, it is possible that adolescence was marked using body modification (see Carr 2005) or with materials (i.e., clothing) that have not survived the archaeological record.

Understanding Violence in Female Lives Clinical and sociological data show that violence in female lives is a result of complex social and cultural situations, and may become endemic (Kimmel 2004:278–283; Radford and Stanko 1997:66–72). This is because, compared to men, women consider a wide range of behaviors and actions to be violent, such as stalking, deprivation, and emotional abuse

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The Contexts of Violence

(Tjaden 2004). The World Health Organization (1997) considers that females are at risk from violence from conception to old age, with dangers ranging from sex-selective abortion, child prostitution, domestic violence during marriage/partnership, and the abuse of elderly women. The World Health Organization (2002:5) divides violence into two groups, interpersonal and collective violence, where the former is committed by family and community, and the latter by groups of people with a particular identity. Women are considered to be vulnerable from both groups, and the types of acts committed against them is reflective of their own position in society, as well as that of their family and partner, whereby related males can be attacked by enemies who direct violence toward the target’s wife/wives or daughters (Edston and Olsson 2007). To acknowledge the difference between male and female experience, the United Nations defines female-directed violence as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women” (United Nations 1993 cited in Watts and Zimmerman 2002). Any definition of violence is culturally determined, as are the levels of acceptable violence and how these acts are responded to (Bowman 2001:26; Krohn-Hansen 1994:368; World Health Organization 2002:13, 19). Many clinical and sociological studies recognize that the unequal status of women increases their risk of violence and perpetuates its presence in their lives (Watts and Zimmerman 2002). Therefore, we must acknowledge that our perceptions of violence in the past will be influenced by relatively recent Western concepts of the individual and identity, notions of harm and what are considered to be “normal” or acceptable responses to violence and aggression (see Summerfield 2002, 2005). The extent to which sex-based differences in behavior are influenced by ­underlying ­biological differences is subject to a highly contentious debate, particularly as feminist scholars recognize that these data can be used to support biological determinism and negatively affect female lives (Oudshoorn 1994). Therefore, the major findings are outlined, as they augment the overview of feminist and other sociological perspectives which show that biological differences are not, as Goldstein’s (2009) research has shown, the sole reason for male participation in violence. Sex differences in aggression and violence are considered to be influenced by two processes: sexual selection and social roles. The role of hormones, particularly testosterone, is not believed to be directly linked to physical aggression, because if it were we would expect to see higher levels of aggression in both sexes during puberty (Archer 2004, 2006). Gender differences are most clearly shown in how the sexes react to a situation, as many studies have found that females will prefer psychological (indirect) rather than physical (direct) aggression (Björkqvist et al. 1991; Eagly and Steffen 1986:316; Leonetti et al. 2007). Notably, their use of indirect forms of aggression increases between the ages of 6 and 17; in both sexes aggressive behaviors level off in young adulthood (Archer 2004; Salmivalli and Kaukianinen 2002), but throughout the life course females are more likely to engage in indirect aggression, particularly verbal (Hess and Hagen 2006). From early childhood, females on the whole prefer social stimuli and are less likely to use aggression that causes pain or physical injury and, overall, have lower levels of physical aggression (Eagly and Steffen 1986). In both sexes, the importance of socialization and gender differences in expected behavior should not be underestimated; a huge body of anthropological data has shown that culture influences behavior. Eagly and Steffen (1986:310–312) observe that the Western

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Violence as an Aspect of the Durotriges Female Life Course 69

historical view of female gender roles is one that emphasizes the avoidance of physical harm and behaving in a manner incompatible with aggression, but as gender roles have become more equal in Western nations, physical aggression between partners has reached relatively equal levels (Archer 2009). These findings underscore the role of socialization and the important part that historical divisions in gender roles have had in its diffusion. In most societies, girls are discouraged from behaving aggressively and using violence to solve social problems but cross-culturally, indiscriminate physical aggression by both sexes is censured (Archer and Latham 2004). Cultural differences between females are also related to their participation in violence and willingness to do so (Forbes et al. 2008; Fry 1998). One of the most famous studies is that by Burbank (1994), whose study of aggression in Aboriginal communities in Australia, found that females were the “initial actors” in 62.4 percent (495/793) of cases of aggressive behavior, females instigated aggressive encounters in 35.9 percent (285/793), and 18.5 percent (147/793) of these encounters were only between women. In contrast, societies where gender inequalities exist, female behavior may be quite different. Despite female preference to engage in indirect violence, clinical and ethnographic data have shown that females can be responsible for domestic violence in homosexual and heterosexual relationships, child abuse, and acts of violence against children, males, and other females (Burbank 1987; World Health Organization 2002:15); indeed, one study concluded that “women are as, or even more, violent than men” (Kelly 1997:33–36). At this point, it is worth noting that in studies of intimate partner violence, female violence toward males is usually set within a “constellation of abuse” by the male partner, with females acting in self-defense and/or in retaliation. Additionally, although the number of acts (punches, kicks, bites etc.) may be equal between partners, female violence is less harmful and often judged by both partners as being less serious (Dobash and Dobash 2004). In violent events outside of intimate partner violence, the dynamics change. A study by Bettencourt and Kernahan (1997) observed that when both sexes are exposed to violent cues they can be equally aggressive, but found that individual differences in personality temper the scale of gender variations. This is supported by Peach’s (2005:22–27) research, which found that the American Military acknowledge there is no empirical evidence to show that females cannot be trained to exhibit the same degree of aggressiveness as males, and that mixed-sex combat units perform as effectively as all-male units, and often more so (cf. Ghiglieri 1999:183–184). This is because, as Frodi et al.’s (1977) review of the experimental literature concerned with female acts of aggression shows, when they believe it to be justified, women can be as aggressive as men. Feminist and Other Sociological Perspectives The discussion of violence in female lives most frequently identifies them as victims, and passive nonparticipants; violence is something that happens to them rather than a context in which they actively participate (Eagly and Steffen 1986:310–311; Matthews 2003). This stereotype persists in spite of much evidence to the contrary, such as the existence of women gang members, which is often explained away as a reaction to social upheaval, rather than recognizing that some women will engage in violence for the same reasons as men, such

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as the acquisition of power and wealth (Collins et al. 2007; Halberstam 1998:267–277; Pearson 1999; Pollock et al. 2006). In both sociological and archaeological discourses, there has been a tendency to associate women with making peace rather than violence, enabling this assumption to appear as “natural” and expected behavior (Large 1997:25). This underlines the tensions between ­biological sex, gender roles, and social behavior, as shown by cross-cultural and other anthropological studies of crime and warfare (e.g., Burbank 1990; Large 1997:25). Eagly and Steffen (1986:310–312) observe that the historical Western view of female gender roles is one that emphasizes the avoidance of physical harm and the view that girls and women behave in a manner incompatible with aggression. Importantly, these authors highlight the difference between gender roles and the social occupations associated with a particular sex, as males are more likely to be socialized in violence and aggression through competitive activities (Eagly and Steffen 1986:310; Pinker 2002:345). Cultural differences between females are also related to their participation in violence and willingness to behave violently (Forbes et al. 2008; Fry 1998). For example, Schuster’s (1983) analysis of female aggression in Zambia (Africa) concluded that violent episodes occurred because of a certain man and/ or his economic resources, or between females of different social classes, because there was unequal access to employment and the increased dependency of women on men. Feminist scholarship has begun to explore females active involvement in violence and war (Kimmel 2004:272; McClennen 2005), supporting research in the social sciences that has shown that there are no fixed patterns of predictable, biologically given human actions (Greer 2000:206–216; Rose and Rose 2000). As reviewed above, clinical and sociological research has shown that females can be responsible for violent acts at both interpersonal and collective levels (Burbank 1987; World Health Organization 2002:15). However, the findings show that although females can behave violently and aggressively, they differ considerably from males in how they recognize and judge violent and aggressive actions; this is most frequently expressed in how they react to a situation, as many studies have found that females will prefer psychological rather than physical aggression (Eagly and Steffen 1986:316; Leonetti et al. 2007). However, the use of these data to interpret past societies should be undertaken with caution, as a steep rise in female violence has been observed since the middle of the last century (Flowers 1987; The Institute for Criminal Policy Research 2009). This trend reflects changing legislation (e.g., policies to increase the number of arrests) but also wider social problems such as urban deprivation (McCall et al. 2008; Miller and Meloy 2006; Muftic et al. 2007). As such, the author recognizes that an uncritical projection of modern data onto prehistoric communities is not an effective approach. Clinical and Bioarchaeological Perspectives on Identifying Violence The use of clinical data in bioarchaeological research has become standard but is not employed without caveats (Judd and Redfern 2012). For example, using these data to ­identify interpersonal violence is problematic, as the data include victims and aggressors, and often include patients harmed in a wide range of activities: unarmed and armed fights, beatings, brawls, and rape (e.g., Wladis et al. 1999). These data are also biased by the mechanisms producing these injuries: baseball bats, cars, modern firearms, and high v­ elocity

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Violence as an Aspect of the Durotriges Female Life Course 7 1

weaponry. To rectify this situation, Judd (2000) suggests that wherever possible, clinical studies that bear the most resemblance to the archaeological sample should be used, such as from the developing world or communities living in traditional ways (i.e., Amish society). Unfortunately, this considerably limits the available dataset, which is also biased by factors such as poor documentation, lack of access to medical resources, and the focus of many studies on vehicular accidents (Judd 2000:45–46). Walker (2001, 580–582) suggests that modern patterns of interpersonal violence can be used to provide a baseline for paleotrauma studies but he does acknowledge that many injuries may be culturally determined. Judd (2000, 57) proposes that the modern indicators of nonlethal interpersonal violence most useful to bioarchaeology are multiple injuries, cranial trauma, and forearm fracture from a direct blow. One type of forearm trauma, the Parry fracture, has become synonymous with interpersonal violence in bioarchaeology; however, acceptance of this association has been questioned, particularly the criteria used to identify the fracture (Judd 2008; Jurmain 2005:219). A recent survey of interpersonal violence in a prehistoric population by Jurmain et al. (2009:469) led the authors to conclude that “its [Parry fracture] inclusion in evaluation of interpersonal aggression should be used with extreme caution.” It should be noted that unless we are fortunate enough to have mummified material from our chosen region of study, we are only able to identify a reduced trauma prevalence rate, as the majority of injuries observed in modern cases of assault and interpersonal violence affect the soft tissues (Judd and Redfern 2012; e.g., Wladis et al. 1999). Clinical studies of female-directed violence support this finding, as the most frequently observed injuries are abrasions, contusions, and lacerations. Dislocations and fractures, particularly blunt-force fractures to the head are the second most frequently occurring traumas (Greene et al. 1999; Spedding et al. 1999). Female victims of domestic violence are more likely to have multiple injuries, particularly to the head and arms, and fractures to the head, spine, and torso (Allen et al. 2007; Crandell et al. 2004; Flanslow et al. 1998). Recognizing female-directed violence in the archaeological record is reliant on clinical data, but bioarchaeological research has shown that injuries may be highly culturally ­specific— the targeting of the face appears to be a modern trend (Walker 2001:582). Skeletal evidence for domestic violence, based on clinical data, has been identified in many archaeological populations (e.g., Novak 2006). This form of directed violence is not present in all human societies, Hautzinger (2003:101) observes that it “relies on a cultural foundation where violence is a conditioned response to conflict, supported by specific sets of cultural values.” Female-directed violence is not limited to partner or familial aggression, it may take place during community or societal conflicts (World Health Organization 2002:9). In these situations, clinical and bioarchaeological data show that females experience assault injuries as either victims or combatants. Modern clinical data show that the majority of assaulted people admitted to hospitals have sustained injuries to the head, face, and eyes, with most affecting the left side of the face and the front of the body (Brink et al. 1998; Johansen et al. 2008). The musculoskeletal craniofacial injuries sustained include ­fractures to the following bones: nasals, zygomatics, mandible, and dental fractures were also observed (Brink et al. 1998). Trauma was also observed to the post-cranial skeleton, particularly the hand bones—the fifth metacarpal—and defensive injuries to the arms (Brink et al. 1998). Sex differences in assault patterns are also common; females are predominantly

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exposed to blunt-force violence, injuries caused by strangulation, and falls or pushes against the floor/wall (Brink et al. 1998). Sex differences were not observed for injury severity, but there were statistically significant differences in the types of injuries and the mechanisms that caused them (Brink et al. 1998). Bioarchaeological analyses of female-directed violence have shown that in some prehistoric samples, females have a higher prevalence of healed cranial and post-cranial ­fractures, with the majority of cranial blunt-force trauma directed posteriorly and anteriorly (Martin 1997). Analysis of Pre-Contact massacre samples in North America demonstrates that often the majority of the sample are females who have been cannibalized or mutilated, with bluntforce cranial trauma aimed at the frontal bone (Ostendorf Smith 1997, 2003; Turner and Morris 1970; Willey 1990).

Iron Age Warfare and Violence A wide variety of archaeological evidence indicates that during the Iron Age violence and martial acts often took place within and between communities. Examples include mass burials at hillforts, the construction of defensive architecture, manufacture of weaponry and armor, and the development of a warrior class (Cunliffe 2005; Haselgrove 1994; James 2007; Kristiansen 1999; Steuer 2006). Chapman (1992) proposes that warfare was connected to social frameworks and status, and may have only taken place at certain times of the year to ensure continuity of the agricultural economy. The cultural dimension of violence has been discussed by Aldhouse Green (2001) whose analysis of Iron Age rituals demonstrates that violence was bound up with ideological frameworks and expressed through practices such as human sacrifice. Nevertheless, the identification of warfare in the archaeological record is controversial, particularly the extent to which it can be distinguished from other violent practices and recognized as using weaponry (e.g., Carman and Harding 1999:247; Ferguson 1997:326; Vencl 1984). These concerns are raised by Hill (1996, 2007), who considers that warfare was not a major element in society (cf. Armit 2007; James 2007). Focusing upon the Durotriges tribe who occupied Dorset during this period, research suggests that significant social change took place in the first millennium initiated by the introduction of iron technology, which forced existing social networks and communities to change and form groups who vied for control of productive agricultural land. The construction and development of hillforts during this period is believed to reflect this process (Sharples 1991c:84–87). Finney (2006) proposes that much hillfort development was also in response to the use of projectiles during the middle Iron Age. Avery’s (1986) analysis of hillforts proposes that warfare took place between specialized assault groups that formed an army, which included specialized engineers and commissariats. He suggests that stone and timber lined entrances, high dump ramparts, and inner portals formed complex entrances that were designed to combat a gate-burning tactic (see also Armit 2007). In the late Iron Age, the coalescing of smaller groups allowed the emergence of a fighting elite and powerful individuals, who centralized and controlled power using a framework of clients based upon the agricultural economy and material goods (Champion 1997:92–93; Gwilt and Haselgrove 1997:7; Haselgrove 1994:3; Sharples 1991c:84–87). Maiden Castle was

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Violence as an Aspect of the Durotriges Female Life Course 73

a high-status site throughout the period and Sharples (1991c) proposes that the hillfort was an important center of power for the Durotriges tribe, reflected in the development of its defensive architecture. However, by the end of the second century B.C., the ceasing of this work suggests that intra-tribe conflict decreased but external warfare increased. Sharples (1991c) considers that violence occurred between individuals to acquire wealth and status, but also between groups for control of valuable areas of the landscape and to increase their territory, and observes that many of Wessex’s hillforts are located in or close to large tracts of productive land. With the development of Roman client kingdoms in southeast Britain after A.D. 43, and an increase in tensions between these communities and more peripheral tribes, the Durotriges may have engaged in sporadic internal and external conflict (e.g., raiding and warfare), before finally being defeated in A.D. 43 by the Roman army (Bates et al. 2002; Creighton 2000; Cunliffe 2004; Hill 2007; Mattingly 2006; Sharples 1991a).

Materials and Methods The sample employed in this study consists of adult female and subadult human remains dating from the fifth century B.C. to the early first century A.D. (Table 4.1) curated by institutions in England: a total of 53 adult females and 72 subadult individuals (Redfern 2006; Redfern and DeWitte 2011). These individuals were derived from 12 cemetery or settlement contexts, which were located in the south, east, and west of the county and the majority of samples date to the late Iron Age (first century B.C. to first century A.D.) (Table 4.1). The majority of burial contexts were located in or nearby to the region’s main town during the Roman period, Durnovaria (Dorchester), which is located in the southwest of the county (see Redfern 2008; Redfern and DeWitte 2011). Unfortunately, due to inter-cemetery differences in phasing and the inability to consistently categorize burials from the earliest phases of Roman occupation, a transition sample could not be identified. Individuals were included in the sample if they were from articulated inhumations or securely dated contexts and conformed to stages zero to three of preservation (Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994). Subadult age at death was determined using a combination of dental development and eruption, diaphyseal length, and epiphyseal fusion methodologies (Moorrees et al. 1963a, 1963b; Scheuer and Black 2000; Ubelaker 1989). Where the skeletal age and dental age were both available, the dental age was selected as this has the most reliable correlation to chronological age (Lewis and Garn 1960). The age groups devised by Buikstra and Ubelaker (1994:9) were employed (cf. Redfern 2007b): fetal (20 years old) was achieved by scoring the morphology of the skull and ossa coxae using the methods described in Buikstra and Ubelaker (1994). Adult age at death was determined using degeneration of the pubic symphysis (Brooks and Suchey 1990), auricular surface (Lovejoy et al. 1985), and agerelated changes in sternal rib end morphology (I˙sçan and Loth 1986a, 1986b). Adults were divided into the age ranges stated in Buikstra and Ubelaker (1994:9): young adult (20–35 years old), middle adult (36–50 years old), older adult (more than 50 years old), and adult (>20 years old).

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Table 4.1 Samples Used in the Study by Date, Type, and Number of Females and Subadults Date

Settlement Type

Site

Female

Subadult

M-LIA

Settlement

Gussage All Saints

4

21

LIA

Cemetery

Alington Avenue

4

—

Cemetery

Dorchester Bypass

6

5

Hillfort

Hod Hill

1

—

Isolated burial associated with a cemetery

Kimmeridge

1

1

Hillfort cemetery

Maiden Castle

24

9

Cemetery

Portesham

1

—

Cemetery

Poundbury Camp

5

27

Cemetery

Rope Lake Hole

-

1

Cemetery

Tarrant Hinton

2

—

Cemetery

Tolpuddle Bypass

2

3

Cemetery

Whitcombe

2

2

Period Total

52

69

Wainwright 1979; 2 Davies et al. 2002; 3. Young 1974; 4 Richmond 1968; 5. O’Connell 2000; 6. Wheeler 1943; 7. Fitzpatrick 1997; 8. Farwell and Molleson 1993; 9. Maw 1970; 10. Graham 2007; 11. Hearne and Birkbeck 1999; 12. Aitken and Aitken 1991.

1

Recording Skeletal Evidence of Trauma The theme of this study will be explored using the skeletal evidence for trauma. In order to achieve this, the following types of peri- and ante-mortem skeletal data are discussed: postcranial fractures, blunt-force cranial trauma, and sharp-force weapon and projectile injuries (blunt and sharp). Trauma is defined as an injury or wound that affects the body (Roberts 1991:226) and this category includes fractures and weapon and projectile injuries (Byers 2006; Roberts and Manchester 2005). In the recording and analysis of trauma, it is essential to distinguish between injuries that had occurred at or shortly before the time of death (peri-mortem) and those that had taken place before death and show evidence of healing (ante-mortem). This division is made, because peri-mortem events are less frequently observed in the archaeological record and their analysis can provide information on the cause and manner of death (Sauer 1988; Walker 2001). Nevertheless, it should be noted that it is often impossible to distinguish between peri- and postmortem events due to taphonomic damage (Jurmain 2005:185). In this study, fracture types were identified with reference to the descriptions and guidance published by Resnick (2002), Galloway (1999), Judd (2008), and Ortner (2003).

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Spondylolysis and osteochondritis dissecans were not included in this analysis, as ­clinical research has demonstrated these fractures to have a multifactorial aetiology (Resnick and Goergen 2002). The analysis of post-cranial fracture types permits the differentiation of direct and indirect traumas (Lovell 1997). Direct blows to the body result in comminuted (>two pieces), transverse, crushing, depressed, compressed, and pressure fracture types, whereas indirect trauma (i.e., from a fall) produces fractures away from the point of impact and causes ­spiral, oblique, greenstick, impacted, burst, comminuted (T or Y shape), and avulsion fractures (Lovell 1997:141–142). However, this division is not always clear-cut and care must be taken to understand the archaeological context in which the fractures were sustained (Judd and Redfern 2012), as Jurmain (2005) reminds us that trauma patterns cannot just be “read-off” a skeleton. Blunt-force cranial trauma is produced by blows to the head using a range of ­instruments (e.g., clubs) or by the head impacting against a hard surface, and results in discontinuities, plastic deformation, beveling, and radiating and concentric fracture lines that cover a wide area (Berryman and Haun 1996; Byers 2006:294). The location of fractures on cranial bones may permit the direction of blows to the head to be determined. Experimental studies by Gurdjian et al. (1950a, 1950b) established the relationship between the location of blows and where fractures will develop. These were recorded if a projectile or sharp-force weapon injury had not caused the fractures. It is acknowledged that overlap does exist in how these traumas are manifested in the cranium, and because many individuals had multiple cranial traumas present, these may have obscured the recognition of particular injuries. An estimation of the number and sequence of traumas is often made ambiguous by repeated blows to a single area that can hide earlier fractures, taphonomic damage obscuring and damaging affected areas, poor skeletal recovery during excavation, and incomplete skeletons (Knüsel 2005; Loe 2008). Multiple peri-­mortem traumas can make such analysis unfeasible, as it is not always possible to distinguish between trauma that contributed to or was the cause of death, and mutilation after death (Loe 2008; Willey 1990). Sharp-force weapon injuries are perhaps the clearest evidence of interpersonal violence but the skeletal prevalence rate will underestimate the past true incidence, as the majority of such injuries affect the soft tissue (Shepherd et al. 1990). These injuries are produced by single- or doubled-edged bladed instruments that apply narrowly focused and dynamic compression forces to a bone and produce a puncture, incision, or cleft, often with wastage fragments depending on the force and direction of the blow (Byers 2006:312–318). Such injuries are usually linear, distinct with a clean and flat edge, and have a smooth polished surface (Boylston 2006). However, it must be noted that one weapon may produce many injury types, further complicated by the plastic nature of bone often masking the true dimensions of a weapon (Boylston 2006; Byers 2006; Lewis 2008). The location, severity, and morphology of these injuries allow us to investigate the context in which they were sustained but this may be complex, because in an assault, the victim will try to avoid the blows or may only be struck once he or she has been forced onto the ground (Byers 2006:312–322). In organized fighting, the blows may be more directed and fewer in number, as individuals are usually trained and experienced, but in routs the fighting may be more brutal (Ingelmark 2001; Novak 2000; Wenham 1989:137). To a certain extent, the type of injuries sustained reflects the archaeological/historical period and

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the rules of engagement in each situation—it would be misleading to compare a prehistoric sample with a later one from the English Civil War. In the late Iron Age, projectiles consisted of sharp and blunt weapons: spears, arrows, stones, and slingstones. The clinical literature shows that stoning injuries will result in depressed fractures (Amir et al. 2005; Judd 1970), and forensic and archaeological research has shown that projectiles will cause penetration and/or perforation of the bone surface, complete d ­ iscontinuity, bone displacement, beveling, and radiating and concentric fractures (Berryman and Symes 1998; Byers 2006; Kimmerle and Baraybar 2008; Smith et al. 2007). Smith et al.’s (2007) study also notes that arrowheads may mimic a pointed sharp implement as they leave incised lozengeshaped marks that will be macroscopically indistinguishable from sharp-weapon injuries. The type of trauma produced also depends upon the instrument used (i.e., sword or club) and the direction, speed, and force of the blow (Byers 2006). The blow may be of such force that fractures are produced; this is particularly common in the skull where radiating fractures are produced by heavy weapons (Knüsel 2005). The distribution and location of trauma in an individual are influenced by the context in which the victim sustained these wounds. If wounds are located on the anterior aspect of the body, it may be hypothesized that the victim was assaulted from this direction. However, forensic research has shown that a person may be attacked from the front but only sustain wounds to their back, because they have attempted to flee, or have been forced to the ground and then attacked. It is also commonplace for people to receive multiple injuries and/or be mutilated when they are unconscious or already dead (Byers 2006). The results are presented at the crude prevalence rate: the number of individuals affected by a fracture (direct or indirect), a sharp-force weapon injury, a projectile injury or blunt-force cranial trauma from a particular period and age group. The results were tested for statistical significance using a chi-square test with Yates correction with the two-tailed p value set at 0.05 percent (Madrigal 2005).

Results Inter-Regional Differences The Durotriges sample displayed site-type differences in the presence of ante- and peri-­mortem traumas and the types of trauma observed. All of the samples derived from settlement (e.g., Gussage All Saints) and cemetery (e.g. Whitcombe) sites (Table 4.1) did not have evidence for peri-mortem trauma (fractures and weapon injuries) and only a small proportion of the ante-mortem trauma was caused by direct mechanisms. Only females from Maiden Castle hillfort had evidence for ante-mortem injuries caused by direct mechanisms, including interpersonal violence, and were the only females to evidence for peri-mortem trauma—fractures and weapon injuries. Demography A total of 55 adult females and 80 subadults whose age at death could be determined using dental and osteological methodologies were available for analysis. The majority of subadults were fullterm (N = 45) and infant (N = 21) individuals (Figure 4.2). Adult female

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Violence as an Aspect of the Durotriges Female Life Course 77

demography showed that almost equal numbers of adults were dying between the ages of 20 and 45 years old (Figure 4.3) with fewer females reaching more than 50 years old. Figure 4.3 demonstrates that individuals with skeletal evidence for trauma can be identified in the older subadult and all adult age groups. The highest numbers of individuals with evidence for trauma had died between the ages of 20 to 50 years, and accounted for at least 6 percent of all deaths in those age groups, particularly for those aged 20 to 35 years old. 40 Percentage of study sample

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

Fetal

Infant

Child

Adolescent Young adult Middle adult Older adult Age Group

Adult

figure 4.2 The regional demography of late Iron Age Dorset: subadult and female individuals.

Trauma present

No trauma present

100

CPR % by age group

80

60

40

20

0 20-35 yrs

36-45 yrs

> 45 yrs

> 20 yrs

Age Group

figure 4.3 Regional demography of late Iron Age Dorset showing the age distribution of individuals with trauma.

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This result is supported by a new demographic analysis of late Iron Age Dorset, which employed 23 subadults for whom age at death could be established and 52 adult ­individuals from Maiden Castle with observable pubic symphyseal faces, and 48 subadults and 40 adults from the settlement and cemetery sites of Kimmeridge, Tarrant Hinton, Flagstones, Alington Avenue, Gussage All Saints, Whitcombe Farm, and Poundbury Camp. The results of this study indicate that at the non–Maiden Castle sites, more than half of the individuals are subadults and there are approximately equal numbers of adult males and females. This finding conforms to the normal attritional mortality profile of prehistoric populations (Chamberlain 2006). Maiden Castle has a different mortality profile, as there are more males present and a smaller proportion of subadults, a statistically significant result (X2 = 10.31, d.f. = 2, p = 0.006). The demography of the hillfort conforms to a catastrophic mortality profile, indicating that the individuals had died during conflict (Redfern and Chamberlain 2011). Trauma by Age-Group Analysis of the regional sample demonstrates that trauma was identified in adolescent, young, and middle adult age-groups (Figure 4.3). The greatest numbers of females with trauma were identified in the young and middle adult categories (N = 9 respectively), with older females having the lowest number of adults affected (N = 3) (Figure 4.3). Subadults (50 years old).  Older adult females had the lowest crude prevalence rates for trauma, and did not have evidence for healed cranial injuries caused by blunt or

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Table 4.8 Types of Skull Trauma Observed in Middle Adult Females Presented at the Crude Prevalence Rate (CPR %) Timing and Type of Injury

Cranium

Mandible

Peri-mortem blunt-force

40 (8)

5 (1)

Ante-mortem blunt-force

5 (1)

—

Peri-mortem sharp-weapon injury

5 (1)

—

Peri-mortem blunt projectile

15 (3)

—

Ante-mortem blunt projectile

5 (1)

—

Note:  Numbers of individuals affected are given in parentheses.

Table 4.9 Distribution of Older Adult Female Fractures Presented at the Crude Prevalence Rate (CPR %) Direct Force

Indirect Force

Unknown Mechanism

Fracture Location

Timing of Trauma

Transverse

Compression

Compound

Complete

Vertebrae

Ante-mortem

—

50 (2)

—

—

Ribs

Ante-mortem

—

—

—

25 (1)

Radii

Ante-mortem

25 (1)

—

—

—

Hand bones

Ante-mortem

—

—

25 (1)

—

Note:  Numbers of individuals affected are given in parentheses.

sharp instruments, weapons, or projectiles, and no peri-mortem traumas were observed. The distribution of force for ante-mortem fractures was almost equally divided between direct (N = 3) and indirect (N = 2) forces (Table 4.9).

Discussion Clinical and sociological perspectives show us that we should expect to encounter evidence of violence in the female life course. However, in bioarchaeology, how the osteological evidence is interpreted should be undertaken with caution because modern societies have seen an escalation of violent behavior, especially by women (The Institute for Criminal Policy Research 2009). The value of applying a life course approach to bioarchaeological data (see also Buikstra and Scott 2009) enables us to have a better understanding of when the trauma occurred (Lovejoy and Heiple 1981; Neves et al. 1999) and how this may relate to changes in status and responsibilities.

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This bioarchaeological study of trauma in the life course of females from the Durotrigian territory of Dorset, England, shows us two contrasting insights into their l­ ife-ways and wider events in late Iron Age Britain. The first insight is that theirs was an agricultural population, whose communities had equal mortality risk, normal demographic patterns and a low risk of violence, as the majority of traumas observed in the sample were ante-mortem and caused by accidental mechanisms, indicating that female participation in or exposure to violence was very low—as strongly evidenced by the younger and older adult ante-mortem indirect fracture data (Tables 4.3 and 4.9) (Redfern 2010; Redfern and DeWitte 2011; Redfern and Chamberlain 2011). These data support wider archaeological evidence for an agricultural economy and engagement in domestic activities (Gale 2003; Sharples 2010). The findings of the present study also correspond to those reported from attritional burials in late Iron Age Britain, whereby very few fractures are reported in females and the majority appear to have been sustained by accidental mechanisms (King 2009; Roberts and Cox 2003:98–100). The second insight is that their agrarian life-ways were punctuated by episodes of violence, which can be divided into the ante- and peri-mortem events. The evidence for violence in this sample derives from the late Iron Age females buried at Maiden Castle hillfort (Table 4.1), a result supported by the conflict mortality profile of that site (Redfern and Chamberlain 2011), and the presence of direct-force fractures to the scapula and long bones, weapon and projectile injuries (Tables 4.2–4.9). The pattern of ante-mortem direct-force fractures differs between age groups, with the majority observed in young females (Table 4.3), suggesting that they were received before the age of 35. However, it should be remembered that these results are biased by a single injury recidivist from Maiden Castle. Nevertheless, as Table 4.5 shows, young adult females also had the highest prevalence rates of healed projectile and blunt-force cranial injuries. It is suggested that the range of ante-mortem evidence shows that different types of conflict affected their lives. Taken in context of late Iron Age hillfort activity (Sharples 1991c, 2010), the projectile injuries are more suggestive of organized larger-scale conflict, which, due to the nature of projectile weaponry, may not have excluded female participation, because learning to handle these weapons usually begins in childhood, they do not require great physical strength, and anthropological evidence shows that female herders regularly used them to control predators and catch game (see Redfern 2009). The small number of healed assault injures is more difficult to place in context, because only three females had cranial fractures (Tables 4.5 and 4.8), and three young adult females had fractures to the ribs and scapula. It is possible that these injuries may have been sustained during interpersonal violence within their community, or between members of the Durotriges confederacy, or as noncombatant victims of intertribal warfare (see Martin et al. 2001). The option for their active participation as combatants in conflict cannot be dismissed outright, because clinical data shows us that the majority of trauma sustained by any individual affects the soft tissue, which has not been preserved in this study area. Therefore, as with all archaeological populations, we can never know the “real” levels of trauma (Judd and Redfern 2012). Evidence that lends weight to their being involved in large-scale conflict includes the coexistence of peri-mortem trauma (Tables 4.3–4.8, see below), the conflict mortality profile of the hillfort, and, similar to cases involving males from Maiden Castle hillfort and

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other burial locations in late Iron Age Dorset (data presented in Redfern 2006), a paucity of skeletal evidence for healed direct-force fractures, particularly to the cranio-facial skeleton, a finding that is reflected in national data (King 2009; Roberts and Cox 2003:98–100) and in other examples of prehistoric martial catastrophic contexts (e.g., Meyer et al. 2009). The role of women in conflicts during the late Iron Age may be suggested from the primary literature concerning Celtic Europe (Koch and Carey 2003). The Insular literature does include female warriors, such as Scáthach, who was a prophetess highly proficient in warfare and ran a training school for warriors (Green 1997:148–149). However, as Márkus’s (1992) review of female agency in Celtic Insular literature and myths shows, these texts (e.g., the Ulster Cycle) do not provide evidence of the active participation of women in a society that accepted them as equals; instead their power and influence is shown to be dangerous. The Insular texts also contain limited information about women of non-elite or “other” statuses, where (focusing on violence) they are mentioned as slaves/captives taken during episodes of raiding and intertribal conflict (Green 1997; Koch and Carey 2003). Textual evidence from a Roman perspective focuses on stock characters, usually of high status, uttering fabricated speeches that make political and social comments on the Empire and do not accurately portray any individual (Green 1997:26; Hingley and Unwin 2005:58). The texts relating to Britain, record Boudica as an active combatant, in contrast to the other British female leader recorded in the texts—Cartimanuda, a Roman collaborator (Hingley and Unwin 2005:8). But again, their application to preconquest communities (particularly in the southwest) is problematic, as both are high-status individuals, from tribes located in the southeast and northeast of England, and date from a period of political and social instability (Green 1997; Hingley and Unwin 2005). In the literature relating to European societies, Green (1997:29–31) observes that there is evidence to show that women did actively participate in warfare as combatants, or that they stayed in carts positioned at the margins of the battlefield, where they were “supporters” (this is reported for the Boudican rebellion). It should be noted that, again, this information relates to communities during a period of warfare with an Empire, which would be quite different than tribal conflict (Ferguson 2000; Otterbein 2004). Overall, the Roman view of their interaction with organized collective violence suggests that the majority were noncombatants who might have been killed or injured in the fray—indeed; this is noted by Tacitus and Caesar (Green 1997:26–29; Grossman 1996:175). Although some of the healed traumas support this—for example, the healed projectile injuries, which could have been sustained on the periphery of battle—the presence of direct-force injuries such as the proximal third humeral fracture shows that some females were hurt in close-quarters interpersonal violence. The peri-mortem data strongly contrast to the ante-mortem evidence, but these injuries sustained shortly before or at the time of death are only found in the Maiden Castle hillfort sample. It should be noted that other Iron Age samples from Dorset with evidence for weapon and other lethal traumas have been lost to us, and therefore our knowledge is biased toward this hillfort (Gale 2003; Redfern 2011; Sharples 1991b). The long bone perimortem fractures (Tables 4.3 and 4.6), although caused by indirect forces such as falling, does not mean that they cannot occur in an episode of conflict, such as when the victim is running away (see Judd 2004:46–47). As many of the affected females have peri-mortem

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Violence as an Aspect of the Durotriges Female Life Course 85

cranial fractures, and a minority (N = 4) have projectile and sharp-force weapon injuries (Tables 4.4, 4.5, 4.7, 4.8), this also supports the hypothesis that the peri-mortem fractures were sustained during an episode of conflict (Redfern 2006, 2011). Overall, the peri-mortem evidence, combined with the demographic analysis of the ­hillfort (Redfern and Chamberlain 2011), shows that many Durotriges females died in an ­episode of conflict, which may have taken place at Maiden Castle hillfort. Unfortunately, radiocarbon dating of the burials from the hillfort has not been undertaken, and therefore their dating relies on archaeological evidence that dates these burials to between the first century B.C. and first century A.D. (Hamlin 2007; Sharples 1991a, 2010; Wheeler 1943). Therefore, it is suggested that potentially they derive from inter/intratribal conflict and/or from a battle with the invading Roman army in A.D. 43 (Redfern 2011; see also, Wheeler 1943). Securely identified samples of individuals killed during the Roman conquest are sparse in the archaeological record. In the Czech Republic, at the site of Hradisko in Moravia, a Roman fortification moat contained the remains of 34 adults and children; these skeletons had evidence of decapitation and sharp-force weapon injuries and are considered to have been killed during the conquest of that territory (Docˇkalová 2005). Bioarchaeological analysis of the human remains recovered from the battle site of Kalkriese (Germany), where in A.D. 9 German tribes annihilated three Roman legions, has endeavored to distinguish between Roman and German individuals. In the German human remains, multiple sharp-force weapon injuries were observed to the cranium, upper limbs, torso, and lower limbs; limb amputations, decapitation, and blunt-force trauma were also reported (Wells 2004:178–182; Wilbers-Rost 1999). Working from Hamlin’s (2007; personal communication 2009) hypothesis that in a period of crisis Durotriges females may have been able to widen their roles, it is suggested that the social and political environment of the first century B.C.-A.D. provided such a scenario (see also Otterbein 1997:104–109). Using primary sources, we can reliably establish that the Claudian invasion (A.D. 43) affected Dorset, as Legio II Augusta fought numerous battles in the southwest and conquered many hillforts, including Maiden Castle (Tacitus 1973, VI–VII). Therefore, in this period of stress, the involvement of older subadults and young to middle-aged female combatants should be expected, as work in Post-Contact North America has shown, “the need for warriors…may have provided opportunities that previously went unfilled by women” (Hollimon 2001:189). The Roman authors noted European female combatants in times of stress; Plutarch’s (first and second centuries A.D.) biography of Marius records that Celtic women used swords against the legionaries, and this active participation is supported by Ammanius (fourth century A.D.) (Green 1997:28–29). Adam’s (1983) cross-cultural study of women warriors also supports this hypothesis, as he concluded that in the nine societies (of a total of 67) where women frequently participated in warfare, all were characterized by exclusive external wars, and in other societies, women only actively participated when their settlements were under attack. The type of weapons used by the Durotriges would have required extensive training (probably from childhood), as well as socialization to prepare them for conflict, because people who are more resilient will actively respond to violence and are less likely to experience psychological trauma (Johansen et al. 2008; Redfern 2011; World Health Organization

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2002:8). Clinical, anthropological, and historical data all show that females may be s­ ocialized for participation in violence, and many Durotriges females—particularly the middle adults— appear to have been affected by violence before the last conflict that took their lives.

Conclusions The Durotriges tribe appears to have had parity between the sexes, as evidenced by the bioarchaeological and funerary data (Hamlin 2007; Redfern and DeWitte 2011). This adaptable approach to life-ways suggests that in periods of crisis, many more females and older subadults were able to actively participate in martial episodes. By uniting a life course perspective with bioarchaeological data, this study has demonstrated that it is a useful tool in understanding the prevalence and type of violence sustained by Durotriges females. The bioarchaeological data shows that in the late Iron Age, female-directed violence had two clear distinctions. Using the World Health Organization’s (2002:5) divisions, the ante-mortem data show that the majority of injuries were caused by accidental mechanisms sustained as part of agrarian activities, or direct forces produced by interpersonal and/or collective violence (Redfern 2010, 2011). In direct contrast, the perimortem evidence from Maiden Castle shows that many females had been brutally killed in a conflict situation that may have included the Roman conquest—a frequent occurrence for communities who resisted conquest (Redfern 2011; Redfern and Chamberlain 2011; Kate Gilliver pers. comm 2010). Might the presence of a small number of injury recidivists with ante- and peri-mortem traumas potentially indicate existing active combatants, and therefore accepted targets of assault (Redfern 2007a)? Alternatively, they may represent victims of earlier episodes of violence in a tribal context, with the females and subadults with solely peri-mortem traumas indicative of a serious crisis period—the Roman conquest. The life course approach demonstrated that middle adults had the highest trauma prev­ alence rates, reflecting accidental and direct force injuries sustained while growing up and during earlier adulthood. These and the young adults were likely to have been caught up in fighting as active participants, rather than being killed during a massacre where, typically, younger children and older adults show evidence of trauma—none of which were identified in this sample (e.g., Turner and Morris 1970; Willey 1990). The author considers that these were active participants, because their age, trauma distribution, and type match the male injury recidivists data, and because the females with peri-mortem injuries were only identified at Maiden Castle, a hillfort conquered by the Romans (Redfern 2011; Redfern and Chamberlain 2011). Therefore, the female Durotriges show us two sides of late Iron Age life: the first representative of everyday accidents and intra/intertribal warfare or assaults; the second of a crisis episode(s), where greater numbers of females and subadults participated in order to preserve their way of life against Roman invaders.

Acknowledgments I wish to thank IEMA and the University of Buffalo for inviting me to participate in this seminar and for supporting my visit; special thanks are extended to Sarah Ralph.

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Many of these results were presented at the 2008 Sara Champion lecture for The Prehistoric Society, and the helpful comments and suggestions given by the members were gratefully appreciated and incorporated into this study. The paper includes the findings of research undertaken with Andrew Chamberlain, Sharon DeWitte, Kate Gilliver, Christine Hamlin, Andrew Millard, and Niall Sharples. Thanks are given to Maggie Bellatti, Mercedes Okumura and Jay Stock for all their help during my numerous study visits to the Duckworth Laboratory (University of Cambridge). The doctoral research on which this study is based has benefited from the help of Simon James and Megan Brickley, and was supported by grants from the University of Birmingham and an Ian Horsey award from Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society. The help and support of Peter Woodward and Dorset County Museum throughout my research is gratefully acknowledged. References Cited Adams, D. B. 1983 Why Are There So Few Women Warriors? Behavior Science Research 18(3):196–212. Albarella, Umberto 2007 The End of the Sheep Age: People and Animals in the Late Iron Age. In The Later Iron Age in Britain and Beyond, edited by Colin C. Haselgrove and Tom Moore, pp. 389–402. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Aldhouse Green, Miranda 2001 Dying for the Gods: Human Sacrifice in Iron Age and Roman Europe. Tempus, Stroud. Allen, Terry, Shannon A. Novak, and Lawrence L. Bench 2007 Patterns of Injuries: Accident or Abuse. Violence Against Women 13(8):802–816. Amir, L. D., L. Aharonson-Daniel, K. Peleg, Y. Waisman, and Israel Trauma Group 2005 The Severity of Injury in Children Resulting from Acts against Civilian Populations. Annals of Surgery 241(4):666–670. Arber, Sarah, and Jay Ginn (editors) 1995 Connecting Gender and Ageing: A Sociological Approach. The Open University Press, Buckingham. Archer, John 2004 Sex Differences in Aggression in Real-World Settings: A Meta-Analytic Review. Review of General Psychology 8:291–322. Archer, John 2006 Testerone and Human Behaviour: An Evaluation of the Challenge Hypothesis. Neuroscience and Biobehavioural Reviews 30:319–345. Archer, John 2009 Does Sexual Selection Explain Human Sex Differences in Aggression? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32(3–4):249–266. Archer, John, and Marcus Latham 2004 Variations in Beliefs about Aggression as a Function of Relationship to the Opponent. Personality and Individual Differences 37(1):33–41. Armit, Ian 2007 “Hillforts at War”: From Maiden Castle to Taniwaha Pa. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 73:25–37. Arnold, Bettina 1996 “Honorary Males” or Women of Substance? Gender, Status and Power in Iron Age Europe. Journal of European Archaeology 3(2):153–168. Arnold, Bettina 2002 “Sein und Werden”: Gender as Process in Mortuary Ritual. In In Pursuit of Gender: Worldwide Archaeological Approaches, edited by Sarah Nelson and Myriam RosenAyalon, pp. 239–256. AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek. Arnold, Bettina 2006 Gender in Mortuary Ritual. In Reader in Gender Archaeology, edited by Sarah M. Nelson, pp. 137–170. AltaMira, Walnut Creek.

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Chapter Five

Facing the Sword

Confronting the Realities of Martial Violence and Other Mayhem, Present and Past Simon T. James Abstract  This gathering was especially welcome, as it offered an opportunity to address a major gap in contemporary archaeology: the failure to establish a mature discourse on violence. Keeley’s War Before Civilization chimed with my own exasperation during the 1980s and ’90s that, in mainstream British Iron Age and Roman archaeology, anything relating to violence was either ignored or downplayed. More researchers are now addressing such matters, but archaeological treatments still often betray a lack of clear thinking. We can see this, for example, in frequent equation of violence with war, and its conflation into the latter. Yet in many cultural contexts, even what I term martial violence (i.e., that dealt by soldiers and warriors, at least ostensibly on behalf of a polity) is far from confined to warfare. This is abundantly clear from the history of the profoundly hierarchical, slave-owning Roman world, which equally illustrates on the grandest scale that violence extends far beyond the martial. Such observations should be banalities, but these matters frequently get airbrushed out of our pictures of past cultures. Unlike other key aspects of human history, violence is not fully theorized in archaeology. We need to address this; and to do so we need to understand why such a situation prevails.

Introduction

T

he Buffalo gathering was especially welcome, as it offered an opportunity to address a major gap in contemporary archaeology: failure thus far to establish a mature, ­theoretically informed discourse on violence and related issues. (By violence I mean the use of ­physical force with intent to inflict injury on people, or damage on their property 98

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and resources. I will also discuss nonphysical, psychological, and symbolic aspects of, or processes parallel to, such physical actions.) From one perspective, this failure is simply bizarre. While direct archaeological traces of violent practices appear surprisingly sparse (below), there is good reason to believe this is deceptive; and many cultures have invested a great deal of their time, talents, and treasure on activities relating to violence, often most obviously armed conflict. Here are a few examples, mostly from my own fields of research. In Iron Age European societies, so-called Celtic art largely comprised embellished weaponry such as swords, while many groups also built fortified centers, sometimes embellished with grisly trophies such as severed heads. The Roman Empire was provided with special theatres of death, arenas for gladiatorial contests that became immensely popular features of provincial life and culture from Britain to the Euphrates. The biggest single organization in that empire was the almost half-million-strong military, which constructed immense systems of frontier control, most elaborately the eighty-mile Hadrian’s Wall. However, this was dwarfed in terms of resource consumption by military installations and engineering works along the Rhine and Danube and in Mesopotamia, and by Rome’s famous road network, built not for commerce but armies. And even Rome’s colossal investments in military manpower and infrastructure were probably outmatched by those of the early Chinese empire (Lewis 2007 30–50, 128–154). Since archaeology takes as its remit all physical remains left by past societies, there is no need for any special academic justification for the study of past violence, in military or other contexts. So why is its study so underdeveloped? A key reason is that, except for bone and forensic specialists, archaeologists are not currently given by their peers the dispensation ­society grants to pathologists, trauma medics, criminologists, or sociologists to deal with such fearful subject matter—especially studying perpetrators. We must of course contemplate victims of violence; however, that is also relatively easy, safe, and comfortable. We must also explore the perspectives of those who sanctioned and inflicted violent acts. While, of course, this does not require us to condone their actions, it remains much more difficult and dangerous; expressing interest in such matters evokes suspicion, even hostility. My comments here are, in consequence, framed with such skeptical interlocutors especially in mind. For such reactions substantially explain why, in mainstream Anglophone archaeology (and to my knowledge beyond), discourse on violence has remained stunted, and generally confined to small peripheral groups of specialists. Archaeology remains substantially “in denial” about violence. My comments relate mainly to the wider community of “cultural archaeologists,” although the smaller tribe of “biological archaeologists” (by which here I mainly mean bone specialists) have not been entirely immune. Keeley’s polemical War Before Civilization (Keeley 1996), which brought the matter to center stage, chimed with my own exasperation during the 1980s and ’90s that, in mainstream British academic archaeology, anything relating to violence was being ignored, downplayed, or sanitized. Iron Age hillforts were explained (away) in almost any terms but warfare, while contemporary “Celtic-style” weaponry and horse-harness was almost ignored for a generation (James 2007). Similarly, the sword was central to the creation and continuance of Roman civilization, yet many Roman archaeologists do not discuss it, preferring to focus on the urban and artistic glories of the “Roman Peace.” Even specialized Roman military archaeologists mostly tend to avoid the realities of

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what they are dealing with, to focus on army organization and ­infrastructure—anything but bloodshed itself (James 2002, 2010). And it seems that at times bone s­ pecialists, too, have tended not to “see” violent trauma on human remains, because they are still discovering how to recognize sometimes “subtle stigmata,” or because they were not e­ specially looking out for it (Knüsel 2005; Redfern, this volume; Walker 2001). I have discussed elsewhere why this situation has arisen (James 2011a). Certainly, in recent years more archaeologists have begun addressing questions of violence, yet treatments still often betray a lack of clear thinking. To me, one telltale indication of the continued immaturity of discourse is the way in which works generally emphasize war first, and violence second. There is nothing necessarily wrong with this, of course, except that it is striking how, in practice, there is a tendency to treat the two words as virtual synonyms, and in discussion to elide “warfare and violence” to “warfare (and violence)” and then just “warfare” (e.g., Thorpe 2005 and Parker Pearson 2005 for such tendencies). This privileges corporate mayhem between groups, diverting attention from violence within them, which may have been at least as important. Maybe this is partly because we think of war as the epitome of violence and, subconsciously, may feel fascination for it (horrified or otherwise), or—and these are not contradictory—we wish to corral violence within something modern ­Westerners consider self-evidently an aberrant state, occurring for the most part at the peripheries of society, on boundaries with other polities. Keeping violence in a box labeled “warfare” means that most of the time we do not need to factor it in when considering “normal” functioning of past societies—precisely how discourse on many ancient cultures tends to be framed. But even what I term martial violence—i.e., that dealt by (where we have evidence, almost universally male) soldiers and warriors, at least ostensibly on behalf of a polity—was and is far from confined to warfare, or even use of weapons: much has been inflicted with boot, fist, or phallus. This is abundantly clear from the history of, for example, the Roman world which, as a profoundly hierarchical, slave-owning society, equally illustrates on the grandest scale how far violence has also always extended beyond warriors. Equation of “violence” with martial actions alone also serves to distract from other contexts where females may have been actors too; historical and contemporary evidence shows that condoning, commissioning, and committing violence was and is largely a male preserve, but by no means entirely. It potentially precludes discussion of female violence (see Redfern, this volume). Such observations should be banalities, yet not only is violence sometimes elided into war; worse, it still frequently gets entirely airbrushed out of representations of past cultures, including the “glory that was Rome.” Unlike other key aspects of past human societies, for example, exchange, production, or dimensions of identity such as gender, violence is neither sufficiently discussed nor (as a consequence) yet adequately theorized in archaeology. We need to confront the issue of violence.

Approaching the Archaeology of Violence I see archaeological study of violence as, ideally, a bipartite reflexive process between, on the one hand, the material record, which may preserve traces of violent incidents and practices, or at least related phenomena, which imply them; and, on the other, our framework

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of understanding of human actions and behavior, drawn from observation of our own world, and study of recent societies, better attested than many of those archaeologists examine. This understanding shapes the interpretations we draw from such evidence— and even what we identify as evidence at all. Crucially, there must be the possibility that fresh data might modify our underlying conceptual framework; otherwise, what we “learn” from archaeology can only be relatively superficial. At worst, it simply reinforces existing ­thinking—or ­prejudices—regarding human motivations, actions, and responses, with regard to i­ndividuals (theory of mind) and collectives, from small groups to empires. It is this framework of understanding on which I will initially focus, especially the widespread paradigms of violence as aberration from a peaceful norm and as pathology. I argue that, to comprehend violence in present or past, we need to challenge—indeed, jettison—both. Among archaeologists, a common default position on the subject of violence, which I have often encountered but rarely heard overtly articulated, is one shared by educated Western opinion at large. It is roughly as follows: violence is entirely destructive, harmful, and useless (as Sting sang in “Fragile”: “Nothing comes from violence, and nothing ever could”); it represents aberration from peaceful and, if not perfectly harmonious, at least nonviolent normality, taken to be the default condition of any society deemed healthy (sic); violence is thus an abnormal, deviant, and/or pathological phenomenon; it is unquestionably bad, often downright evil, and therefore carries moral opprobrium. “Violence” is a strongly pejorative term. But while placing violence beyond the pale asserts our moral integrity, it does nothing to advance comprehension of a widespread human phenomenon, which on such a view is perpetrated by the bad and/or the mad. Indeed, in modern societies it is not only mayhem arising from mental disorders that is discussed in the language of pathology, but violent behaviors more generally. A clear example is the treatment of domestic violence as a public health issue (e.g., Krug et al. 2002). Presenting violence as a disease may provide an effective political and rhetorical approach to problems we face within our own societies, while some acts, such as ritualistic serial murders, are pathological by almost any standard. Other actions we might also regard as at least in part pathological, such as, to take an example of a kind occurring with grim frequency at the time of writing, a suicide bomber who killed herself and more than thirty Shia Moslem pilgrims at Iskendiriya, Iraq, on Friday 13 January 2009 (BBC 2009). This was likely the outcome of what is, to me, itself a deranged extremist Sunni interpretation of the Koran, preying on a vulnerable, perhaps already damaged mind. In such contexts, it might be useful to consider endemic violence as a quasi-pathology of the quasi-organism which is a society; consider also the cases of the Tamil Tigers and Pathans vividly observed by Dalrymple in his Age of Kali (Dalrymple 1999). Similar pathologyframed readings might be made of the motives of Hamas militants firing rockets from Gaza into Israel in hopes of random murder—and for the Israelis who, in a storm of explosives and white phosphorous unleashed on Gaza, slaughtered some 1,300 Palestinians, mostly women and children, a hecatomb of victims immolated in retaliation for each of the thirteen Israelis killed by Hamas in the same period in January 2009. This seemed to me an appallingly brutal and disproportionate overreaction, for which Israelis across almost the entire political spectrum appeared incomprehensibly unapologetic. But in seeking to understand

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such violent flare-ups in the long-running conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, treating them as madness precludes further analysis, or any practical response. Here the pathology paradigm is of negligible utility. Instead, psychological and cultural considerations must take center stage, especially the group dynamics of identity defined in terms of religion and ethnicity, and of fear and hatred of the Other. Similarly, in studying warlike and oppressive past societies, we could employ the pathology paradigm, choosing to judge them “sick,” that is, suffering from collective psychoses, but that may prove less explanation than abdication. Rather, the path to deeper comprehension of this dark aspect of humanity is to recognize that treating all acts of injurious force as beyond the pale is a moral ideal to which relatively few humans actually adhere consistently, even in modern Western societies. As academics, we are likely all to agree that, to us, physical violence is unacceptable as a mode of human interaction, period. However, this puts me in mind of Winston Churchill’s reputed response, when questioned on sin: “I’m agin it.” There are implicit, wry ambiguities in Churchill’s words, not least: it depends what you mean by sin. Similarly, advocating an absolute moral stance on violence may place us on the side of the angels, but it can be an obstacle to understanding our own world, let alone to comprehending past societies in their own terms. For, if violence is defined as the use of injurious force, in practice there is no universal agreement that, reciprocally, all injurious force is violence. Crucially, the pejorative overtones of the term violence obscure the reality that many do not consider all applications of injurious force to be, of their nature, either wholly negative or necessarily bad. Obvious examples are Western attitudes to boxing and military force; those who disapprove of them label them violence, while those who approve do not. The same individuals may locate the boundary variously, according to context or perspective, by, for instance, in war commonly distinguishing between “our legitimate defensive use of minimal force” and “the violence of the enemy.” The events in Gaza in January 2009 underline how such judgments are often a matter of viewpoint, something I first learned during the 1970s–1990s “Troubles” in Northern Ireland (were the “Provos” freedom fighters or terrorists-cum-criminal-gangsters? Soldiers and policemen defenders of citizens and law or military and political oppressors?). If in modern Western societies there is no agreed boundary to what is and what is not violence, then there is little reason to expect existence of a clear universal human category spanning all cultures and languages. Rather, there may at best be comparable perceptions of a spectrum of injurious actions; however, the point along this spectrum at which social disapproval sets in appears to be highly varied and contextual. We are dealing with calculated use of injurious force as a means to achieve some particular end, which is far more usefully conceptualized as social strategy than disease. This is labeled by academics “instrumental violence” (contrasted with “impulsive violence”: Huss 2008:83). The decision to inflict instrumental violence is a calculated risk and, at least apparently, rational. People judge they are likely to gain from it, and feel vindicated often enough for such strategies to persist. Today, we see such decisions especially clearly in the still relatively anarchic arena of international politics, where governments periodically calculate that a net benefit will accrue from starting a war. Recent examples include the Argentinean invasion of the British-held Falkland Islands (Las Malvinas) in 1982, Saddam’s invasions of Iran (1980) and Kuwait (1990), and the Anglo-American-led invasions of Afghanistan

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(2001) and Iraq (2003). While many prove to be bloody miscalculations, others do not, at least to their instigators. Chinese annexation of Tibet may remain troublesome to Beijing, but is doubtless still seen as a long-term success. Further—and this is a crucial point too often forgotten—the calculation may not actually turn on the act of physical violence itself at all, but on its wider, materially intangible effects: on the fear it engenders. The main purpose of instrumental violence may be to give credibility to wider threats, designed to intimidate the weak or to deter the strong: either way to modify others’ behavior, compelling compliance or constraining actions. Hence, occasional savage executions, the public gallows, or the wearing of showy weaponry occasionally wielded lest it lose its terror. We can hardly overestimate the significance for archaeological discourse of these real effects of actual and threatened violence, precisely because they are powerful yet intangible. For modern societies that deprecate the “V-word,” military conflicts with outsiders are commonly presented as, at most, undesirable necessities in an imperfect world. Within societies, instrumental violence is generally seen as illicit, or is clandestine and routinely denied on the public stage (“Of course I don’t beat my partner”; “This government neither practices nor condones torture”; “… fell from a window while trying to escape”). It is usually only marginal groups that openly revel in it (e.g., Jihadist on-camera beheadings of hostages). However, there is evidence that general delicacy about violence is actually a global phenomenon developing especially over the last couple of centuries, and that earlier attitudes were commonly very different (see below). For past societies, matters we often conceptualize in terms of evil or psychological illness may have been seen to resemble accidents and incurable bodily disease: unpleasant but inevitable and routine parts of life. People accepted some violent acts as grimly useful sources of individual or collective benefit. Further, some valued certain practices we deem violent as positively desirable—not as bad, let alone evil—and overtly celebrated them. Our implicitly judgmental moral framing of these matters makes it hard to swallow, or even to consider, the idea that past societies may have had such vastly different understandings of the nature, purpose, and consequences of what we lump together as violence, or that these were not necessarily pathological. Two major strategic options are available in human interactions: collaboration and coercion, with violence constituting the physical part of the spectrum of coercive methods. At least internally, modern Western societies have succeeded in greatly reducing the role of coercion in their discourse and operation, emphasizing persuasion and negotiation, leading to consent and willing collaboration as the desirable modes of interaction. This is a great human achievement, but is also recent and historically anomalous. Through our predominately nonegalitarian past, coercion, facilitated by violence and the threat of ­violence—through fear—routinely operated alongside collaboration, and was far more visible and important in the past than the present (see below). Recently, Pinker has highlighted this “different past,” collating studies that, over recorded human history, appear to show a marked and sustained very long-term downward trend in levels of violence and brutality (albeit with frequent bloody “blips”: Pinker 2007; Pinker 2011 makes these arguments in detail, but appeared too late to consider). He argues that this has been too rapid to explain

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in evolutionary terms, and sees it as a general cultural trend, which he proposes ­continues a pattern already detectable in prehistory. He co-opts Keeley in particular in support for this, and I have argued elsewhere that all this raises major issues which archaeologists need to address (James 2011a). Pinker does seem to have illuminated a real, global progression in human history to place alongside others such as the general shift to agriculture, and the subsequent trend toward urban dwelling. If real (and I think it is), Pinker’s sustained overall decline in coercion, violence, and fear does mark genuine progress in human affairs, although neither inevitable nor irreversible; looming global environmental catastrophe seems likely to throw it into reverse. But with regard to the past, it seems that instrumental violence was not aberrant but integral to the dynamics of most—virtually all?—past societies. In such circumstances, past societies may, like us, have seen absence of war as a desirable condition, but human experience has often been that such peace is not the default condition of society. We came to know our ancestral cultures first through texts surviving from the literate societies of recent millennia. More recently, archaeology has allowed us to venture beyond the bounds of text-attested societies, to look at prehistory—the territory where Keeley (1996) has argued we have been failing badly in addressing these issues. For historical cultural contexts we possess two independent channels of evidence from the past: writings and material remains. We should make use of this, to attempt triangulation on past realities. Considering violence in historical contexts may help us calibrate what material evidence for such practices and their epiphenomena archaeologists might hope to find—and also what we cannot expect to find—when dealing with prehistory, namely, matters out of range of contemporary writings even of distant societies.

The Wider Roman World as a Case Study I would like to offer some observations and reflections on past human violence that draw on study of the Roman world in the widest sense (James 2011b). Rome, being deemed ancestral, and long used as a model for everything from artistic taste to mores and military organization, has a special, literally fundamental place in the history of our Western national cultures. The Roman era also saw profound transformations in Judaism and the rise of Christianity, processes fundamentally driven by Roman state violence. The Judeo-Christian and Classical traditions formed the two pillars on which modern Western civilization and scholarship were built. Rome itself gave us the central term and concept of this volume: the English word ‘violence’ derives from Latin violentia, itself from the root vis. The Oxford Latin Dictionary (OLD) defines violentia as: “the (unreasonable) use of force against others … violence, aggressiveness, passionateness, etc., of disposition or mood.” The primary meanings of vis are: “Physical strength exerted on an object (esp. in order to constrain), force, violence … force used to obtain sexual gratification … Unlawful force or violence.” It is clear from the 28 definitions listed for vis alone in the OLD that while the terms concerned were extended into figurative use, centrally vis and violentia described dangerous or disproportionate physical force, socially unsanctioned or overtly illegal, imperiling good order. It is not just the word violence we have inherited from the Romans, but also its pejorative connotations.

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Philosophical rejection of violence has also been strongly influenced by the Christian ethic of turning the other cheek (Matthew 5:39, an admonition Christians have, on aggregate, not followed with great success). At least in the Anglophone world, this has itself been underpinned by the established reading of the Sixth Commandment as “Thou shalt not kill”—the King James Version text of Deuteronomy 5:17 and Exodus 20:13, actually a dubious translation of original Hebrew more accurately rendered, “Thou shalt not murder” (as most modern Jewish translations of the Torah render it); foreigners and infidels were fair game. Our concept of violence, then, is largely built on the basis of ideas received from the Classical and Judeo-Christian traditions emanating from the Roman Empire, transmitted via historical, legal, and doctrinal writings. Surviving texts give a strong indication of what was happening in Roman times with regard to violent practices—and especially martial violence, a central preoccupation of ancient texts. The Roman world in the broadest sense provides a rich text-informed context for research into the nature of violence in past societies at once familiar but also distant, different, and diverse. The Roman polity itself evolved profoundly, from Italian city-state republic to Mediterranean empire to medieval Christian state (“Byzantium”). To its west were proto-historic “barbarian warrior peoples,” which Rome largely absorbed, and to the north Germans and Steppe peoples it fought but could not annex. The Mediterranean and the Middle East comprised fully literate city-states and larger polities, from Greek poleis and Hellenistic kingdoms to the Parthian and Sasanian empires of Iraq and Iran. In historical records surviving from this world, contemporaries described and sometimes sought to analyze the behavior of their own societies, their neighbors and antagonists. For example, in the second century B.C. the historian Polyius composed a detailed analysis of the social, moral, political, and military reasons for the rise of Rome to dominion over the Mediterranean. This was an attempt to explain to his fellow Greeks this startling, then-recent revolution in affairs, when Roman legions repeatedly defeated the famed Macedonian phalanx of pikemen, which had conquered Achemenid Persia (Polybius, Histories, especially book VI: Walbank 1957, 2002). The result is a nuanced (if, of course, far from objective or complete) text-derived picture of violent practices, their social meanings, symbolic and ideological values, political objectives and outcomes, causes and consequences—providing archaeologists with a strong basis on which to investigate the question of the archaeological visibility of past violence, and generally its study through material means.

Violence and the Roman World: The Historical Picture Roman imperium—at first mostly hegemony, later as territorial empire—provides an example of the outcome of sustained violent aggression. Its extraordinary durability, of the order of a millennium, was also substantially achieved through standing threat of armed force. Among Romans, at least in the dominant discourse of citizens and rulers, while they abhorred vis—unsanctioned violence—much corporal injury and lethal force was regarded as necessary and acceptable—indeed, desirable and laudable. Free masculinity, virtus, was defined around a capacity for violence, especially lethal armed force, in pursuit of personal

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honor and service to the state (McDonnell 2006). Romans also notoriously developed an elaborate theatre of violence. Beyond appealing to bloodlust, gladiator types recalled dangerous foes such as Gauls, Samnites, and Thracians who, actually (Spartacus was a Thracian who was made a gladiator) or in lethal role-play, were compelled to fight and die before Roman audiences, a profoundly powerful assertion—and psychological reassurance—of domination of dangerous peoples by Roman arms (e.g., Futrell 1997). But in matters such as the bloody games, was Rome the exception that proved the rule? Rather, the evidence suggests that, with regard to violence, she was simply first among equals. While early Rome was still one Italian city-state among many, the warrior’s prowess was celebrated in Etruscan and Campanian art, and through offerings of arms at sanctuaries and the interment of entire panoplies among the Samnites and related peoples. Even the Greeks, that most civilized of people by ancient or recent reckonings, carved colonies out of the Italian coastlands and boasted of their “spear-won land.” Gladiatorial combats were themselves a relatively belated addition to this far wider Mediterranean tradition of celebrating martial violence. And they were invented not by Romans, but were developed out of bloody funerary rites by Campanians, becoming absorbed with them into Roman culture (Futrell 1997:3–5). Rome was a shark—but in a sea full of other sharks. To its east, the Hellenistic Greek kingdoms waged bloody expansionist wars, and were imitated in their aggressive behavior by smaller polities such as the Hasmonean Jewish state (Millar 1993:344–346). In the west, Gauls engaged in large-scale plundering raids, seized land south of the Alps, and served widely as mercenaries, as did many men from the Iberian peninsula (Yalichev 1997). Roman-era societies were mostly slave-owning and prone to internal violence ranging from endemic brigandage (Grünewald 2004) and repressive force to slave uprisings and full-scale civil wars. It was a world reliant on whip and sword. We know about the cultural preoccupation with the sword in most detail for Rome itself. By the end of the republic, the City was an enormous complex of war memorials, but not in our sense: solemn, regretful monuments “to the fallen” hardly existed. Public spaces and buildings, and the homes of the senatorial elite, were festooned with the symbols of war, especially its actual material culture: armor, weapons, the bronze rams of warships (see Dillon and Welch 2006). These were not Roman arms, but booty taken from defeated enemies. They were crowing celebrations of conquest, domination, slaughter, and enslavement, many set up as formal thank-offerings to the gods. Rome was full of “manubial” temples, shrines promised to favorite deities by generals in return for victory in battle, fulfilled and funded from enemy spoils. From the middle republic, Roman discourse and visual symbolism focused less on war per se than on successful war. On the battlefield, victory became a habit and then an expectation. It was personified as a winged goddess bearing the victor’s crown. Like that of many other Roman deities, this iconography was copied from Greek models, but Roman Victoria came to be far more important to Romans than Nike ever was to Greeks (Hölscher 1967, 2006). The cult of Victory became a national obsession. Military domination was celebrated on a vast scale in imperial monuments such as the Flavian amphitheatre (Colosseum) and the “Temple of Peace,” built by Jewish war-slaves

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from the Great Revolt, and funded and embellished by the plunder of Jerusalem taken in A.D. 70. That a Temple of Peace should be bankrolled and built in such a manner may look an obscene and cynical irony to us, but would have made perfect sense to a Roman, for whom “peace” was not something to be negotiated but imposed, even inflicted: pax presupposed utter, abject capitulation of the foe at the point of a Roman sword (Rosenstein 2007). This, then, provides perhaps the supreme example of the reality that (pace Sting) something can come from violence, for some people at least some of the time—or in the case of the Roman Empire, for substantial sectors of society over a period of centuries. Violence was commonly deployed within all ancient societies, while perhaps every polity of the Roman era sometimes made the calculation that war was in its interests. Some got it wrong, or were hapless victims of others’ aggression. Violence certainly did destroy entire peoples, for example, the Gallic Eburones, who suffered “ethnocide” (forcible dissolution as a polity) if not full genocide (Caesar, Gallic War 5.24–41, 6.34; they vanish from history thereafter). Yet—and this is something we hardly discuss—even for the losers in war, witnessing and (providing it is survived) suffering systematic violence can have paradoxical constructive, creative side-effects, to which our moral judgment of its universal, unconditional badness can blind us. Martial violence especially can be instrumental in reforging existing identities and creating new ones: it is a driver of ethnogenesis. (To reiterate: this is not to condone the horrors perpetrated, or to argue that the outcome somehow mitigates them: it is simply an observation of counterintuitive consequences.) A striking example of phoenix-like re-creation out of the crucible of Roman violence was the transformation of Judaism under the empire (Millar 2006). The appalling slaughters of the two great Jewish Revolts shattered the society of the Second Temple, and symbolically disassociated Jewry from Judea, which was renamed Palestine. Surviving Jewish communities rapidly developed new ethnic/religious structures, the rabbinical society that characterized and sustained Jewish culture and identity for centuries thereafter. The twentieth century would then see another violent catastrophe resulting in a further revolutionary turn in Jewish history, a new episode of horror and national redefinition (the Holocaust, rapidly followed by the founding of Israel), and yet more war, ethnic cleansing, and further ethnogenesis (of a distinct, self-aware Palestinian national identity). Closely intertwined with the bloody transformation of Jewry under the Roman empire in the first and second centuries A.D. was the creation of Christianity as a trans-ethnic religious community, which spread among Romans and provincials, especially the poor. It was substantially boosted in cohesion and appeal during the third century by the courage of martyrs during violent state persecutions—spectacles themselves deriving from Roman rather than Jewish tradition (Carter, this volume). Eventually adopted as the imperial cult, in Byzantium Christianity became the central pillar of the state. There were other special, and rather remarkable, cultural circumstances in the case of Rome. Victims of her wars often suffered mass enslavement, and many of the enslaved were effectively worked to death; in this Rome resembled many contemporary societies in kind, if she outdid them in scale. Yet, exceptionally for ancient polities, a significant minority of those enslaved by the Romans actually recovered and even improved their fortunes

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in the long term, for the Romans not only freed many slaves, but gave them citizenship. In ­imperial times, it is thought, most of the vast population of the City were descendants of slaves, now incorporated into Roman society. Roman martial violence and political aggression also precipitated formation of powerful new polities around the Roman world, from Ireland to Iran; manifestations of the “­violent edge of empire” effect (Ferguson and Whitehead 1999). Beyond the northern frontiers major barbarian confederacies concatenated during the early centuries A.D., largely due to the proximity and actions of Rome. These political entities, including the Scots, Picts, Saxons, Franks, Alamanni, and Goths, gave rise to the medieval kingdoms of Europe (for the example of the Goths and an overview of the “fall of the Western empire” see Heather 1996, 2005). But the most important of these peripheral changes precipitated by Roman violence was in the East: the rise of Sasanian Iran (Brosius 2006; Curtis and Stewart 2008; Daryaee 2006; Dignas and Winter 2007). Appearance of this “Neo-Persian” empire was the supreme example of “imperial blow-back.” The preceding Arsacid Parthian empire was weakened by serial Roman military aggressions, but Rome’s inability to hold Mesopotamia created a power vacuum into which the Sasanids exploded. From the third century A.D. Sasanian Iran became Rome’s most dangerous enemy. Proximity of this great new empire was a major reason for the shift in the center of gravity of Roman imperial power to Constantinople, and its evolution into “Byzantium.” In the seventh century, Sasanian Iran fell to Islam, but its culture formed the substrate for the medieval caliphate. These examples illustrate the fact that, while an appalling meat grinder, Roman martial violence had multiple creative side effects, on an enormous scale. Outcomes certainly unintended and undesired by the Roman state, they proved as important for world history as Roman imperialism itself. If Roman violence destroyed, transformed, and even inadvertently created its antagonists, Rome was itself created, defined, and refined in relation to the violence of others. The republic was forged in an Italy characterized by endemic warfare and fratricidal conflict, which tore at social fabrics, something also widely true of the contemporary Mediterranean as a whole. Rome’s own foundation myths were blood-spattered. Aeneas escaped burning Troy and fought his way into Italy: Virgil’s Aeneid opens with the word arma (arms, weapons), and ends with a fatal sword thrust. The foundation of the City was desecrated by Romulus’s murder of his twin. The republic was remembered as born in rejection of the tyranny of the Tarquins, the city then being saved from the vengeful Etruscans by Horatius’s heroic holding of the bridge over the Tiber (Livy 2.10). Equally edifying, and probably equally unhistorical, was the gallant defense of the Capitol against the Gallic Senones who sacked Rome in 387 B.C. (Livy 5.47), setting the tone for Roman pluck against these archetypal fearful barbarians. And then there was the death struggle with Hannibal and Carthage, the prelude to Rome’s astonishingly rapid smashing of the power of the Hellenistic kingdoms. Nevertheless, for all Rome’s public obsession with war and victory, its power was never solely based on violence. Indeed, it may be that the supreme military capability that Rome used to conquer and hold the Mediterranean world was the outcome, not the cause, of the preceding Roman unification of Italy. Certainly, Italian unification was partially achieved

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by military conquest, but in substantial measure it resulted from diplomatic negotiation, albeit under asymmetric relations of power, conducted on the basis of common interests between the militaristic elites of Rome and of other Italian polities (Terrenato 1998, 2007). Republican Rome was exceptional less in her military talents (although these were evidently formidable), than in her special skill at forming and controlling alliances, which added the military power of others to her own—and in allowing former enemies to become Romans. This capacity was intimately related to Rome’s self-conception as a mongrel polity, enabling exceptional openness to inclusion of outsiders, as her treatment of at least selected war-slaves illustrates. She treated many defeated peoples less as subjects than as allies—subordinate to be sure, but allies nonetheless. Through this customary policy, Rome successfully harnessed the ferocious martial energies of the warring peoples of Italy and, in “federal” armies under Roman generals, directed this aggression outward, to mutual benefit: internal stability and external glory and booty. Thus, paradoxically, Rome built the colossal military strength that she unleashed on the Mediterranean from the third century B.C. as much by the open hand as by the sword (James 2011b). Here we see par excellence an inextricable intertwining of violent coercion and collaboration, which utterly reshaped the Classical world.

The Archaeology of Violence in the Roman World We possess, then, a detailed text-based historical picture of the central role of violence in the Roman world. Instrumental violence and the engendering of fear were commonplace, effectively routine in Roman-era societies from top to bottom, as strategies of choice for purposes of domination, oppression, and resistance. Mayhem was overtly celebrated, not least in dedicated theatres of slaughter. Martial violence in particular was frequent, sometimes on an enormous scale consuming hundreds of thousands of lives. Even under the much-vaunted pax Romana there were many wars, some huge, some very long, albeit largely fought beyond or near the frontiers. What, then, of the archaeological signature of this ­woeful historical catalogue of brutality and slaughter? Surely, if any major cultural context is going to produce extensive direct evidence for archaeologists to examine, it must be this. Yet in proportion to historically based expectations, the total amount of direct physical evidence of violence is astonishingly meager. An obvious strategy for investigating violence in past cultures is to look at the bones of the dead, for healed ante-mortem injuries, and peri-mortem trauma. However, much mayhem, including severe domestic abuse and even lethal attack, need leave no skeletal trace for us to find (e.g., strangulation or deep puncture wounds). Further, we do not have a representative sample of the dead from antiquity anyway. In some cultural contexts, for instance, for much of the British Iron Age or the Sasanian empire, the dead were not buried in the earth for us to find, while cremation was long the favored rite in much of the Roman world. In any case, there is good reason to suggest powerful, differential selection against preservation of the bodies of those who met violent ends, or indeed of other evidence of mayhem. This applies even to direct evidence of large-scale wars, which we might expect to survive: traces of violent trauma on the bodies of battle casualties, damaged weaponry, and other material signs of armed conflict. We have actually found remarkably few battlefield burials.

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There is some graphic evidence, such as the bone-pits from Kalkriese near Osnabrück, ­identified as the scene of the annihilation of Varus’s three legions by the Germans in A.D. 9 (Anon. 2009; Schlüter 1999; Wells 2003). About twenty bodies from a siege-mine at ­Dura-Europos, Syria, in my interpretation Roman victims of Sasanian “gas warfare” (James 2011c), might have offered valuable data but the remains were not examined by a pathologist (Du Mesnil du Buisson 1936). But as yet, no single mass war-grave with clear violent pathology comparable with the medieval examples of Wisby (Thordeman 1939) or Towton (Fiorato et al. 2007), has been excavated and studied. The closest is the trauma evidence from Ephesus gladiator cemetery (Kanz and Grossschmidt 2002, 2006; Krinzinger 2002; Pietsch 2002). In part this is because trauma evidence has passed unrecognized, been underreported, and generally not looked for very thoroughly. However, it is also substantially a function of the ephemeral nature of the processes and events in question, and their aftermath. ­Pre-gunpowder wars might barely touch the built or natural environment. Recent identification of an unsuspected Roman-era battlefield at Kalefeld in Saxony illustrates this. From scatters of military metalwork alone, archaeologists have inferred a battle between Romans and ‘barbarians’ deep inside Free Germany, in the decades around A.D. 200, apparently unattested in surviving historical sources. However, the battlefield was only detected at all as a result of developments in technology and methodology: systematic use of metal detectors combined with precise plotting of artifact scatters (Geschwinde et al. 2009). In fact, literary and archaeological evidence shows that normally battlefields were rapidly stripped of anything valuable, while many soils will destroy iron. For example, no clear archaeological trace has yet been found of Hannibal’s victory at Cannae in 216 B.C., in which he famously annihilated a 50,000-strong Roman army. Both training and tactics beat numbers and fine equipment. Here and on the fields of their other victories, Hannibal’s men stripped the dead, not least so that they could re-equip themselves with the superior Roman armor (Polybius Histories 18.28). The victor’s dead were usually removed or cremated on the surface, while enemy dead and horses were commonly just left to rot and weather away. After the shattering Gothic victory at Adrianople in A.D. 378, the defeated Romans could not recover most of their casualties, whose bones whitened the plain long afterward (Ammianus Marcellinus History 31.7.16). Consequently, in the long term there might be absolutely no physical survivals marking even enormous battles—except lingering phosphate concentrations where the dead had once been piled. It was recorded that the bones of the hordes of Teutones and Cimbri slaughtered by Marius in 102 B.C. long enriched the soil of Provence (Plutarch, Marius 21.3). Beyond warfare, judicial violence is attested by a solitary crucifixion victim (Haas 1970; Zias and Sekeles 1985), and some beheadings, for example at Cirencester (Bath Gate cemetery burial 305) (McWhirr et al. 1982), and York (Hunter-Mann 2009), but many executed criminals received no formal burial. Slaves worked to death were equally unlikely to be buried in archaeologically durable ways. And the routine sublethal violence punctuating Roman-era social life might rarely mark bones, or if it did, would often be indistinguishable from accidental injury. Overall, in contrast to the picture derived from texts, the dearth of direct a­ rchaeological evidence of violence in the Roman world is striking. And more generally, the companion

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of violence—fear—has no obvious identifiable direct material correlate anyway. If we did not have histories, epigraphy, and inscribed coins, from mute physical remains alone would archaeologists be able to infer the dangerous, fear-suffused reality of the Roman era? Without Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio on Boudica, would we be able to discover that there had been a vast rebellion in Britain in A.D. 60–61, leading apparently to hundreds of thousands of deaths—perhaps the greatest loss of life in the island’s history before the Black Death of the fourteenth century? Without Josephus and the Jewish textual tradition, would we comprehend the sheer scale of destruction and the social, political, and religious consequences of the Jewish revolts? Where is the archaeology of the epic Second Punic War, the “First World War of Antiquity,” of the vast battles of the Trebbia, Trasimene, Cannae, and Zama, not to mention its many lesser engagements? Still less survives of the enormous naval struggles of the First Punic War. From archaeology alone we can get close to the nature of the horrors of the arena, and should be able to infer something of their cultural meaning; likewise, the reliefs on the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius are pretty explicit testimony of conquest, slaughter, and enslavement. But could we get at the violent significance of Rome’s manubial temples and senatorial mansions without the textual evidence? All this relates to large-scale public violence: what of smaller-scale juridical, criminal, and domestic brutality, the routine mayhem directed against subordinates, which texts reveal permeated Roman-era social relations from Iran to the Atlantic? Certainly, there are mosaics, reliefs, and other visual representations of the horrors of the arena, but there are hardly any representations of “domestic abuse”: a mosaic detail from Piazza Armerina, Sicily, of a soldier or official beating a servant with a stick, is exceptional (Carandini et al. 1982). The clear lesson of the historical archaeology of the Roman era—especially for ­prehistory—is that it is very dangerous indeed to read absence of direct evidence for violence as evidence of absence of violent practices in any past cultural context. Pervasive violence and fear may simply not be directly detectable from archaeology alone. However, this is not a council of despair. Archaeology may be limited, but is far from powerless. Proving negatives is always problematic anyway and, even in the absence of violence-shattered bodies, other material evidence may provide indirect indicators. In many cultural contexts archaeology can identify preparations to inflict, or at least to meet, violent attack, which imply intent or expectation. Armed violence/martial violence/warfare (overlapping but not coterminous fields) may be especially visible, because so many societies have invested heavily in their material culture, especially armaments and fortifications. These we can study. Where weapons existed, they were used to inflict violence; the only question is, How much? Actual armed mayhem may indeed have been limited. Weapons may well have worked 99 percent of the time by the visibly implicit threat of the sword on the hip, through deterrence, instilling at least caution if not terror. But if they were never used, they would cease to be feared.

Conclusion Issues such as violence and fear are especially problematic in archaeology. Compared with evidence for, say, agricultural regimes, trade, or urbanism, material traces left by most ancient mayhem, even huge battles, were relatively ephemeral or nonexistent, while

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its enormously ­powerful moral effects, such as promoting group identity and especially ­engendering fear, were inherently intangible. In some cultural contexts, it may be effectively impossible for archaeologists to conclude much specific about it; yet in others, which did actively celebrate it, we can say a considerable amount. The reality is that we are faced with an epistemological asymmetry, in archaeology by no means unique to questions of violence, but especially fraught because of its emotive implications: material evidence can prove the existence of violent practices, but it is far more difficult to prove the negative, that they were absent. We can certainly be alert to the dangers of simplistic face-value readings of missing evidence denoting real absence of violence. I argue that, when considering the nature of past societies, our baseline assumptions should include coercion, violence, and fear; the only questions are of degree and of the specific forms these took. When we encounter glorious architecture and other splendors in the archaeological record, among our default expectations, perpetration of suffering on outsiders or dominated groups should stand alongside cultural and artistic achievements. This might be regarded as unduly misanthropic, but I invite the reader to consider cases from the historical era up to at least the mid-twentieth century, and to reflect on whether there are examples of cultures where this can be shown to be untrue. That violence is destructive is a truism to the point of banality. To many, the suggestion that mayhem, especially martial violence, also often has constructive implications and consequences, is emetic. Yet that is the clear implication of historical examples such as the Roman era, a major component of a human past qualitatively different from our present, far more suffused with open coercion, fear, and physical violence than anything in our own experience, or almost anything encountered by report from our own times. It seems that, with regard to violence, the deeper past really is a foreign country. If we are going to understand human history, we have to be prepared to do so on its own bloody terms.

Acknowledgments I am very grateful to IEMA, and especially Sarah Ralph, for the invitation to take part in a stimulating gathering, and to Sarah for her patience over the delayed submission of this paper. Many thanks also to Rebecca Redfern for references. References Cited Anon. (editor) 2009 Varusschlacht in Osnabrücker Land. Von Zabern, Mainz. BBC 2009 Iraq Suicide Bomb Kills Pilgrims. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/ 7887881.stm. (Accessed 29 October 2009). Brosius, Maria 2006 The Persians: An Introduction. Routledge, London. Carandini, Andrea, Andreina Ricci, and Mariette de Vos 1982 Filosofiana, The Villa of Piazza Armerina. S.F. Flaccovio, Palermo. Curtis, Vesta Sarkhosh, and Sarah Stewart (editors) 2008 The Sasanian Era. Tauris, London.

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Dalrymple, William 1999 The Age of Kali: Travels and Encounters in India. Flamingo, London. Daryaee, Touraj 2006 Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire. Tauris, London. Dignas, Beate, and Engelbert Winter 2007 Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity: Neighbours and Rivals. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Dillon, Sheila, and Katherine E. Welch (editors) 2006 Representations of War in Ancient Rome. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Du Mesnil du Buisson, R. 1936 The Persian Mines. In The Excavations at Dura-Europos. Preliminary Report of Sixth Season of Work, October 1932-March 1933, edited by M. I. Rostovtzeff, A. R. Bellinger, C. Hopkins, and C. B. Welles, pp. 188–205. Yale University Press, New Haven. Ferguson, R. Brian, and Neil L. Whitehead (editors) 1999 War in the Tribal Zone: Expanding States and Indigenous Warfare. 2nd edition. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Fiorato, Veronica, Anthea Boylston, and Christopher Knüsel (editors) 2007 Blood Red Roses: The Archaeology of a Mass Grave from the Battle of Towton AD 1461. 2nd edition ed. Oxbow, Oxford. Futrell, Alison 1997 Blood in the Arena: The Spectacle of Roman Power. University of Texas Press, Austin. Geschwinde, M., H. Hassmann, P. Lönne, M. Meyer, and G. Moosbauer 2009 Roms Vergessener Feldzug: Das neu entdeckte Schlachtfeld am Harzhorn in Niedersachsen. In 2000 Jahre Varusschlacht: Konflikt, edited by S. Berke, S. Burmeister, and H. Kenzler, pp. 228–232. Konrad Thiess, Stuttgart. Glare, P. G. W. 1968–1982. Oxford Latin Dictionary. Clarendon Press, Oxford. Grünewald, Thomas 2004 Bandits in the Roman Empire: Myth and Reality. Routledge, London. Haas, Nicu 1970 Anthropological Observations on the Skeletal Remains from Gi'vat ha-Mivtar. Israel Exploration Journal 20:38–59. Heather, Peter, J. 1996 The Goths. Blackwell, Oxford. Heather, Peter, J. 2005 The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History. Macmillan, Basingstoke & Oxford. Hölscher, Tonio 1967 Victoria Romana. Archäologische Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Wesenart der römischen Suesgöttin von den Anfängen bis zum Ende des 3.Hhrs. n. Chr. Von Zabaern, Mainz. Hölscher, Tonio 2006 The Transformation of Victory into Power: From Event to Structure. In Representations of War in Ancient Rome, edited by Sheila Dillon and Katherine E. Welch. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Hunter-Mann, Kurt 2009 Romans Lose Their Heads: An Unusual Cemetery at The Mount, York. In The Archaeology of York Web Series No. 6. vol. 2009. York Archaeological Trust, York. Huss, Matthew T. 2008 Forensic Psychology: Research, Clinical Practice, and Applications. Wiley/ Blackwell, Malden, Massachusetts. James, Simon T. 2002 Writing the Legions: The Development and Future of Roman Military Studies in Britain. Archaeological Journal 159:1–58. James, Simon T. 2007 A Bloodless Past: The Pacification of Early Iron Age Britain. In The Earlier Iron Age in Britain and the Near Continent, edited by Colin. C. Haselgrove and Rachel. E. Pope, pp. 160–173. Oxbow, Oxford.

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James, Simon T. 2010 The Point of the Sword: What Roman-Era Weapons Could Do to Bodies— and Why They Often Didn’t. In Waffen in Aktion. Akten der 16. Roman Military Equipment Conference, edited by M. Müller and H. J. Schalles, pp. 41–54 Xantener Berichte 16, Xanten. James, Simon T. 2011a Interpretative Archaeologies, Violence, and Evolutionary Approaches. In Evolutionary and Interpretive Archaeologies: A Discussion, edited by Ethan E. Cochrane and Andrew Gardner, pp. 127–149. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek. James, Simon T. 2011b Rome and the Sword: How Warriors and Weapons shaped Roman History. Thames & Hudson, London & New York. James, Simon T. 2011c Stratagems, combat and “chemical warfare” in the siege-mines of ­Dura-Europos. American Journal of Archaeology 115:69–101. Kanz, Fabian, and Karl Grossschmidt 2002 Waffenwirking und Verletzungsspuruen. Der traumatologische Befund. In Gladiatoren in Ephesos: Tod am Nachmittag, edited by F. Krinzinger, pp. 43–8. Österreichisches Archäologisches Institut, Istanbul & Vienna. Kanz, Fabian, and Karl Grossschmidt 2006 Head Injuries of Roman Gladiators. Forensic Science International 160(2–3):207–216. Keeley, Lawrence. H. 1996 War before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. Oxford University Press, Oxford & New York. Knüsel, Christopher 2005 The Physical Evidence of Warfare—Subtle Stigmata? In Warfare, Violence and Slavery in Prehistory, edited by Mike Parker-Pearson and I. J. N. Thorpe, pp. 49–66. BAR International Series 1374. Archaeopress, Oxford. Krinzinger, F. (editor) 2002 Gladiatoren in Ephesos: Tod am Nachmittag. Österreichisches Archäologisches Institut, Istanbul & Vienna. Krug, E. G., L. L. Dahlberg, J. A. Mercy, A. B. Zwi, and R. Lozano (editors) 2002 World Report on Violence and Health. World Health Organization, Geneva. Lewis, Mark. E. 2007 The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han. Harvard University Press, Cambridge & London. McDonnell, Myles 2006 Roman Manliness: Virtus and the Roman Republic. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. McWhirr, Alan, Linda Viner, and Calvin Wells 1982 Romano-British Cemeteries at Cirencester. Cirencester Excavation Committee, Cirencester. Millar, Fergus 1993 The Roman Near East, 31 BC–AD 337. Harvard University Press, Cambridge & London. Millar, Fergus 2006 Rome, the Greek World, and the East. Volume 3: The Greek World, the Jews, and the East. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill. Parker-Pearson, Mike 2005 Warfare, Violence and Slavery in Later Prehistory: An Introduction. In Warfare, Violence and Slavery in Prehistory, edited by Mike Parker-Pearson and I. J. N. Thorpe, pp. 19–34. BAR International Series 1374. Archaeopress, Oxford. Pietsch, W. 2002 Der Gladiatoren-Friedhof von Ephesos. Der archäologische Befund. In Gladiatoren in Ephesos: Tod am Nachmittag, edited by F. Krinzinger, pp. 15–17. Österreichisches Archäologisches Institut, Istanbul & Vienna. Pinker, Steven 2007 A History of Violence. Edge 206. http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/ edge206.html#pinker. (Accessed 4 January 2011).

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Pinker, Steven 2011 The Better Angels of our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes. Allen Lane, London. Rosenstein, Nathan 2007 War and Peace, Fear and Reconciliation in Rome. In War and Peace in the Ancient World, edited by Kurt A. Raaflaub, pp. 226–244. Blackwell, Oxford. Schlüter, Wolfgang 1999 The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest: Archaeological Research in Kalkriese near Osnabrück. In Roman Germany: Studies in Cultural Interaction, edited by John D. Creighton and Roger J. A. Wilson, pp. 125–159. Journal of Roman Archaeology Suppl. vol. 32, Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Terrenato, Nicola 1998 The Romanization of Italy: Global Acculturation or Cultural Bricolage? In TRAC 97: Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, Nottingham 1997, edited by Colin Forcey, John Hawthorne, and Robert Witcher, pp. 20–27. Oxbow, Oxford. Terrenato, Nicola 2007 The Clans and the Peasants: Reflections on Social Structure and Change in Hellenistic Italy. In Articulating Local Cultures: Power and Identity Under the Expanding Roman Republic, edited by Peter Van Dommelen and Nicola Terrenato, pp. 13–22. Journal of Roman Archaeology Suppl. 63, Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Thordeman, Bengt 1939 Armour from the Battle of Wisby, 1361. Reprinted 2001, with new intro by B. R. Rice. Chivalry Bookshelf, Highland Village, Texas. Thorpe, I. J. N. 2005 The Ancient Origins of Warfare and Violence. In Warfare, Violence and Slavery in Prehistory, edited by Mike Parker-Pearson and I. J. N. Thorpe, pp. 1–18. BAR International Series 1374. Archaeopress, Oxford. Walbank, Frank William 1957 A Historical Commentary on Polybius. Volume 1. Commentary on Books I–VI. Clarendon Press, Oxford. Walbank, Frank William (editor) 2002 Polybius, Rome and the Hellenistic World: Essays and Reflections. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Walker, Philip L. 2001 A Bioarchaeological Perspective on the History of Violence. Annual Review of Anthropology 30:573–596. Wells, Peter S. 2003 The Battle That Stopped Rome. Norton, New York & London. Yalichev, Serge 1997 Mercenaries of the Ancient World. Constable, London. Zias, J., and E. Sekeles 1985 The Crucified Man from Giv'at ha-Mivtar: A Reappraisal. Israel Exploration Journal 35:22–27.

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SECTION II

The Politics and Identities of Violence

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Introduction

Bradley A. Ault

T

he four papers in Section II: The Politics and Identities of Violence, provide a u ­ seful cross-section of the topics, demonstrating the breath of coverage to which they are ­applicable, and in so doing how these two themes are intertwined and all-pervasive throughout human history. Chronologically, the contributions range from Roman (Carter and ­Varner) to Modern (Carman and Galaty) in their concerns, but with implications for ­prehistory as well (Carman and Galaty). Geographically, they are situated across European and Mediterranean landscapes, but with special emphasis in two on Roman practices in the Greek East (Carter) and in the Balkans (Galaty). The approaches vary from considerations of violence directed toward sculptural likenesses of Roman emperors (Varner), situating Christian martyrdom in the “arena” of Roman spectacle (Carter), ethnoarchaeological analysis of one of the last surviving tribal societies in Europe (Galaty), to an explication of the emergent field of “conflict archaeology” (Carman). All stand as outstanding examples of what Ralph calls in her Introduction “an interdisciplinary approach to the study of violence and conflict,” for individually and collectively they add up to more than the sum of their parts. Varner looks not only at the damnatio or literal “defacing” of Imperial portraits, but their “cannibalism” and reuse by subsequent ruling classes, whereby the ignoble are refashioned into the noble, empowering the latter at the expense of the former in processes quite distinct from those taken up by Pollini in Section III. Galaty’s archaeological and ethnographic fieldwork in northern highland Albania has been able to utilize evidence for twentieth-century Shala tribal organization in order to model archaeological evidence for remains dating from the Iron Age as similarly constituted “refuge area warrior societies.” In Carter’s contribution, acts of Christian martyrdom in the Greek East are ­palpably likened to arena blood sports, a Roman pastime initially imposed upon but quickly embraced by Greeks, in which all parties played an active role, Christians, Romans, and Greeks in the 118

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“cultural ­performance” of violence. Finally, Carman shows how “battlefield ­archaeology” has matured into “conflict archaeology,” complete with internationally constituted working groups, emphasizing the transformative power of past warfare in the forging of a ­pan-­European identity as well as a discipline irrespective of nationalist concerns. The four scholars whose work is presented here employ a range of methodologies, ranging from but not limited to art historical and textual, from landscape to ethnographic archaeology. All bring these to bear on a common theme, however, the integral role played by acts of violence in shaping societies past and present.

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Chapter Six

Violent Discourses

Visual Cannibalism and the Portraits of Rome’s “Bad” Emperors Eric R. Varner

Abstract  The mutilated and altered images of Rome’s “bad” emperors vividly n­ arrate the violent political transitions that characterized regime change in ancient Rome. Beginning with Caligula, portraits of overthrown rulers were subjected to anthropomorphic attacks. Eyes, mouths, and ears were mutilated in an effort to deprive ­imperial effigies of any metaphorical ability to see, speak, or hear. These attacks were also closely related to the desecration of corpses (poena post mortem) carried out against the remains of capital offenders and others whose status as noxii made their physical ­bodies especially liable to violation. Similarly, full-length statues could be decapitated, ­mirroring another form of corpse abuse as well as capital punishment. Mutilated and headless images remained on public view as potent markers of posthumous denigration. Significant numbers of marble portraits of the “bad” emperors were also physically transformed in the early empire. Representations of Caligula, Nero and ­Domitian were reconceived as likenesses of victorious successors or revered predecessors. The displacement of one emperor by another visually cannibalized the original portrait and its associative power. Many of these redacted images left readable signs of the substitution that had occurred. The mutilation and transformation of imperial images constituted a dynamic and lasting corollary to real political violence in an ongoing struggle as living and dead emperors vied for legitimacy.

History and Violence against Images

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ot surprisingly, images feature prominently in historical accounts of the violent upheavals marking the overthrow of an individual emperor or dynasty. Indeed, for the Romans visual and concrete manifestations of an individual’s identity were the primary

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targets of violence directed against memory (Hales 2003:47–50). As Nero lost control of the military and political situation in A.D. 68, the troops of Rufus Gallus attacked representations of the emperor at the time of the revolt of Vindex (Cassius Dio, Roman History 63.25.1). After Nero’s suicide, Plutarch records angry crowds dragging the emperor’s statues through the Forum Romanum (Galba 8.5). In A.D. 69, a portrait of Nero’s successor Galba was wrenched from a legionary standard to broadcast the military’s repudiation of the emperor’s authority in Rome (Tacitus, Histories 1.41.1; Gregory1994:80) and his statues were destroyed during the rioting that followed his murder (Plutarch, Galba 22, 26.7). Indeed, A.D. 69, “the year of the four emperors,” was a watershed period for factional violence; late in the year, after his defeat by Flavian partisans, Vitellius was compelled to watch the destruction of his statues in the Roman Forum before he was tortured to death and his corpse jettisoned in the Tiber (Tacitus, Histories 3.85; Suetonius, Vitellius 17.1–2; Aurelius Victor, Caesaribus 8.6; Kyle 1998:219; Scheid 1984:181–182, 185). Pliny the younger famously describes the demolition of the golden portraits of the last Flavian emperor Domitian after his murder in A.D. 96, and the author employs an anthropomorphic rhetoric clearly intended to link the dismemberment of the emperor’s representations with the violation of his physical body (Panegyricus 52.4–5). In Pliny’s account, the faces of the portraits are trampled in the dust and the images are threatened with the sword, attacked with axes, and finally hacked into mutilated limbs and pieces. Furthermore, D ­ omitian’s portraits are violated as sentient beings able to experience pain. The conceptual collapsing of image and body underscores the portraits’ functions as simulacra, artistic doubles of the emperor’s physical presence (Baudrillard 1994; Hersey 2009; Stewart 2003:184–222). By Late ­Antiquity, statues and portraits could function quite literally as effigies that “allowed access to the ­spiritual through the material” (Stewart 1999:162; Ambrose, Expos. Psalm 118.10.25). Indeed, Cassiodorus, writing in A.D. 537 is still able to refer to Rome’s statues as if they were a second population of the city (quas amplexa posteritas paene parum populum urbi dedit quam natura procreavit, Variae Epistulae 7.15; Edwards 2003;44, 46; Stewart 2003:118–156). The corporeality of portraits is often stressed in historical narratives of political or even religious destruction. Earlier in the first century during the principate of Tiberius, Sejanus, like Vitellius, is forced to witness the destruction of his statues before his execution and they are attacked by the angry mob as if they were assaulting Sejanus himself (­Cassius Dio, Roman History 58.11.3). Significantly, the mutilation of Sejanus’s representations prefigures and simulates the subsequent mutilation of his corpse, which is alleged to have occurred over a three-day period (Cassius Dio, Roman History 58.11.5). When memory sanctions are once again enacted against an overthrown emperor in 193, images are explicit targets of violence. The statues of Commodus are thrown down (deiecerentur; Historia Augusta. Pertinax 6.3), dragged off (detrahantur; Historia Augusta. Commodus 18.12–14), and abolished (abolendas statuas; Historia Augusta Commodus 17.6). Once again, the author of the Historia Augusta presents the statues as simulacra and equates the attacks on Commodus’s portraits with the violation of his physical remains. Under the Severans, likenesses continued to be intimately connected with political upheaval. In A.D. 203, the exceptional power and prominence of Plautianus, Septimius ­Severus’s cousin and Praetorian Praefect, was signaled by the vast number of his public ­portraits,

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which were reported to outnumber those of the emperor himself and his oldest son, Caracalla (Cassius Dio, Roman History 75[76].14.7). As a result, Septimius declared Plautianus a public enemy (hostis) and ordered the destruction of his bronze likenesses, and various cities complied and demolished his portraits (Cassius Dio, Roman History 75[76].16.2–5; Historia Augusta. Severus 14.7). The portrait sanctions were later rescinded when Septimius reconciled with Plautianus, but were enforced once again in 205 after the execution of Plautianus on charges of plotting to overthrow the emperor (Cassius Dio, Roman History 75 [76] 16.4). The material and archaeological record, as well as historical accounts, suggest that the memory sanctions enacted against Geta after his murder on 26 December 212 were among the most virulent and violent of the imperial period. According to Dio, a contemporary witness, in the aftermath of Geta’s murder, 20,000 of his partisans were proscribed and killed (Roman History 77[78].3.4). Furthermore, Dio indicates that even Geta’s statue bases and numismatic portraits were the targets of Caracalla’s anger (Roman History 77[78]12.6). And indeed, Geta’s likeness on surviving bronze coins from Stratonicea have all been carefully obliterated (Figure 6.1) (Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum Deutschland, Sammlung von Aulock 1957–1968: 2679, 2686, 2692; Harl 1987:p. 12.4). The Stratonicea coins all originally featured facing portraits of the two brothers and some have been countermarked with the inscription qeou, likely a reference to Caracalla’s new position as the son of the deified ­Septimius Severus. Several other numismatic portraits of Geta have been ­targeted, including issues from ­Ephesus, Isaura, ­Clazomenae, ­Miletus, Nicea, ­Pergamum, ­Perperene, and Smyrna (Harl 1987:pl. 12.4–5; Mowat 1904: 448, 452–460; ­Neugebauer 1936:162, Figure 5; ­Regling 1904:137–142). While isolated

figure 6.1 Caracalla (and Geta), Bronze coin, Stratonicea (after Varner 2000: cat. 46).

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attacks on the coins of bad emperors or countermarking are not uncommon, the scope and scale of the attacks on Geta’s coins is unprecedented. According to historical sources, portraits continued to play prominent roles in the political turmoil of the third century. Images of ­Maximinus Thrax, the first of the so-called ­soldier emperors, were reported to be the ­targets of mob violence and toppled at Rome and outside Aquileia in A.D. 238 (Historia Augusta. Gordiani Tres 13.6; Historia Augusta ­Maximini Duo. 23.7; Herodian 7.2.8; 7.7.1–2). The elision of images and bodies in narratives of ­violence ­surrounding the overthrow of “bad” emperors reaches its apogee in an account in the H ­ istoria Augusta of the crucifixion of a portrait of the North African usurper “Celsus” near the middle of the third century. “His portrait (imago) was hoisted on a cross, with the crowd running around as if they were seeing Celsus himself on the gibbet” (Historia Augusta. Tyrani Triginta 29.4; Freedberg 1989:259; Stewart 1999:169). Although this anecdote is likely to be entirely fictive, the author of the Historia Augusta is writing for audiences who would believe that this kind of execution in effigy (executio in effigie) was entirely probable. Later, the motivations for image desecration would shift from the political to the religious, as John Pollini has amply explored (2007, 2008; and also Sauer 2003), and the cult image from the Serapaeum at Alexandria is dismembered and burned during riots in 392 (Haas 1997:159–168; Hahn 2004:78–97; Hahn 2006:368–383; Hahn 2008; Kristensen 2009:90–97; Sauer 2003). The attacks on the statue of Serapis eerily presage the violation of the physical body of the pagan philospher Hypatia, who is similarly dismembered and burned at Alexandria in 415, and both are Late Antique examples of “performative violence” against pagan images and bodies (Kristensen 2009). The material record corroborates the central role that images played in violent ­political transitions. Intentionally mutilated portraits survive for almost every “bad” emperor who suffered some form of memory sanctions, beginning with Caligula. Indeed, for certain emperors such as Macrinus or Maximinus Thrax, every surviving portrait has been attacked and mutilated. A portrait of Macrinus at Harvard has been systematically attacked and its disfigurement, with damage confined to the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, is typical of many mutilated portraits (Cambridge, Harvard University, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, inv. 1949.47.138; Brauer and Vermeule 1990:155, no. 142). The deprivation of all of the sensory organs reenforces the portrait’s function as a simulacrum of the emperor’s physical body. Furthermore, the metonymous power of the image to see, hear, speak, or breathe has been entirely negated. Nevertheless, other details of the portrait, including the finely carved hair and beard as well as the highly polished surfaces of the skin are left untouched, and the mutilated image is still a legible likeness of Macrinus as it activates a narrative of his political overthrow, death, and posthumous denigration. While not as extensively damaged as the Harvard head, a portrait now in the Centrale Montemartini has also been attacked and defaced with damage to the brows and upper eyes, nose, and left chin (Figure 6.2) (Rome, Centrale Montemartini 3.82, inv 1757; Fittschen and Zanker 1985:112–113, no. 95, pls. 116–117). Extensive restorations to a third representation of Macrinus in the Stanza degli Imperatori of the Museo Capitolino camouflage even more severe damage, again to the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth (inv. 460; Fittschen and Zanker 1985:112–114, no. 96, pls. 118–119). The bust originally formed part of the Albani collection and the restored

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figure 6.2 Macrinus, Rome, Centrale Montemartini, inv. 1757: Photo Author.

extremities such as the nose and ears were likely added in the early eighteenth century. The mutilation of Macrinus’s images also extended to glyptic representations, as evidenced by a sardonyx cameo in Bonn, which also included a portrait of his son Diadumenianus

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(Bonn, Rhenisches Landesmuseum, inv. 32300; Megow 1987:247, no. A 163, pl. 50.3), and a bronze likeness in Belgrade that has been beheaded from its original statue body (City Museum, inv. 2636; Cambi et al. 1988:153–154, no. 171 [I. Popovic´]). Sculpted portraits of Diadumenianus, who had been proclaimed Caesar, were also violently attacked as evidenced by an extensively mutilated bust now in the Vatican. As with the disfigured portraits of his father, the brows, eyes, nose, upper lip, chin, and ears have all been destroyed (Museo Gregoriano Profano, 651 [10135] Giuliano 1957:68, no. 80). In addition, there are deep gashes to the left cheek. The portrait was discovered during excavations of the Lateran seminary in Rome in an area of the city that housed the barracks of the equites singulares, which suggests that the violence perpetrated against the image was carried out by the imperial horse guard. Macrinus’s epigraphic identity was also the target of calculated violence when one of his inscriptions from the barracks of the vigiles at Ostia was erased and ultimately thrown into a latrine (Figure 6.3) (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 14.4393 = Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae 465; Donderer 1991-2:224–225; Pavolini 1988:59; Stewart 1999:164). The names Opellius and Diadumenianus have been eradicated, l­eaving only the highly respectable imperial nomenclature of Marcus Antoninus (Varner 2008: 131–132, Figure 3). Nevertheless, the abraded letter forms spelling out Opellius and ­Diadumenianus are still quite visible, and like the mutilated portraits, which leave legible traces of their original identity, the erased inscription presents a clear narrative of h ­ istorical emendation and political change Later Christian destruction of pagan imagery would also include disposal in latrines (Marcus Diaconus, Vita Porphyrii episcopi Gazensis 71; ­Kristensen 2009). The destruction of the portraits and inscriptions of Macrinus and his son find their historical counterpart in accounts of the Roman populace’s public ­dishonoring the ­imperial pair at games held to celebrate the birthday of Diadumenianus on 14 September 217 (­Cassius Dio, Roman History 78[79] 20.1–3). As with Macrinus, all of the surviving portraits of Maximinus Thrax have been attacked. A bust in the Museo Capitolino in Rome has been reassembled from numerous ­fragments and exhibits restorations to the left brow, nose, and ears (Stanza degli ­Imperatori 46, inv. 473; Fittschen and Zanker 1985:124–127, no. 105, pl. 128–129). Like the ­Capitoline Macrinus, the bust of Maximinus Thrax was part of the Albani collection and likely restored in the early eighteenth century. A fragmentary portrait in the Museo Palatino has been violently split from the lower half of the head and this may been caused by violent blows to the nose, which has been removed, as have the ears (Figure 6.4) (Sala 8, inv. 52681; Tomei 1997:95, no. 68). Other disfigured images of Maximinus are in the Louvre (MA 1044; de Kersauson 1996:563, no. 277), the Casino Aurora of the Villa Ludovisi in Rome (Giuliano 1986:246–247. 250-2 [L. de Lachenal]), and in Copenhagen (Johansen 1995:100–101, no. 39). All are from Rome and they confirm the destruction of ­Maximinus’s portraits carried out by the angry populace at the capital as alleged in historical accounts. Surviving physical evidence also suggests that violent assaults encompassed the ­representations of Maximinus’s son and heir Maximus, and he is certainly recorded to have been included in the sanctions condemning his father (Historia Augusta Maximini Duo 15.2, 26.3,5; Historia Augusta Gordiani Tres 11.1, 7–10; Historia Augusta Maximus et

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figure 6.3 Statue Base of Diadumenianus, Ostia, Barrack of the Vigiles, Corpus ­Inscriptionum Latinarum 14.4393: Photo Author.

­Balbinus 1.4). Two images of Maximus discovered in Rome together with the mutilated ­portrait of his father in Copenhagen have been similarly disfigured with chisel damage to the eyes, nose, mouth, chin, and ears (Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, invs. 819, 823; Johansen 1995:102–105, nos. 40–41). The disfigurement of adolescent images, such as those

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figure 6.4 Maximinus Thrax, Museo Palatino, inv. 52681: Photo Author.

of ­Diadumenianus and Maximus, is actually rare and it reveals the familial scope of the ­violence, which was intended to destroy any semblance of dynastic stability or continuity, both in reality, through the murder of the two heirs, and in art through the destruction of their portraits. The mutilation of images finds a counterpart in the desecration of corpses, which was perpetrated on the remains of condemned capital offenders and others who were deemed noxii. This kind of corpse abuse was termed poena post mortem or punishment after death and the disfigurement of portraits is its artistic analogue (Varner 2001). As already noted with the bronze head of Macrinus in Belgrade, full-length statues could be decapitated mirroring another form of corpse abuse as well as capital punishment (Fields 2005; Voisin 1984). Mutilated and headless images remained on public view as potent markers of posthumous denigration. Surviving heads and bodies, as well as reliefs, provide copious sculptural evidence for the decapitation of statues of “bad” emperors throughout the imperial period. A noteworthy example is a full-length armored statue of Nero now in Istanbul, whose head has been severed from the body (Istanbul, Archaeological Museum, inv. 506; Smith and Ertug 2001:159, pl. 56; Varner 2005:74–75, Figure 7.8). Originally carved from a single block of marble, the inscription on the statue’s base secures its identification as “Nero Claudius, Son of the God Claudius Caesar,” and also ensured that its identity as Nero outlived the deprivation of its portrait head. As such it would have been a powerful visual marker of Nero’s posthumous denigration. Like the anecdote in the Historia Augusta concerning the crucifixion of a statue of Celsus, the decapitation of the Istanbul portrait

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bears eloquent testimony for execution in effigy. It is also possible that a cuirassed statue of Nero from the cycle of Julio Claudian portraits that adorned the theater at Caere remained in headless state after Nero’s suicide (Musei Vaticani, Museo Gregoriano Profano, inv. 9948; Fuchs et al. 1989:68–70, no. 5 [M. Fuchs]; Varner 2005:75). Unlike the Istanbul statue, the portrait head has here been worked separately for insertion, but none of the disassociated portrait heads from Caere can be connected with it. In this case, the strikingly Neronian imagery of the breastplate, which depicts a Nero-ized version of Sol-Apollo, would have confirmed the statue’s identity as a decapitated Nero for visually astute viewers. While the Istanbul and Caere statues have survived as headless bodies, a decapitated bronze likeness of Nero, now in a private collection, is a bodiless head (Fejfer 2008:274, Figure 204; Varner 2005:71, Figure 72). The back of the neck preserves physical evidence of the blows that were struck to sever the head from its statue body. In the early third century, several relief portraits of Geta were decapitated on the Arch of Septimius Severus at Lepcis Magna, including the scene of imperial concordia (harmony) from the attic (Varner 2005:73–74, Figures 7.4–6). The head of Geta who appears between his father and brother was sawn off the arch and buried nearby. There is no evidence that the severed head was ever replaced, so the relief appears to have remained in its mutilated state with a headless Geta at the center of its composition. Discovered during the early twentieth century, the head was reconnected with the relief, although the original was stolen by an allied soldier during World War II and the current head is a copy. At Rome, Geta’s relief portraits may have been similarly decapitated on the Arch of Septimius Severus and in the Palazzo Sachetti Relief (Varner 2005:73–74; Vout 2008:170). Although several of the figures are now headless in the Palazzo Sachetti Relief, including Septimius Severus, the shorter figure flanking the emperor to his left likely represented Geta. Here, the head has been severed cleanly at the base of neck, probably as a result of the memory and image sanctions leveled against Geta after his murder in 212. In both reliefs, Geta’s decapitated figure would have stood in stark contrast to the flanking figures of his father and brother, who both retained their heads and their corporeal identities. Geta’s inscriptions were also attacked and erased in great numbers, including a dedicatory inscription on the base of a portrait bust from Rome, which now reads IMP SEVERI AUG F/CLAUDIANUS IVLIANUS PER/APER DEVOTUS NUMINI EIUS, completely omitting Geta’s names but retaining his affiliation as a son of Septimius Severus (Museo Nazionale Romano alle Terme di Diocleziano, la Collezione Epigrafica, Fjefer 2008:279–280, 481). The portrait seems to have been displayed originally in a more private or domestic context. Although the fate of the now-missing portrait is unknown, it may have continued to be displayed together with the erased inscription in mutilated or decapitated form. If so, it would have been a potent repudiation of Geta’s memory and an expression of loyalty to the new regime of his brother, Caracalla, and it bears eloquent testimony to the extensive violence enacted against Geta’s images and substantiates Dio’s account that statue bases were specifically targeted. In addition, the erasure finds parallels to the statue base of Diadumenianus from Ostia eventually discarded in a latrine. Clearly, the appearance of severed heads, headless bodies, and dismembered body parts was not an isolated occurrence, since Marcus Aurelius alludes to them in a visual

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­ etaphor that supposes that his readers will be familiar with the sight (Meditations 8.34: m , , ,  ,  ∼ E i′ ποτε εE′δες χεAρα α ποκεκομμε′νην  η πo′δα,  η κεϕαλη′ν αποτετμημε′νην χωρi′ ς ,  που′ ποτε απο τοO¤ λοιποO¤ ςω′  ματος κειμε′ν ηn “And you have seen a severed hand or foot or a decapitated head lying at some distance from the body”). Indeed, from the ­Republican period onward, the historical record is rife with references to decapitations and the public display of severed heads of important political figures including Pompey, Cicero, Brutus, Galba, ­Vitellius, Avidius Cassius, Perinax, Pescennius Niger, Clodius ­Albinus, ­Macrinus, Diadumenianus, Elagabalus, Julia Soemias, Maximinus Thrax, and Maximus (Varner 2005: 69–70). In Late Antiquity, Christian violence against pagan statuary would employ the same kinds of somatic tropes, and the decapitation of the cult image from the Santo Stefano Mithraeum in Rome recalls Jerome’s description of the destruction of another Roman Mithraeum carried out by Furius Maecius Gracchus (Epistulae 107.2; Coates ­Stephens 2007:173–174). The violent disposal of images in bodies of water such as the Tiber also mirrored poena post mortem corpse abuse. Cadavers of capital offenders, traitors, and spectacle victims from the arena were routinely disposed of in the Tiber to deny them proper burial (Kyle 1998:213– 228). This kind of corpse abuse may also be linked to the Sacra Argeorum, the annual purification ritual held in May to rid Rome of hostile entities by throwing human effigies into the Tiber from the Pons Sublicius (Kyle 1998:215–216). Upon the death of Tiberius, the disgusted populace of Rome wished to desecrate the corpse of their former emperor and are said to have shouted the alliterative pun “Tiberius in Tiberim (Tiberius into the Tiber)” (Suetonius, Tiberius 75.1). Numerous images of “bad” emperors were retrieved from the Tiber, including a miniature marble bust of Caligula, and their disposal in the river resonates with the practices of corpse abuse (Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, inv. 4256; Giuliano 1987:141– 143, R98 [B. Di Leo]). Ultimately, bodies, both real and artistic, violently disposed of in the Tiber, sewers, or other types of water are literally devalued as unwanted refuse (stercus) (Gowers 1995:27). The violence itself inflicted on sculpted simulacra of the emperor also provided an important avenue of communication about changing political realities and power relationships in ancient Rome.

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Visual Cannibalism and Reconfigured Images While the desecration of portraits stands as a violent emendation of the visual record of imperial Rome and weaves a rather unambiguous narrative of political permutation, their revision into new likenesses recounts more complex negotiations of imperial identity and authority. In the early empire, vast numbers of marble representations of Caligula, Nero, and Domitian were refashioned into new depictions of victorious successors or revered predecessors. These new images visually cannibalized the power of the original representation. The alteration of portraits, however, was not a simple act of obliteration, as the likeness of one emperor replaced another. Refashioned likenesses often left legible traces of their reconfiguration, which enabled astute viewers to decipher the portrait cannibalism which had occurred. Like the mutilated and decapitated images, altered portraits were no less violently redacted as the identity of one emperor forcibly displaced that of another. Dio records

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the grisly detail that some of Caligula’s assassins tried to cannibalize his corpse, and the ­reconfiguration of imperial identity in reworked portraits stands as a kind of visual cannibalism (Cassius Dio, Roman History 59.27.7). Indeed, for the first century refashioned portraits far outnumbered deliberately defaced images of the ‘bad” emperors, and they all leave legible traces of the transformative process from one emperor to another (Fejfer 2008:377–380; Galinsky 2008; Vout 2008:158–165). At least 38 portraits of Caligula have been recarved. The majority of these now represent his uncle and successor Claudius or his great-grandfather Augustus, but still often flaunt their original iteration as Caligula. C ­ olossal portraits from Carsulae (Museo; Varner 2008:137–139, Figure 8a-b), an Umbrian settlement along the Via Flaminia from Otricoli (ancient Oriculum) now in the Vatican (Sala Rotonda 551, inv. 242; Varner 2008:139, Figure 9), both maintain stark reminders that they once depicted Caligula. Although Claudius’s more aged physiognomy has completely displaced the more youthful visage of Caligula in the Carsulae head, Caligula’s distinctive long locks have been left essentially unaltered along the nape of the neck. ­Additional fragments confirm that the original statue followed the compositional type of the seated Jupiter Optimus Maximus Capitolinus, and its colossal scale ensured that it was a major component of the visual landscape of ancient Carsulae. Inhabitants of the town would have been very well aware of its original identity as Caligula, reinforced by the visual remnants of his long hair and the violent impingement of the new Claudian facial features. The Otricoli portrait of Claudius with Jupiter attributes is more subtle in its hybrid identity. It was added to the cycle of Julio-Claudian Portraits from the Basilica at O ­ tricoli and would have been its centerpiece. Unlike the Carsulae statue, this portrait retains the youthful aspect of Caligula’s likeness. The hair over the forehead, however, has been extensively recut with a second row of locks in Claudius’s main type orientation. Again, inhabitants of Otricoli, familiar with the portrait would have been able to read its narrative of political transition, as the new emperor’s likeness subsumes that of his assassinated ­predecessor. As theomorphic incarnations of imperial identity, both the Otricoli and Carsulae portraits have become new hybrid images that powerfully evoke a specifically Augustan or imperial Jupiter. Claudius’s other likenesses redacted from preexisting representations of Caligula are similarly hybrid. Like the Carsulae head, a portrait in the Centrale Montemartini in Rome melds Claudius’s more aged physiognomy with an essentially unaltered Caligulan coiffure (Figure 6.5) (inv. 2443; Fittschen and Zanker 1985:16–17, no. 15, pl. 16). All of the reconfigured portraits highlight Claudius’s tense and complicated engagement with the memory of his murdered nephew. Claudius prevented the Senate from passing memory sanctions against Caligula (Suetonius, Claudius 11.3; Dio, Roman History 60.4.5–6; de Jong and Hekster 2008:86), but by reconfiguring his predecessor’s portraits he was able to visually upstage Caligula and take over the trappings of emperor without formally condemning his memory and calling into question the legitimacy of the dynasty and the imperial system itself. Claudius’s grandnephew and adopted son Nero was the last of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and committed suicide on 9 June A.D. 68 (Suetonius, Nero 47–49; Dio, Roman ­History 63.27). Nevertheless, Nero’s continued posthumous popularity with certain ­segments of Roman

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figure 6.5 Caligula/Claudius, Rome, Centrale Montemartini, inv. 2443: Photo Author.

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society complicated the issues of memory and identity enmeshed in the ­expropriation of his images by the Flavian emperors. Despite his declaration as a hostis and the memory sanctions leveled against him by the Senate (Suetonius, Nero 49.2), for many, Nero remained a charismatic and compelling figure. Otho rescinded the initial sanctions and re-erected Nero’s ­representations and Vitellius offered sacrifices to his manes (Dio, Roman History 64.7.3; ­Suetonius, Vitellius 11.2). Members of the populace at large decorated Nero’s tomb and brought his togate images and edicts to the Forum Romanum for display on the Rostra “as if the emperor were still living (quasi viventes).” Belief in the Nero’s superhuman powers led to several imposters convincing thousands that they were in fact the resurrected Nero well into the second century. These impersonators have been variously referred to in modern scholarship as false Neros or Nero messiahs (de Jong and Hekster 2008:85). More than forty surviving portraits of Nero have been resculpted into new images and the majority have been reconfigured into likenesses of the three members of the succeeding Flavian dynasty, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. Portraits of Vespasian recycled from Nero may have intended to simultaneously displace Nero and access the positive aspects of his legacy through readable traces of the original portrait. For instance, reconfigured portraits of Vespasian in the Galleria Chiaramonti of the Vatican (Galleria Chiaramonti7.9, 12.91; Varner 2008:139–140, Figure 10) and Cleveland Art Museum (inv. 29.439a; Pollini 1984:547–552, 555, pl. 72.1–5) combine veristically handled details of Vespasian’s older physiognomy with traces of Nero’s longer, carefully styled type 4 coiffure style readily visible behind the ears and at the back of the head. Similarly, an even more insistently aged likeness of Vespasian in the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme in Rome retains legible traces of Nero’s type 3 hairstyle behind the ears (Figure 6.6) (inv. 53; Giuliano 1987:184, no. R142 [A. Amadio]). In all cases, the resulting likenesses create a hybrid Vespasianic-Neronian imperial persona, very different from the portraits of Vespasian created ex novo. Not every viewer would recognize the reconfiguration of the portrait, but astute observers could note the original Neronian details and contemplate the relative virtues of old and new emperor. While the number of reconfigured portraits of Nero is impressive, and points to the widespread dissemination of his images and his enduring popularity, the percentage of portraits of Nerva refashioned from preexisting likenesses of his overthrown predecessor ­Domitian is staggering. Of the sixteen surviving portraits of Nerva, thirteen or approximately 80 percent have been re-elaborated from Domitianic likenesses. This cannot simply be the result of the brevity of Nerva’s reign, but rather a programmatic cannibalism of his predecessors’ images. Domitian was assassinated on 18 September A.D. 96 and, like Nero, the question of his legacy is highly complicated as he remained popular with the army, who wished to deify him and prosecute those involved in the plot to assassinate him (miles gravissime tulit statimque Divum appellare conatus est. paratus et ulcisci, Suetonius, Domitian 23.1; de Jong and Hekster 2008:85). A portrait from the sanctuary of Hercules Victor at Tivoli illustrates the assimilative approach that Nerva’s recut portraits adopt (Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, inv. 106538; ­Varner 2008:144–145, Figure 14) (Figure 6.7). Nerva’s characteristic thin and somewhat aged physiognomy is combined with an essentially unaltered version of Domitian’s third type coiffure. As these imperial hairstyles were both highly individualized markers of ­imperial

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figure 6.6 Nero/Vespasian, Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, inv. 53: Photo Author.

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figure 6.7 Domitian/Nerva, Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, inv. 106538: Photo Author.

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identity, as well as associative bonds with previous emperors, it cannot have escaped visually attuned viewers that Nerva was forging a new, highly hybrid visual persona by hijacking both the images and the coiffure of his predecessor, further inflected by Nerva’s own position as former close associate of the emperor and likely participant in the plot to overthrow him (Grainger 2003; Jones 1999:194–196). The same agglomerative strategy is employed to even more exaggerated effect in a head now at the Getty Villa in Malibu (inv. 83.AA.43; Jucker and Willers 1982:113, no. 45) (Figures 6.8 & 6.9). While the lower sections of the face emphasize Nerva’s mature and aged physiognomy with crows-feet wrinkles at the corners of the eye, heavy pouches beneath the eye, sunken cheeks, and strong naso-labial lines, the forehead is entirely smooth and unlined, having been retained in its totality from the original likeness of Domitian. Unusually for this period in Roman portraiture, the head has been pieced together and the top and back of the head are separate sections of marble. The ancient iron pin for attaching the back section is still extant. Each of these pieces present unaltered aspects of Domitian’s characteristic third type hairstyle. Significantly, the pieces were not recarved or replaced.1 As with the Tivoli head, the resulting collage of marble visually documents the displacement of Domitian by Nerva. Nerva has forcefully inserted himself into his predecessor’s image and become the new Domitian. Other portraits in the Museo Capitolino, Palazzo dei Conservatori, Musei Vaticani, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Copenhagen, Baia, and formerly Berlin bear further witness to Nerva’s cannibalization of Domitian’s likenesses (Fejfer 2008:377; Varner 2008:144–145; Vout 2008:159–163). Nerva has similarly co-opted Domitian’s historical presence in Frieze A of the ­Cancelleria reliefs (Musei Vaticani, Museo Gregoriano Profano, Magi 1945). As with the three-dimensional likenesses, Domitian’s portrait profile has been reconfigured to reflect Nerva’s more aged facial features with horizontal furrows in the forehead, pouches beneath the eyes, and emphatic naso-labial lines. Domitian’s signature wavy hairstyle, however, has once again been left almost entirely intact. In addition, the recut head is now disproportionately small for the unaltered body and clearly signals the transformation that has occurred. The emperor is dressed in the long-sleeved tunic that was the traveling costume of the Roman general, and the event represented in this frieze is likely Domitian’s return (reditus) to Rome in A.D. 93 after his Sarmatian campaigns and his donation of military spoils (domum militarium) to Jupiter Optimus Maximus Capitolinus (Ghedini 1986:294). Despite the historical specificity of the narrative, Nerva has not hesitated to take over ­Domtian’s role in the scene in a brazen act of historical cannibalism. In fact, Frieze A of the Cancelleria reliefs, Nerva may have gone too far in his historical redaction, however, as there is no physical evidence in the relief, or its unreworked counterpart, Frieze B, that either was ever set up, and both were discovered in 1937 in an area of the western Campus Martius beneath the fifteenth-century Palazzo della Cancelleria in an area that appears to have been used as a sculptural depot (Magi 1945:37–41; Mayer 2002:197). In fact, ancient sculptors seem to have been particularly active in this area of the city where there seems to have been a number of stone depots or storage areas.2 The reconfiguration of imperial portraits was not an ephemeral phenomenon, but rather simultaneously changed the visual and political record while at the same time

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figure 6.8 Domitian/Nerva, Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum, Villa, 83.AA.43: Photo Author.

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figure 6.9 Domitian/Nerva, Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum, Villa, 83.AA.43: Photo Author.

­ ocumenting the process of change. Reworked portraits establish both an aesthetic system d and an ideology of mutilation and alteration. In the case of reworked portraits a new hybrid identity can be formulated, which sought to impose new portrait features while accessing

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any lingering positive associations of the original. The systemic violence enacted against the images of Rome’s “bad emperors” was not a bald attempt at cancellation or repudiation, but rather a subtle negotiation and manipulation of visual memory. The mutilation and transformation of imperial images constituted a dynamic and lasting corollary to real political violence in an ongoing struggle as living and dead emperors vied for legitimacy. In so doing, these violated representations prompted an ongoing strident discourse concerning the nature of imperial identity and the struggle for ultimate authority, which has left clear traces of violence in the archaeological and artistic record.

Notes 1.

2.

Recarving the separate pieces of coiffure may have been challenging, as the marble is not especially thick and recutting may have resulted in fractures, but replacement with new sections of marble with more appropriate segments of Nerva’s coiffure would not have been difficult. For instance, Francesco Borromini was able to carve the interior doorway of the Oratatorio of S. Fillipo from unused blocks of Aphrodisian black (Göktepe) marble found in situ during the seventeenth-century construction work, in an area not far in the Campus Martius from the site of the discovery of the Cancelleria Reliefs (Attanasio and Bruno forthcoming).

References Cited Attanasio, Donato, and Matthias Bruno forthcoming The Newly Discovered Göktepe Quarries in Ancient Caria near Aphrodisia: Use and Distribution from the 1st Century to Late ­Antiquity. In Using Images in Late Antiquity. Identity, Commemoration and Response, edited by Troels Myrup Kristensen and Birte Poulsen. Danish Academy in Rome, Rome. Baudrillard, Jean 1994 Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. Brauer, Amy, and Cornelius C. Vermeule 1990 Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and ­Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums. Harvard University Art Museums, ­ ­Cambridge. Cambi, N., N. Ljamic-Valovic, W. Meier-Arendt, I. Popovic, L. B. Popovic, and D. Srejovic (editors) 1988. Antike Porträts aus Jugoslavien. Museum für Vor und Frühgeschichte, Frankfurt. Coates Stephens, R. 2007 The Reuse of Ancient Statuary in Late Antique Rome and the End of the Statue Habit. In Statuen in der Spätantike, edited by F. A. Bauer and G. Witschel, pp. 171–188. Reichert, Wiesbaden. De Jong, Janneke, and Olivier Hekster 2008 Damnation, Deification, Commemoration. In Un ­Discours en Images de la Condamnation de la Mémoire, edited by Stéphane Benoist and Anne Daguet-Gagey, pp. 79–96. Centre Régional Universitaire Lorrain d’Histoire, Site de Metz, Metz. De Kersuason, Kate 1996 Musée du Louvre. Catalogue des Portraits Romains 2. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Donderer, M. 1991–1992 Irriversible Deponierung von Grossplastik bei Greichern, Etruskern, und Römern. Jahreshefte des Österreichischen archäolgischen Instituts in Wien 61:193–276.

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Edwards, Catharine 2003 Incorporating the Alien: the Art of Conquest. In Rome the Cosmopolis, edited by Catharine Edwards and Greg Woolf, pp. 44–70. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Fejfer, Jane 2008 Roman Portraits in Context. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York. Fields, Nic 2005. Headhunters in the Roman Army. Roman Bodies: Antiquity to the Eighteenth ­Century, edited by Andrew Hopkins and Maria Wyke, pp. 55–66. The British School at Rome, London. Fittschen K., and P. Zanker 1985. Katalog der römischen Porträts in den Kapitolinischen Museen und den andern kommunalen Sammlungen der Stadt Rom I. Kaiser- und Prinzenbildnisse. Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz. Freedberg, David 1989 The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Fuchs, M., P. Liverani, and. P. Santoro (editors) 1989. Caere 2. Il teatro e il ciclo statuario ­Giulio-Claudio. Centro Nazionale di Ricerca, Rome. Galinksy, Karl 2008 Recarved Imperial Portraits: Nuances and Wider Context. Memoirs of the ­American Academy in Rome 53:1–25. Ghedini, F. 1986 Riflessi della politica domizianea ne rilievi flavi di Palazzo della Cancelleria. ­Bulletino della Commissione archeologica communale di Roma 91:292–309. Giuliano, Antonio 1957 Catalogo dei Ritratti Romani del Museo Profano Lateranense. Tipografia ­Poliglotta Vaticana, Rome. Giuliano, A. 1986 Museo Nazionale Romano. Le sculture 1.6. De Luca Editore, Rome. Giuliano, A. 1987 Museo Nazionale Romano. Le sculture 1.9.1. De Luca Editore, Rome. Gowers, Emily 1995 The Anatomy of Rome from Capitol to Cloaca. Journal of Roman Studies 85:23–32. Grainger, John D. 2003 Nerva and the Roman Succession Crisis of A.D. 96–99. Routledge, London. Gregory, A. P. 1994 “Powerful Images”: Responses to Portraits and the Political Use of Images in Rome. Journal of Roman Archaeology 7:80–99. Haas, Christopher 1997 Alexandria in Late Antiquity: Topography and Social Conflict. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. Hahn, Johannes 2004 Gewalt und religiösen Koflikt. Studien zur Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Christen, Heiden und Juden im Osten des römischen Reiches (von Konstantin bis Theodosius II). ­Akademie Verlag, Berlin. Hahn, Johannes 2006 Vetustus error extinctus est—Wann wurde des Serapeion von Alexandria zerstört? Historia 55(3):368–383. Hahn, Johannes 2008 The Conversion of the Cult Statues: The Destruction of the Serapaeum 392 A.D. and the Transformation of Alexandria into the “Christ-Loving City.” In From Temple to Church: Destruction and Renewal of Local Cultic Topography in Late Antiquity, edited by Johannes Hahn, Stephen Emmel, and Ulrich Gotter, pp. 243–274. Brill, Leiden. Hales, Shelley 2003 The Roman House and Social Identity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Harl, Kenneth W. 1987 Civic Coins and Civic Politics in the Roman East, A.D. 180–275. University of California Press, Berkeley. Hersey, George L. 2009 Falling in Love With Statues: Artificial Humans from Pygmalion to the Present. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

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Johansen, Flemming 1995 Roman Portraits III: Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen. Jones, Brian W. 1999 The Emperor Domitian. Routledge, London and New York. Jucker, Hans, and Dietrich Williwers (editors) 1982 Gesichter. Griechische und römische Bildnisse aus Schweizer Besitz. Archaologisches Seminar der Universitat Bern, Bern. Kristensen, Troels Myrup 2009 Archaeology of Response: Christian Destruction, Mutilation and ­Transformation of Pagan Sculpture in Late Antiquity. Unpublished PhD Thesis. Department of Anthropology, Archaeology and Linguistics, Aarhus. Kyle, Donald G. 1998 Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome. Routledge, London. Magi, Filippo 1945 I Rilievi Flavi del Palazzo della Cancelleria. Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia, Rome. Mayer, Emmanuel 2002 Rom ist dort, wo der Kaiser ist. Untersuchungen zu den Staatsdenkmälern des dezentralisierten Reiches von Diocletian bis zu Theodosius II. Römisch-Germanisches ­Zentralmuseum Forschungsinstitut für Vor- und Frühgeschichte Monographien 53. Verlag Des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums, Bonn. Megow, Wolf-Rüdiger 1987 Kameen von Augustus bis Alexander Severus. Antike Münzen und geschnittene Stein 11, Mainz. Mowat, Robert 1904 Martelage et abrasion des monnaies sous l’empire romaine. Revue ­Numismatique: 443–471. Neugebauer, Karl 1936 Die Familie des Septimius Severus. Die Antike 12:155–172. Pavolini, Carlo 1988 Ostia. Guide Archeologiche Laterza 8. Laterza, Rome and Bari. Pollini, John 1984 Damnatio Memoriae in Stone: Two Portraits of Nero Recut to Vespasian in ­American Museums. American Journal of Archaeology 88:547–555. Pollini, John 2007 Christian Destruction and Mutilation of the Parthenon. Athenische Mitteilungen 122:207–228. Pollini, John 2008 Gods and Emperors in the East: Images of Power and the Power of I­ ntolerance. In The Sculptural Environment of the Roman Near East: Reflections on Culture, Ideology, and Power, edited by Elise A. Friedland, Sharon Herbert, and Yaron Z. Eliav, pp. 165–196. ­Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Culture and Religion 9, Leuven. Regling, K. 1904 Zur greichischen Münzkunde III. Zeitschrift für Numismatik 24:129–144. Sauer, Eberhard W. 2003 The Archaeology of Religious Hatred in the Roman and Early Medieval World. Tempus, Stroud, Gloucestershire and Charleston, South Carolina. Scheid, J. 1984 La mort du tyran. Chronique de quelques morts programées. Du châtiment dans la cité. Supplices corporels et peine du mort dans le monde antique. Collection de L’École Française de Rome 79:177–193. Smith, R. R. R., and Ahmet Ertug˘ 2001 Sculptured for Eternity: Treasures of Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Art from the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. Ertug˘ and Kocabiyik, Istanbul. Stewart, Peter 1999 The Destruction of Statues in Late Antiquity. In Constructing Identity in Late Antiquity, edited by Richard Miles, pp. 159–189. Routledge, London. Stewart, Peter 2003 Statues in Roman Society: Representation and Response. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Tomei, Maria A. 1997 Museo Palatino. Electa, Rome.

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Varner, Eric R. (editor) 2000 From Caligula to Constantine: Tyranny and Transformation in Roman Portraiture. Michael C. Carlos Museum, Atlanta. Varner, Eric R. 2001 Punishment After Death: Mutilation of Images and Corpse Abuse in Ancient Rome. Mortality 6:45–64. Varner, Eric, R. 2005 Execution in Effigy: Severed Heads and Decapitated Statues in Imperial Rome. In Roman Bodies: Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century, edited by Andrew Hopkins and Maria Wyke, pp. 67–84. The British School in Rome, London. Varner, Eric R. 2008 Memory Sanctions, Identity Politics and Altered Imperial Portraits. In Un ­Discours en Images de la Condamnation de la Mémoire, edited by S. Benoist and A. ­Daguet-Gagey, pp. 129–152. Centre Régional Universitaire Lorrain d’Histoire, Site de Metz, Metz. Voisin, J. L. 1984. Les Romains, chasseurs des têtes. Du châtiment dans la cité: supplices corporels et peine de mort dans le monde antique. Collection de l’École Française de Rome 79:241–293. Vout, Caroline 2008 The Art of Damnatio Memoriae. In Un Discours en Images de la Condamnation de la Mémoire, edited by Stéphane Benoist and Anne Daguet-Gagey, pp. 152–172. Centre Régional Universitaire Lorrain d’Histoire, Site de Metz, Metz. Vout, Caroline 2009 Representing the Emperor. In The Cambridge Companion to Historiography, edited by Andrew Feldherr, pp. 261–275. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

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Chapter Seven

“An Offense to Honor Is Never Forgiven…”

Violence and Landscape Archaeology in Highland Northern Albania Michael L. Galaty

Abstract  Northern Albania is the only place in southern Europe where tribal s­ocieties survived intact into the twentieth century, including tribal councils and chiefs, an oral customary law code (the Kanuni i Lekë Dukagjinit), and intra- and intertribal violence, including feud, raiding, and warfare. Since 2004, the Shala Valley Project (SVP) has studied one of these tribes, the Shala, the territory of which encompasses the upper reaches of the Shala River. The SVP supports integrated, i­nterdisciplinary ­programs of archaeological, ethnographic, and ethno- and archival historical research. In three seasons of fieldwork (2005–2007), 1000 fields were ­subjected to intensive archaeological survey, 580 structures were mapped and fully documented, and 36 heads of household participated in detailed formal interviews. Three historians accessed documents pertaining to northern Albania housed in Albania, Austria, Italy, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Taken together, these data paint an interesting picture of the origins and evolution of the Shala tribe, beginning in the fifteenth century A.D. through the present day. Fully interpreting this picture, however, is almost impossible without considering the effects of violence. In this paper I describe the various ways in which Shala’s tribal system, settlement pattern, and built environment changed through time, as reflected in the regional landscape, in response to endemic violence, including feud, raiding, and warfare. It seems likely that violence worked to relieve demographic and economic pressure, which was critically important given Shala’s harsh environment, but that contests between individuals and clans, for access to social and political power, caused most incidents of feud and decisions to go to war. Our work in Shala identifies the various effects violence may have had on settlement, the built environment, and landscape the world over, in periods of prehistory and history, and demonstrates the power of integrated, interdisciplinary approaches to violence and conflict to inform archaeological data. 143

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Introduction

T

he Shala Valley Project (SVP) is an Albanian-American collaboration led by Michael Galaty of Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, and Albanian archaeologists Ols Lafe and Zamir Tafilica. The project was launched in 2004 and conducted fieldwork during the summers of 2005–2008 (see Galaty 2006, 2007; Galaty et al. 2006, 2009a, 2009b; ­Mustafa 2008; Mustafa and Young 2008; Schon and Galaty 2006).1 The SVP integrates interdisciplinary programs of intensive and extensive archaeological survey and excavation with geo-scientific, ethnographic, and historical surveys, including ethno- and archival ­historical research, in order to study the Shala fis (“tribe”), one of many northern Albanian fise that survived intact into the twentieth century and, to some extent, down to the present day (Figure 7.1). The goals of the project are twofold: (1) to produce a diachronic record of the valley’s cultural resources that might help local administrators create a viable ­management plan, and (2) to study the effects of “isolation” on people who have always lived in a frontier zone at the edge of larger polities such as the Ottoman Empire and Albanian nation state. In 2005 we surveyed the village of Theth in upper (northern) Shala (Figure 7.2). Three hundred and thirty-eight fields and 460 structures were mapped and fully documented and 26 heads of household participated in detailed interviews. In 2006 and 2007 we surveyed lower (southern) Shala. 662 fields and 120 houses were mapped and fully documented and 10 heads of household participated in detailed interviews. Also in 2007, an extensive archaeological survey team worked south of Shala in the regions of Shosh and Kir, identifying and documenting 11 new archaeological sites. One result of intensive field survey was our discovery in 2005 of a terraced, fortified Iron Age site in the modern neighborhood of Grunas, located at the far southern tip of Theth. In 2006, 2007, and 2008 we conducted excavations at Grunas (Galaty et al. 2009a). Results, including a series of calibrated AMS radiocarbon dates, demonstrate that the site was built in a single construction phase ca. 800–900 B.C. and abandoned sometime before 500 B.C. The next evidence for substantial occupation dates to the Late Medieval period (ca. A.D. 1200–1500). Late Medieval pottery collected in the course of survey was scattered in fields surrounding Shala’s Catholic churches, most of which were destroyed under communism, and at the site of Dakaj, a Venetian-Ottoman-era fort strategically located at the center of the lower valley. Oral histories and family genealogies collected by SVP ethnographers suggest that the ancestors of the valley’s modern inhabitants arrived in the fifteenth century fleeing forced conversion by the Ottomans, perhaps in the wake of the death of the Albanian national hero Gjergj Kastrioti Skanderbeg (1405–1468) and the collapse of the resistance movement he had led. They probably infiltrated a sparsely settled, or empty, landscape, quickly spreading north toward Theth, sometimes occupying residential terraces vacated in the Iron Age, such as at Grunas. It was during the following centuries that Shala’s “tribal” sociopolitical system developed. Our working hypothesis has been that the organization and growth of the Shala fis is reflected in the valley’s landscape, settlement system, and built environment, and that it evolved in response to interactions with the surrounding, outside world, primarily the Venetians, the Catholic Church, the Ottomans, the Serbs and Montenegrins, and, after 1912,

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Figure 7.1 Map of Albania showing the location of the Shala Valley: Author.

the Albanian nation, which from 1945 to 1990 was a hard-line communist state. Such being the case, “isolation” was not so much a condition to be endured, but was rather a strategy engaged, one used to fend off conquest and incorporation by external powers and preserve a degree of autonomy. Archaeological, architectural, and ethnographic data collected in the

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Figure 7.2 Satellite photo of the Shala Valley showing the locations of places mentioned in the text: IKONOS, Author.

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field by the SVP generally support this conclusion, as do archival historical data. However, as was clear from the start, and became more apparent as we sought to interpret the results of our work, we could not make good sense of Shala’s landscape and settlement history, the history of the built environment in particular, without careful consideration of the effects of violence, including intra- and intertribal feud, raiding, and warfare. In this paper I review traditions of violence and warfare in northern Albania. I describe the ways in which violence and warfare affected and are reflected in the regional landscape. Finally, I discuss the implications of our research for archaeology elsewhere and in different periods, in particular those that have not produced similar, supplementary written and oral historical data, as are available for Shala. In the end, much can be explained by reference to northern Albania’s frontier position. Throughout history, in Modern times in particular, northern Albania sat along a “contested periphery,” tightly wedged between competing, predatory powers. The chiefs of Shala did not answer to the representatives of these p ­ owers: pashas, popes, doges, and dictators. They were not conquered by or subjected to them, but, nevertheless, they interacted with and were affected by them. The politics of northern Albanian tribal chiefs were local, but their political decisions, such as when to go to war and at what potential benefits or costs, were always balanced against the aims and concerns of the external powers that encircled and threatened them.

Theorizing Violence and War in Shala This paper is not about World-Systems Theory (WST), but WST does provide a shared vocabulary that may help us to describe and contextualize Shala’s position within a larger, “geopolitical” system (Hall et al. 2009). In Modern times northern Albania was—and ­perhaps always has been—a frontier zone, located at the edge of larger, expanding states, yet never conquered and not fully integrated by any of them. I do not use the term frontier in the traditional sense—indicating simply territory located at the edge of some kind of line of advancement—rather, frontiers are now thought to be “zones of contact and interaction” (Lightfoot and Martinez 1995), places where cultures collide, mix, and hybridize. Northern Albania was, though, a special kind of frontier, a “contested periphery” (Allen 1997), land claimed by multiple, opposed neighbors, each of which sought to co-opt the Albanian tribes at the expense of the others, sometimes by force, but more often by deploying relatively more subtle, social strategies. Further complicating matters, the larger zone of the Prokletija mountain range is split by multiple, smaller ethno-linguistic and religious boundaries, separating Slavs from Albanians and Muslims from Christians, both Catholic and Orthodox, who were also at odds. These further differences were variously exploited by the “contesting” powers that sought to incorporate the Prokletija. We may therefore employ Hall’s model of “complex incorporation” (1986, 1998, 2000, 2001), whereby a peripheral zone is drawn into a core polity’s orbit through multiple mechanisms, though rarely fully and formally. Complex incorporation leaves room for local leaders to, in a sense, dictate the terms whereby they agree to incorporation, which may be temporary and partial. Kardulias (2007) refers to this process as “negotiated peripherality.” The people of Shala appear to have creatively and successfully “negotiated” their “peripherality” and, importantly, v­ iolence, including feud, raiding, and warfare, was a key means of doing so.

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It is not clear whether the northern Albanian tribal system was brought to the ­mountains when the first refugees arrived in the very Late Medieval period or whether it evolved in situ over the ensuing several centuries. Probably a bit of both, but certainly the tribal system documented in the twentieth century was the direct result of adaptation to a particular mountain environment and to processes of complex incorporation, as outlined above. Boehm (1983, 1984a, 1984b) calls the mountain tribes of the Prokletija, including Shala, “refuge area warrior societies” and makes the case that all such societies—having escaped to remote mountains and defended their freedom militarily—should exhibit similar cultural features.

The Shala Valley and Tribe Life in the high mountains of Albania is difficult. While the peaks of Shala approach 3000 m asl, most houses are at valley bottom, between 800 and 1000 m asl. The climate is sub-Alpine and the winters are long and hard, with large amounts of snow. The economy is currently built around full-time sedentary agro-pastoralism—sometimes called “mixed” village farming—and functions at or just below subsistence levels; government aid or remittances from overseas relatives bridge the gap. Large, stone houses, some of them fortified, called kulla, dot elaborately terraced foothills (Figure 7.3). Property boundaries are marked by stone walls and fences, and deeply entrenched, clearly very old paths, called shtegu, link fields and homes.

Figure 7.3 Aerial view of the Ulaj and Kolaj neighborhoods of Theth, Shala: Photo Author.

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The tribal sociopolitical system can be described as follows: Large extended ­households (shpia) organized into neighborhoods (mehalla) share patrilineal descent from a common apical ancestor thereby forming exogamous segmented clans or “tribes” (fis). Individual fis may be further divided into “brotherhoods” (vllazni). Several neighborhoods and fis together compose a single village (katund). Political power is vested in the person of the family patriarch, the zot i shpi. Family heads are appointed or elected to a village council, a kuvend, that makes decisions of importance to the whole community. A single council member is elected “headman” or kryeplak. In Ottoman times, several villages and fis might be politically joined in a bajrak, a “banner,” led by a bajraktar, a “banner chief.” Bajraks formed loose tribal confederations; for example, those of the Shala “tribe” joined Shosh, Shala’s nearest neighbor to the south, and several other tribes, to form the Dukagjin “­confederacy” (farë). Oral, customary laws regarding kinship relations and political organization were codified by a fifteenth-century chief named Lekë Dukagjini. The Kanuni i Lekë Dukagjinit was not transcribed in full until the early twentieth century by a Franciscan priest, Father Shtjefën Gjeçov (1989). The kanun is based on the concept of honor (nder). Any breach of a man’s honor might precipitate a blood feud (gjakmarrje).

Traditions of Violence 593. The Kanun of the Albanian mountains does not make any distinction between man and man. “Soul for soul, all are equal before God.” .… 595. If a person’s honor is offended, there is no legal recourse for such an offense; the Kanun says, “Forgive, if you see fit; but if you prefer, wash your dirty face.” .… 597. “There is no fine for an offense to honor.” An offense to honor is never forgiven. 598. “An offense to honor is not paid for with property, but by the spilling of blood or by a magnanimous pardon (through the mediation of good friends).” (Gjeçov 1989:130)

The basis for understanding all forms of codified violence in northern Albania is honor and affronts to honor, and the rules of behavior that regulate violence as it relates to honor are set down in the kanun. Any offense to a man’s honor might precipitate an intra- or inter-fis feud. However, whereas the need to defend or recover one’s honor was always the immediate cause for feud—one who was dishonored, i.e., “black-faced,” was socially shunned—there typically existed an underlying, deeper motivation that justified or necessitated violence. In practical terms, for example, one might extend one’s territory through feud, and indeed disputes about land and water rights often provided the impetus for feud. A wounded man was allowed to “stagger” as far as possible into his enemy’s territory (Gjeçov 1989:76–78). A burial mound (muranë) marked the spot of his death and the newly extended boundary of his family’s land. More commonly, insults leading to feud were used as a means of inflating one individual’s or family’s social and political status at the expense of another’s. A feud often ended when the social and political positions of the persons or families involved had shifted (down for the loser and up for the winner) but before too much damage had been done to the fis at large. Feuds could last years and, in some cases, decades, during which time the men of a household might be confined to a fortified “tower of refuge,” a kulla.

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In a harsh environment with low carrying capacity, feud may act as a release valve, allowing surplus population to be shed. This “cultural ecological” explanation has in recent years been roundly criticized. Indeed, in Shala, despite extremely high male death rates from feud—in the period 1901–1905 an average 26 percent of male deaths was from feud (Nopsca 1925)—in fact the sex ratio was skewed toward men: in Theth in 1918 the female to male sex ratio was 355:414 (Seiner 1922). The logical conclusion is that despite Shala’s ardent Catholicism, the solution to population pressure was not feud; it was, rather, female infanticide. Feud (and along with it, war) was the primary means whereby men competed for social and political status, so boys (men, i.e., “rifles” in the language of the kanun) were valued over girls (women, i.e., “sacks for carrying things,” whether potatoes or, ideally, more boys). As a result, Albanian mountain tribes exemplify the so-called “Mediterranean” ­marriage pattern, whereby each patriarchal family was encouraged to have as many children as possible, especially boys, who were arranged in marriage as early as possible. Women married into the tribe from outside. This can be opposed to the “European” pattern, which, for example, held in the Alpine zone of Switzerland, where population was controlled by restricting marriage for most adults (Netting 1981; Viazzo 1989). The European pattern “worked” in Switzerland because there was no feud—there were other ways of attaining status—though one interesting result was a high rate of illegitimate births, something unthinkable in northern Albania. Northern Albanian men were inveterate raiders. Raiding other tribes, in particular if they were Slavic (i.e., Montenegrin or Serb) or of another religion, was an acceptable means of obtaining additional foodstuffs, especially livestock, and of attaining status. A man who killed another man during a raid risked precipitating an intertribal feud, but gained status back at home. A man proved that he had killed another man in battle by severing his ­victim’s head and returning with it to his home (Durham 2001 [1923]; Jezernik 2004:ch. 7). Likewise, if a man was wounded or killed in enemy territory, it was expected that his kinsmen would bring his body back for a proper burial, and if that were impossible, would at least bring his head back, removing it before the enemy could. The legend is that northern Albanians began shaving their heads and wore “topknots” in order to provide a convenient handle for carrying heads home. There was even a special knife carried by Balkan warriors called a khanjar, used for both taking a head and eating one’s meals (Jezernik 2004:127). The last episode of head hunting in the Balkans reportedly occurred in August 1912, when Albanians cut off the heads of three Montenegrins (Durham 2001:135 [1923]). The decision to raid was not necessarily a communal one. Any warrior could go on a raid, provided he obtained permission from his zot i shpi and could attract fellow raiders. The decision to go to war was, however, made by the kuvend (council of elders) in consultation with the bajraktar. The bajraktar was a tribe’s “banner chief,” its liaison to the outside world. But the political position of bajraktar was an artificial creation of the Ottomans. The earliest written reference to the bajraktar is 1783 (Ulqini 1991), about the same time the independent, Orthodox ecclesiastical state formed in Montenegro, a direct threat to Ottoman hegemony in the Balkans. Unlike traditional positions of leadership in northern Albania, that of bajraktar was hereditary, and the bajraktar gained access to trade goods, arms, and freedom of movement (e.g., into and out of the city) that other leaders

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did not have. In return, he was required to raise a levy if and when the Ottomans required additional troops, in particular when attacking or defending against the Montenegrins. The threat posed by the Montenegrin state, which necessitated mercenary troops and creation of the position of bajraktar, explains why the Ottomans did not conquer and formally incorporate the northern Albanians and why they maintained a frontier or “buffer” zone in the Prokletija (Reinkowski 2003). So good were Albanian mercenaries that their presence is recorded beginning in the sixteenth century in conflicts throughout Europe as far north as Scotland (Millar 1976). The Venetians, who had been ejected from Albania at the time of the Ottoman ­conquest, enter into this picture in a slightly different manner, primarily through their support of Catholicism and the Catholic Church in northern Albania. The Catholic priests, mostly Franciscans, who staffed churches in northern Albania, including Shala, were most concerned with reducing violence among and between their congregants. This strategy failed miserably, but was nevertheless endorsed by the Venetian state due to its potential to weaken Ottoman influence in the region. The documents we have obtained from the Secret Archives of the Vatican, composed of annual reports to Rome from the priests of the Albanian mission, express dismay and frustration that traditions of violence had not diminished. Given the situation as I have reconstructed it, though, it is no wonder that priests were largely ignored when it came to curtailing feud, raiding, and warfare. The local mountain and pan-regional sociopolitical systems were integrated via complex feedback loops that reinforced northern Albanian practices of violence. Northern Albanians could no more stop feuding than the Ottomans could make peace with the Montenegrins. The highland Albanian tribal system did not evolve and survive in isolation; far from it. It responded to the pressures and possibilities presented by a strategic position within a “contested-­peripheral,” frontier zone.

Landscape Effects Our studies of settlement in Shala indicate that the first refugees arrived in the very Late Medieval period. Each of the large, extensive neighborhoods of Shala was settled by a founding family (also the clan’s founding ancestor) and grew over time as households split and new houses were built. We have managed to track this process for several neighborhoods in Theth by interviewing zot i shpi and creating a house chronology based on various architectural features (Galaty et al. 2009b). This process of neighborhood expansion must have been affected by political contests between members of different clans and families, some of which likely involved feud leading to segmentation. This is apparent when members of a particular fis are found stranded in another’s neighborhood, leading to disputes over neighborhood boundaries. Feud had various dramatic impacts on the character of the wider built environment, as well. Boundary stones and carefully managed irrigation canals are ubiquitous. Because feud often erupted due to disputes over land tenure and water rights, boundary stones and canals were dutifully maintained. Deeply entrenched paths (shtëgu) were used to move from house to house under cover. Old stone houses are themselves large, conspicuous features

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of the local landscape, built to be defended, and sometimes carved with martial symbols. Traditionally, livestock was housed on the ground floor and the family on the second floor, which could be accessed by a wooden staircase and balcony. The staircase and balcony were made to be easily and quickly pushed away from the house’s exterior wall if the household came under attack. Very small windows were constructed, called frengji, typically just large enough to accommodate a rifle. Data from Theth collected by the SVP indicate that house architecture shifted through time in response to changes in the outside world (Galaty et al. 2009b). For example, after Albania gained its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1912, the government of King Zog, himself a mountaineer, sought to undermine the power of the tribal chiefs, the bajraktars in particular, who were viewed (probably correctly) as a threat to the stability of the new nation (see Schon and Galaty 2006 for an extended discussion of this process). The most efficient way to diffuse tribal power was to disarm tribal warriors, by force if necessary (Figure 7.4). Without guns, warriors could not easily fight feuds, raid other tribes, and conduct war. Without access to systems of codified violence, as dictated in the kanun, tribal members had no means to compete socially and politically, and no way to defend their honor (no way to “clean their faces”) should it be questioned. By taking away guns, Zog knew that he had cut the heart out of the tribal system, draining away its life blood, honor. The result of disarmament was an almost immediate growth in average window size (Figure 7.5).

Figure 7.4 Last bajraktar of the Shala surrendering his gun to state authorities in 1922. He receives a copy of the new constitution in return. Photo used courtesy of the Fototekë Marubi, Shkodër, Albania.

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Figure 7.5 Old style frengji window next to a much larger, modern window: Photo Author.

Conclusion: Generalizing the Northern Albanian Model If, as Boehm (1984b) argues, the “refuge area warrior adaptation” exemplified in the Prokletija can be extended to other mountain regions, then we should also find evidence for this particular cultural “type” in the archaeological records of these regions. Such being the case, the data we have collected for Modern Shala should allow us to list the archaeological correlates of a “refuge area warrior society”: 1. 2. 3. 4.

located in a frontier, sometimes contested-peripheral zone; high population, scarce, carefully managed resources, low carrying capacity; permanent, extensive settlement in large houses set in defensible locations; evidence for inter- and intragroup violence.

One convenient way to test the efficacy of these correlates is to compare Modern to Iron Age Shala. Are these correlates present for prehistoric Shala itself, ca. 800–500 B.C.? We found evidence for nucleated, prehistoric settlement at two places in Shala: at the site of Grunas in the north and Dakaj in the south, which was reoccupied later, from Late Medieval to Modern times. Evidence for violence in Iron Age Shala is circumstantial. Both sites are in highly defensible locations, marked by the construction of large artificial, residential terraces and fortification walls. These are particularly evident at Grunas, the construction of which must have required substantial investments of time and energy (Figure 7.6). Clearly, defense

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Figure 7.6 Map and aerial photo of the Iron Age site of Grunas in Theth, Shala: Photo Author.

was a concern in Iron Age Shala. Population must have been relatively low and the e­ xcavation data from Grunas point to seasonal, as opposed to year-round, occupation. Prehistoric Shala does not appear to fit the expectations for a “refuge area warrior society.” During the period 800–500 B.C. the Illyrian peoples of the western Balkans were at the height of their growing power (Wilkes 1992). It was not until much later, 229 B.C., that Illyria was attacked and conquered by the Romans, in response to Illyrian pirates operating out of Shkodër, which is almost certainly where the seasonal occupants of Grunas originated. If Iron Age Illyrians had created “refuge” societies, it should have been after 229 B.C. in order to escape Roman conquest. But there is scarce evidence for settlement anywhere in the Prokletija during this period. Grunas and Dakaj do not provide evidence for “refuge area warrior societies” because they fail the first of our expectations: they were not located in a frontier, contested-peripheral zone. It is more likely that Iron Age Illyrians seasonally occupied mountain valleys in order to control the interior passes to metal-rich Kosova. The Roman conquest made this either unwise or unnecessary, or both. This brief analysis of prehistoric Shala suggests that “refuge area warrior societies” might be a particular result of Modern geopolitical processes, and therefore an example of Ferguson and Whitehead’s (1992) “tribal zone” effect, whereby tribal political systems and the violence that may accompany them are the result of unique, relatively recent processes of colonial expansion on the part of (primarily) European imperial powers. However, whether

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such was the case in prehistory is an open, testable question (see Keeley 1992), and our work in Shala may help define how this question might be best asked and answered.

Acknowledgments The SVP was supported by grants from Millsaps College, the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the United States Embassy in Tirana, the Global Partners Project, the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), International Peace Research Association, the University Research Council of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Louisville, and two private donors, Bud Robinson and John Stevens.

Note 1.

Detailed, annual field research reports are available for download at the project Web site: www. millsaps.edu/svp. Recently, the SVP was named the first of four trans-Atlantic exemplars in the LEAP II program (Linking Electronic Archives and Publications), funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. As a result, all of the SVP’s data will be permanently archived and made available to the public by the Archaeology Data Service (http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/) and an interactive article published in the journal Internet Archaeology (http://intarch.ac.uk/). See Galaty et al. 2009b.

References Cited Allen, Mitchell J. 1997 Contested Peripheries: Philistia in the Neo-Assyrian World-System. PhD Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. University Microfilms, Ann Arbor. Boehm, Christopher 1983 Montenegrin Social Organization and Values: Political Ethnography of a Refuge Area Tribal Adaptation. AMS Press, New York. Boehm, Christopher 1984a Blood Revenge: The Anthropology of Feuding in Montenegro and Other Tribal Societies. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence. Boehm, Christopher 1984b Mountain Refuge Area Adaptations. In Cultural Adaptation to Mountain Environments, edited by Patricia D. Beaver and Burton L. Purrington, pp. 24–37. The University of Georgia Press, Athens. Durham, M. Edith 2000 [1909] High Albania: A Victorian Traveller’s Balkan Odyssey. Phoenix Press, London. Durham, M. Edith 2001 [1923] Head Hunting in the Balkans. Republished in M. Edith Durham: Albania and the Albanians: Selected Articles and Letters 1903–1944, edited by Bejtullah Destani, pp.133–137. The Centre for Albanian Studies, London. Ferguson, R. Brian, and Neil L. Whitehead (editors) 1992 War in the Tribal Zone: Expanding States and Indigenous Warfare. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Galaty, Michael L. 2006 From Points A to B: The Shala Valley Project and the Albanian Middle Paleolithic. In New Directions in Albanian Archaeology: Studies Presented to Muzafer Korkuti, edited by Lorenc Bejko and Richard Hodges, pp. 18–30. International Centre for Albanian Archaeology Monograph Series No. 1. Oxbow Books, Oxford.

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Galaty, Michael L. 2007 “There Are Prehistoric Cities Up There”: The Bronze and Iron Ages in Northern Albania. In Between the Aegean and Baltic Seas: Prehistory Across Borders. Proceedings of the International Conference held at the University of Zagreb, Croatia, 11–14 April 2005, edited by Ioanna Galanaki, Helena Tomas, Yannis Galanakis, and Robert Laffineur, pp. 133– 140. Aegaeum 27. Université de Liège and University of Texas at Austin, Liège and Austin. Galaty, Michael L., Ols Lafe, Zamir Tafilica, Wayne E. Lee, Mentor Mustafa, Charles Watkinson, and Antonia Young 2006 Projekti i Luginës së Shalës: Fashata 2005 Hyrje [The Shala Valley Project: Results o of the 2005 Season]. In Seminari i Tretë Ndërkombetar “Shkodra në Shekuj” (Nëntor 2005), edited by Maxhid Çungu, pp. 232–240. Historical Museum of Shkodër, Shkodër, Albania. Galaty, Michael L., Ols Lafe, and Zamir Tafilica 2009a Grunas, Shala: A New Fortified Prehistoric Site in the Northern Albanian Mountains. In Proceedings of the Cinquième Colloque International sur l’Illyrie Mériodionale at l’Épire dans l’Antiquité, Grenoble, France, October 8–12, 2008, edited by Jean-Luc Lamboley. De Boccard, Paris. Galaty, Michael L., Wayne E. Lee, Charles Watkinson, Zamir Tafilica, and Ols Lafe 2009b Fort, Tower, or House? Building a Landscape of Settlement in the Shala Valley of High Albania. Internet Archaeology 27. Lightfoot, Kent, and Antoinette Martinez 1995 Frontiers and Boundaries in Archaeological Perspective. Annual Review of Anthropology 24:471–492. Gjeçov, Shtjefën 1989 Kanuni i Lekë Dukagjini [The Code of Lekë Dukagjini]. Translated by Leonard Fox. Gjonlekaj Publishing, New York. Hall, Thomas D. 1986 Incorporation in the World-System: Toward a Critique. American Sociological Review 51:390–402. Hall, Thomas D. 1998 The Effects of Incorporation into World Systems on Ethnic Processes: Lessons from the Ancient World for the Modern World. International Political Science Review 19:251–267. Hall, Thomas D. 2000 Frontiers, Ethnogenesis, and World-Systems: Rethinking the Theories. In A World-Systems Reader: New Perspectives on Gender, Urbanism, Cultures, Indigenous Peoples, and Ecology, edited by Thomas D. Hall, pp. 237–270. Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, Maryland. Hall, Thomas D. 2001 Using Comparative Frontiers to Explore World-Systems Analysis in International Relations. International Studies Perspectives 2001(2):252–268. Hall, Thomas D., P. Nick Kardulias, and Christopher Chase-Dunn 2009 Inter-regional Interactions, Archaeology, and World-Systems Analysis: A Review. Journal of Archaeological Research. Jezernik, Božidar 2004 Wild Europe: The Balkans in the Gaze of Western Travellers. Saqi Books, London. Kardulias, P. Nick 2007 Negotiation and Incorporation on the Margins of World-Systems: Examples from Cyprus and North America. Journal of World Systems Research 13:55–82. Keeley, Lawrence H. 1996 War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Millar, Gilbert J. 1976 The Albanians: Sixteenth-Century Mercenaries. History Today 26(7):468–471.

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Mustafa, Mentor 2008 What Remained of Religion in an “Atheist” State and the Return of Religion in Post-Communist Albania. In Mediterranean Ethnological Summer School No. 7, edited by Repic Jaka, Alenka Bartulovic, and Katarina Sajovec Altshul, pp. 51–76. Ljubljana, Slovenia. Mustafa, Mentor, and Antonia Young 2008 Feud Narratives: Contemporary Deployments of Kanun in Shala Valley, Northern Albania. Anthropological Notebooks XIV/II:87–107. Netting, Robert McC. 1981 Balancing on an Alp: Ecological Change and Continuity in a Swiss Mountain Community. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Nopsca, Franz Baron 1925 Albanien: Bauten, Trachten und Geräte Nordalbaniens. Berlin. Reinkowski, Marus 2003 Double Struggle, No Income: Ottoman Borderlands in Northern Albania. International Journal of Turkish Studies 9:239–253. Schon, Robert, and Michael L. Galaty 2006 Diachronic Frontiers: Landscape Archaeology in Highland Albania. Journal of World Systems Research 12(2):231–262. Seiner, Franz 1922 Ergebnisse Der Volkszählung in Albanien, in Dem Von Österr.-Ungar. Truppen 1916–1918 Besetzten Gebiete. Höler-Pichler-Tempsky, Vienna. Ulqini, Kahreman 1991 Bajraku ne Organization e Vjeter Shoqeror: Fund i Shek. XVII deri me 1912 [The Organization of the Bajraks in the Old System: From the Seventeenth Century to 1912]. Tirana, Albania. Wilkes, John 1992 The Illyrians. Blackwell, London.

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Chapter Eight

“Persuade the People”

Violence and Roman Spectacle Entertainment in the Greek World Michael J. Carter

Abstract  This paper concerns the participation of the spectators at the m ­ artyrdom of Polycarp in Smyrna in the mid-second century A.D. Following the work of David Potter and Glen Bowersock, who argue that much of the ideology of Christian martyrdom originated in the context of Roman-style spectacles (gladiatorial combats, wild beast hunts, and fabulous executions) that had been adopted in the Greek cities of Asia Minor, it proposes also to understand these games as a sort of Roman cultural performance, certainly in their Roman context. The martyr-act preserves evidence for the active involvement of the people at such shows, even in Smyrna, allowing us to speculate that they might also have served as a sort of cultural performance in the Greek world.

Roman Games in Smyrna The Martyrdom of Polycarp

I

n the mid-second century A.D., the citizens of Smyrna gathered in the stadium during a holiday celebration. Entertaining spectacles had been arranged for them. Smyrna was located on the Aegean coast of Turkey where Izmir now stands and the citizens considered their city to be the “Jewel of Ionia.” There is no longer any record of what went on most of that day, but when we are able to pick up the story, we find the people watching the torture and execution of a group of social outcasts and secretive atheists. Here is a sample of what was happening: Similarly did those who were condemned to the beasts endure terrifying torments, being laid out upon sharp-stones, battered by other tortures, and subjected to various other kinds of cruelties, in

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“Persuade the People” 159 order that, if it were possible, the tyrant might by their lingering tortures lead them to a denial. For the Devil did indeed invent many things against them; but thanks be to God, he could not prevail over them all. For the most noble Germanicus strengthened the timidity of others by the ­perseverance that he showed and he fought heroically with the wild beasts (ethe¯riomache¯sen). For, when the proconsul sought to persuade him, and urged him to take pity upon his young age, he, with a show of force, dragged the beast on top of himself, being desirous to escape all the more quickly from this unjust and lawless world. But upon this the whole mob was astonished (thaumasan) at the great nobility of mind displayed by the devout and godly race of the Christians. They cried out, “Away with the Atheists! Go get Polycarp!” (Mart. Pol. 2–3)1

The passage is from the opening chapters of the Martyrdom of Polycarp and the social outcasts and secretive, treacherous atheists were Christians. Those down in the arena with the beasts had been justly condemned under Roman law and like other damnati ad bestias were executed at the spectacles. The interesting thing about the martyr-act is that it tells the story from the point of view of those being executed (see Potter 1996:155–159). Polycarp was found outside the city moving from estate to estate, and brought back to the city and into the stadium. Again the stadium was filled with the people, possibly as many as twenty thousand and representing as much as 20 per cent of the population (Thompson 2002:49). The proconsul, Lucius Statius Quadratus, was again present in Smyrna when Polycarp was led into the stadium. It was the proconsul himself who interrogated Polycarp: Then, as he was brought in, a great shout arose when the people heard that it was Polycarp who had been arrested. As he was brought before him, the proconsul asked him whether he was Polycarp. When he admitted that he was, the proconsul tried to persuade him to deny, saying, “Respect your age,” and other similar things that they are accustomed to say: “swear by the Genius of the emperor; recant, say: ‘Away with the atheists’”. But Polycarp, with a stern countenance, looked at the mob of lawless heathen who were in the stadium and, shaking his hand at them, he groaned and looked up to heaven and said, “Away with the atheists!” But when the proconsul persisted and said, “Swear and I will let you go. Curse Christ,” Polycarp said, “For eighty-six years I have been his servant and he has done me no wrong; how can I blaspheme against my king who saved me?” But again the other insisted saying, “Swear by the Genius of the emperor,” he answered, “If you are vain enough to think that I will swear by the Genius of the emperor, as you say, and pretend that you do not know who I am, then listen and I will tell you plainly: I am a Christian. If you would like to learn the teachings of Christianity, set a day and listen.” The proconsul said, “Persuade the people.” And Polycarp said, “I would think you worthy of a discussion, for we have been taught to give honor to the authorities appointed by God over us; this does us no harm. But as for them, I do not think them worthy to hear a defense.” (Mart. Pol. 9–10)

The proconsul threatened Polycarp first with condemnation to the beasts and then with fire if he did not repent. In the end, however, it was Polycarp who stood, fearless, filled with joy and courage, while the proconsul was amazed. He sent his herald into the center of the stadium to announce three times to the people that Polycarp had confessed to being a Christian. At this, the crowd went wild with uncontrollable rage and shouted in a great voice: “Here is the schoolmaster of Asia, the father of the Christians, the destroyer of our gods, the one who teaches the many not to sacrifice nor to worship!” They asked Philip the Asiarch to let a lion loose against Polycarp and when he refused, claiming that the days set aside for the wild beast shows were now over, the crowd demanded fire. According to the account, they even collected the kindling themselves.

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The Role of the People How do we account for the reactions and the behavior of the crowd? Who are they? Or better: Who do they think they are? What motivated them to attend, watch, and actually participate in such violent shows? Being citizens of Smyrna—the Jewel of Ionia— they are proud Greeks, after all. But here we find them eagerly watching an ostentatiously Roman spectacle, cheering for a Roman proconsul, who was dispensing Roman justice. One ­hundred years earlier and just down the coast at Ephesus, a similar mob rioted over the ­presence of Christian missionaries preaching against the gods and in particular against the local goddess Artemis of Ephesus: the riot moved to the theatre and some of the ­Christians were dragged along. Chaos ensued with the rioters chanting “Great is Artemis of ­Ephesus!”—for two hours—until they could finally be calmed by city officials, who were terrified that the riot would bring Roman intervention (Acts 19:23–34). For them, the Romans were an alien, occupying force. The anti-Christian attitudes displayed by the crowd at Smyrna were widespread over much of the Empire and generally resulted from the Christian rejection of traditional religious practices and established social customs. Still, the occasion for many martyrdoms remained a thoroughly Roman one (see Potter 1993). Germanicus and others originally died fighting the beasts, perhaps lions. These were almost certainly part of the official munus, a complex spectacle that tended to include gladiators (monomachoi in Greek), venationes (beast hunts, kune¯gesia in Greek), and the often fantastic executions of criminals (noxii or damnati in Latin and katadikoi in Greek). It was Robert’s seminal study Les gladiateurs dans l’Orient grec (1940) that made the scholarly world aware of the spread of the bloody, Roman-style spectacles to the Greek Eastern sections of the Roman Empire. Robert revealed that by the second century A.D., these spectacles had become especially popular in the Greek cities of Asia Minor, almost always in connection with the celebration of the imperial cult. Germanicus’s fight with the beasts, therefore, almost certainly took place within the context of such a munus in Smyrna. It was provided by the chief priest of the imperial cult, a man identified as Philip of Tralles (a nearby community). We know him also from inscriptions from Tralles itself as Gaius Iulius Philippos (Campanile 1994:no.100). Since he was not from Smyrna, he must have been serving as chief priest of the imperial cult for the entire province.2 In martyrdoms, such as that of Polycarp or Germanicus here, there is a real and active role for the people. They are involved in the spectacle in a way that goes beyond mere witnesses, though they are that too: they actively gaze down on an objectified, passive subject/ victim in the arena below. If understanding the Roman munus can tell us about the nature and ideology of early Christian martyrdom, then it should also work the other way around: Christian martyrdom should be able to tell us something about the Roman munus (see ­Potter 1993). This may be especially rewarding since the accounts of the martyrs often ­present us with the view of the spectacle from the perspective of the “performers,” in this case the brave victims who “fought the beasts,” as Germanicus had done. Glen Bowersock has proposed that we should look to the great Greek cities of Asia Minor, such as Smyrna, and the broader

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imperial culture that had developed there to find the origin of early ­Christian martyrdom (Bowersock 1995; cf. Kyle 1998:242–264; Frilingos 2004). In particular, he argued that the phenomenon of Christian martyrdom did not originate in Jewish (particularly Maccabean) traditions, but rather that it should be understood as product of the gladiatorial and related Roman spectacles that had spread from Rome and Italy throughout the whole Empire especially in the first and second century. But Bowersock claims that connections went deeper than synchronicity: Christians and the martyrs themselves also adopted the ideology of the munus to inform their concept of the act of martyrdom. According to Bowersock, “[T]he role of martyrs in dying is conceived as a kind of public entertainment offered by God to the communities where it takes place as some kind of far more edifying transmutation of the traditional games” (Bowersock 1995:52). Martyrdom was spectacle (Potter 1993; Thompson 2002).

Cultural Significance of the Greek Munus Though Louis Robert was able to reveal the extent of the Greek involvement in the ­production of Roman-style spectacles, he showed surprisingly little interest in exploring the cultural significance of these Roman shows in the Greek world. He preferred instead to direct the reader to the works of Ludwig Friedländer (originally published in three volumes between 1864–1871) and Georges Lafaye (1896) from the nineteenth century. The closest Robert came to evaluating the impact of these foreign shows was to equate the diffusion of Roman, gladiatorial spectacles into the Greek world as a disease that had infected the Greeks and marked their Romanization: “La société grecque a été gangrenée par cette maladie venue de Rome. C’est un des succès de la romanisation du monde grec” (1940:263). Since that time, however, and especially in the last fifteen years or so, there has been a determined effort by a number of scholars to take the spectacles seriously, certainly as seriously as the ancients themselves did, and to identify a model to explain its cultural ­significance. ­Jonathan Edmondson and more recently Donald Kyle have proposed that the arena spectacles could be interpreted as a kind of Roman “cultural performance” ­(Edmondson 1996:73–74; Kyle 2007:17–18), but neither offered any discussion of the theory: each only raise it as a ­possibility. Cultural Performances The research into “cultural performances” in other fields has grown considerably over the last several years. Forty years ago, in his study of Indian festive practices, Milton Singer proposed the theory of cultural performance to mark out “plays, concerts, and lectures… but also prayers, ritual readings and recitations, rites and ceremonies, festivals, and all those things we usually classify under religion and ritual rather than with the cultural and artistic” (Singer 1972:71). This concept of cultural performance is similar to what Victor Turner called a “social drama” (e.g., Turner 1974). Key to the “cultural performance” is the idea that what is put on display is important to the gathered people because it somehow reflects v­ alues

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considered central to their culture. More than simple entertainment (Schechner 1977), ­cultural performances are special events, set off from daily realities, at which the community assembles to watch and consider performances that in some way manifest their own cultural priorities, their values, and their ideologies. The spectacle matters to the spectators in a way that goes beyond simple amusement, and because it matters and because the community is assembled to watch it, there is created room for debate in which notions of family, community, ethnicity, and cultural identity, for example, are not only expressed but may also be challenged and changed—or reinforced (cf. the definition of MacAloon 1984:1; McKenzie 2001). Work on the cultural performance is ongoing. For example, David Guss, in his study of festivals in Venezuela, usefully identifies four criteria of a cultural performance: (1) the celebration is somehow out of the ordinary; (2) the central performance embodies and presents values that are important to the community and encourages the community to reflect upon them; (3) it is profoundly discursive, encouraging debate about the importance of the performance and the cultural values on display; and (4) it may result in a range of changes, from simply a reaffirmation of the established order to a more radical reorganization of society. To Guss, “[W]hat is important is that cultural performances be recognized as sites of social action where identities and relations are continually being reconfigured” (Guss 2000:7–12). Such performances are important to the spectators, not just as entertainment, though they may be that too, but because they witness and celebrate some of the ideals that help to define who they are. The spectators gather to celebrate themselves. These criteria provide a ready test to apply to any performance. In Rome and Italy, there is good reason to think of the spectacle of gladiatorial combat, wild beast hunts, and fabulous executions as a kind of Roman cultural performance (Carter 2009:301–305). Huge amphitheaters were specially built all over the western ­Mediterranean in which local communities could gather to watch the games. They were serious spectacles: life and death were played out right in front of the eyes of the assembled citizens. But in no way were the spectators passive recipients of the shows. A measure of the spectators’ response to the wild beast hunts (venationes) can be gauged from a mosaic from Smirat in North Africa, now in the Bardo in Carthage, featuring wild beast hunts of a certain Magerius. Among a group of beast-fighters busy killing leopards stands a man with a tray on which sit four bags of money. Each bag is marked with the symbol (¥), presumably meaning 1,000 denarii. This mosaic is famous for its detailed and gruesome depictions of the slaughter of beasts in the arena. But more fascinating are the fascinating “inscriptions,” which allow the mosaic “to speak” and bring the scene to life (Dunbabin 1978:67–68; Brown 1992). These inscriptions are especially interesting for the study of Roman spectacles because they preserve the voices that were actually heard in the amphitheater. The first inscription records the shout of the herald, asking that the beastfighters be paid 500 denarii (= 2,000 sesterces) for each leopard (presumably each leopard killed). Properly, the people are addressed with the greatest deference: “my lords” (domini mei) they are called. From the picture we should speculate that the four Telegenii have been paid a sack of money each, but if so, then Magerius seems to have given twice as much as asked. Earning popularity was a costly business. Proclaimed by the curio (herald): “My Lords, in order that the Telegenii should have what they deserve from your favour, for each leopard give them five hundred denarii.”

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The second inscription purports to record the rather lengthy shouts of the crowd in response. Though the translation below may express the meaning of the words, it fails to capture the full force of what the crowd shouted in reply. Their phrases are metrical and repetitive (Hoc est habere! Hoc est posse!) and for that reason it may be easier to believe that this is the sort of thing that a crowd could have shouted, even chanted, in unison. The shout in reply: “May future generations know of your munus because you are an example for them; may past generations hear about it. Where has such a thing been heard before? When has such a thing been heard before? You have provided a munus as an example to the other magistrates. You have provided a munus from your own resources.” Magerius pays (the money). “This is what it is to have money! This is what it is to have power! Now that it is evening, they have been dismissed from your munus with bags of money.”

What a day for Magerius! These shouts were apparently accompanied by the people shouting out Magerius’s name: the vocative form of his name—Mageri—appears twice on the mosaic as well. Executions also invited the active participation of the crowd, as a famous passage from Seneca tells us: By chance I attended a mid-day exhibition (meridianum spectaculum) expecting some fun, whit, ­relaxation, some exhibition at which men’s eyes have respite from the slaughter of their fellow men. But it was quite the reverse. The previous combats were the essence of compassion, but now all trifling was put aside and it is pure murder. The men have no defensive armor. They are exposed to blows at all points, and no one ever strikes in vain.…In the morning they throw men to the lions and the bears; at noon they throw them to the spectators.…In the morning they cried “Kill him! Lash him! Burn him! Why does he meet the sword so cowardly?…”

Gladiators received similar attention from the crowd. A wounded gladiator could ­signal ­submission to his opponent by raising his finger: the combat is referred to as combat ad ­digitum (to the finger). But that is not the end of the matter. The wounded gladiator’s opponent would then step back out of both respect to a fellow gladiator and because he was directed to by the summa rudis, a referee in the arena with the gladiators. The decision whether to accept the wounded gladiator’s request for release (missio) lay with the editor who provided the shows, usually the priest of the imperial cult. The presiding priest or ­magistrate, however, was expected to then turn that decision over to the people, even though he had paid for the games. “Domini” (“my lords”) he would call them. It was the people who decided with the famous turn of their thumbs whether the gladiators had fought to their satisfaction (Flaig 2007). The violence is critical to the importance attached to the games: in the early second century A.D., the Roman writer Pliny the Younger praises the games of the emperor Trajan in this way: “[T]hen there was seen a spectacle neither feeble nor dissolute nor likely to soften and break men’s spirits, but the sort which rouses them to beautiful wounds and a scorn for death, when the love of praise and desire for victory could be seen in the bodies of slaves and even criminals” (Panegyric 33.1). An inability to withstand the sight of blood was to be considered a sign of moral weakness (Ps.-Quint. Decl. 279). Thomas Wiedemann has understood the overall significance of the arena in this way: The arena was the place where civilisation confronted nature, in the shape of beasts which represented a danger to humanity; and where social justice confronted wrongdoing, in the shape of the criminals

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Both the might and the civilizing mission of Rome were affirmed in the spectacles associated with gladiatorial combat. Following the beast-displays and executions, the people then witnessed the combats of well-trained, expensive professionals, whose single purpose was (ideally) to present performances of pure martial excellence. All of this, moreover, was witnessed inside a unique, huge, and purpose-built structure—the amphitheater—that turned the community in to focus on the action down on the arena. The show thus had much to say to Romans about who was a Roman, about who was not, about Romanness, and about the Roman Empire. If indeed a sort of Roman cultural performance, the gladiatorial spectacle was a ­powerful mechanism for the creation and maintenance of a Roman sense of cultural ­identity. But what happened when this institution spread to other areas of the Empire? Did it f­unction to help to turn the provincials into “Romans” by exposing them to these ­performances celebrating Rome and engaging them in this same dialogue? A Greek Cultural Performance? A key element in the operation of the cultural performance, however, lies in the importance of the performance to the assembled people: the performance ought to reflect their values and priorities. This is hard to gauge, since Greek writers have left us virtually no descriptions of the attitude or interest in the show by Greek spectators. That is to say: we know from hundreds of inscriptions that these bloody Roman spectacles were put on in the Greek cities of the eastern part of the Empire, but almost no ancient Greek writer talks about it. In fact, we have very little evidence to indicate what the attitude of the people was. Some scholars even today can still deny that the Greeks held these games willingly. In a recent book examining sport and spectacle in antiquity, Donald Kyle can still write that the Romans had “so effectively imposed the arena and circus on provinces that provincials came to accept these new games…as part of a Romanized world” (my emphasis) (Kyle 2007:9). If indeed the spectators were passive recipients of a foreign spectacle imposed on them by their foreign conquerors and for that reason despised or at best disregarded it, then it would be difficult to state that the munus as cultural performance had any sort of impact in the Greek East. For this reason, Bowersock’s theory that the martyr-acts fundamentally reflect the world of the amphitheatre is so important. It is more than the fact that martyrs may have been typically executed during the munus; instead, the martyr-acts adopt and describe the whole world of the arena, including the active, engaged involvement of the crowd. They cared about Germanicus’s performance. They were “amazed.” This is the kind of thing that one says about gladiators. Like a victorious athlete or a triumphant gladiator, the martyr, though damnatus, was nevertheless the star of the show—however ephemerally—for ­Christians certainly, but maybe even for some non-Christian spectators too. The passage from the ­Martyrdom of Polycarp quoted above does say that the spectators were “amazed” by

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­ ermanicus’s performance. Grand spectacles were believed to have great effects on the crowd G that witnessed them: amazement was the product of such shows (see F ­ rilingos 2004:50–52). Unlike those other failed Christians who were too cowardly to fight, ­Germanicus made himself into a superstar when he fought the beasts so bravely. Another martyr, this time a woman named Perpetua, who was executed in the amphitheatre in Carthage in North Africa, gives us some sense of her star power: in the days leading up to the games in which she and other C ­ hristians were to be executed, the jailers had taken to abusing and mistreating them. Perpetua called for the military tribune in command and spoke to him directly: “Why do you not allow us to take some comfort, seeing we are victims most noble (noxii nobilissimi), namely Caesar’s, and on his feast-day we are to fight? Or is it not your glory that we should be taken out thither fatter of flesh?” The tribune grew hot and turned red and gave the order that they be left alone. (Mart. Perp. 16)

Do not interfere with the talent. That a Christian entering the arena should have conceived of him- (or her-) self as a kind of superstar performer, like a gladiator or beast-fighter, is a provocative idea and has stirred some debate. Perpetua famously recorded her dream in the days before her execution in the amphitheater in Carthage in which she fought as a sort of gladiator in combat for the glory of God (Mart. Perp. 10; cf. Shaw 1993:28). Tertullian often compares martyrs to victorious gladiators (e.g., Ad Mart. 2), while Augustine compared the bravery of the martyrs with that of gladiators (e.g., Ennar. in Ps. 70.1). Although Polycarp’s appearance is a cognitio extra ordinem and not strictly a munus, it nevertheless took place in the same place that the munera did (the stadium) and was equally violent. That is, the same serious, life-and-death stakes were present. What quickly emerges as critical to the whole procedure is the involvement of the people. Polycarp is interrogated by the proconsul, and he does so according to the well-established method. He is first asked to identify himself and then is repeatedly asked to recant his offending religion. The governor actually demands that he curse the atheists (as he understands Christians to be) and to swear by the spirit (the genius) of the emperor. When Polycarp refuses, the governor then asks him to “persuade the people,” something Polycarp also refuses to do. The governor ends his cognitio by threatening Polycarp first with exposure to a beast and then with fire, after which he has a herald announce that Polycarp is a confessed Christian, and so now a d­ amnatus condemned to die a spectacular death. The reaction of the people is here ­highlighted again by the authors of the martyr-act. They go wild demanding a lion be let loose against Polycarp, at which point the chief priest Philip intervenes with some legal technicalities: the munus has ended and for that reason he cannot retrieve his lions for this purpose. The law must be obeyed. The people then demand execution by fire and Polycarp is burned at the stake straightaway. In all the martyr-acts, there is envisioned a close engagement of the people in attendance. In Smyrna, the people—Greeks and citizens of the city they considered to be the “Jewel of Asia”—actively participated in the executions taking place before them. Indeed, the governor considered their opinion of primary importance. We might be tempted to see this as evidence only for the engagement of the crowd against the hated Christian subgroup. But Bowersock’s thesis that the martyrs took also the ideology of the broader munus, that

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powerful spectacle, suggests that the interaction between the martyr and the crowd is key: the people are actively engaged in the obviously Roman administration of justice and are subsequently amazed at the performers they see before them. Polycarp stood still to be burned and his death—like Germanicus’s earlier—amazed them. The seriousness of the performance and the engagement of the spectators gathered to watch are two of the key elements defining a “cultural performance.” The spectacular violence of blood and death underscores the seriousness of the shows. Given that it was obvious that the spectacle was Roman in origin and in focus, it must have seemed odd to a Greek spectator to find himself cheering for a gladiator or a beast fighter or against some person condemned to death by a Roman court. Surely, this would have created room for the gathered community to readjust and reevaluate itself and its relation to Rome. Perhaps, to conclude, we might look at an inscription advertising the upcoming games at Odessos from A.D. 227, some 75 years after Polycarp’s martyrdom and from a different region of the Greek East. The advertisement actually states for whom the shows were given: naturally, for the health of the emperor and imperial family—that goes without saying. But the list of those celebrated goes on to include the entire ruling structure of the Empire, from the top down: With good fortune! For the fortune and victory and eternal endurance of the most holy and great and unconquerable emperor Marcus Aurelius Severus Alexander, Pius, Felix Augustus and for the fortune of Julia Mamaea the Augusta and their whole house and for the sacred Senate and people of Rome and for the sacred armies and for the illustrious Lucius Mantennius Sabinus the military governor and for the council and people of Odessos…the chief priests of the city, Marcus Aurelius Simon, son of Simon, the councilor, and Marcus Aurelius Io—(the stone is damaged and illegible here)… through hunts and gladiatorial combats (…a certain number of…) days before the Kalends of May (or March—the stone is damaged and illegible here) in the consulship of Albinus and Maximus. (IGBulg. I² no.70; Bull.Ép. 1972 no. 300)

These Roman spectacles helped to incorporate contemporary Greeks within the ­ resent reality of the Roman Empire. The study of gladiatorial combats in the East would p indicate that Romanization was not a one-way process whereby the Greeks simply adopted an obviously Roman institution and presented it to honor the emperor. Romanization is not simply a word to indicate Roman influence. Rather, the process is more of a cultural dialogue. The Greeks saw what they wanted to see. Far from being an incomprehensible and alien spectacle, or indeed a disease that had infected the Greeks, gladiatorial combats and related spectacles instead provided a means for the meeting of the two cultures and societies.

Notes 1. 2.

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Both the original Greek text and an English translation are readily available in Musurillo 1972: 2–21. The exact date is controversial, but is about A.D. 150. See Barnes 1967. Equating the Asiarch Philip of Tralles in the martyr-act with the Asiarch Philip known ­epigraphically from Tralles is controversial. See Carter 2004:63 for discussion and summary of the arguments.

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References Cited Barnes, Tim 1967 A Note on Polycarp. Journal of Theological Studies 18:433–437. Bowersock, Glen W. 1995 Martyrdom and Rome. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Brown, Shelby 1992 Death as Decoration: Scenes from the Arena in Roman Domestic Mosaics. In Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome, edited by Amy Richlin, pp. 180–211. Oxford University Press, New York. Campanile, Maria Domitilla 1994 I Sacerdoti del Koinon d’Asia (I sec. a.C.-III sec. d.C.): contributo allo studio della romanizzazione delle élites provinciali nell’Oriente Greco. Giardini editori, Pisa. Carter, Michael 2004 Archiereis and Asiarchs: A Gladiatorial Perspective. Greek, Roman and ­Byzantine  Studies 44:41–68. Carter, Michael 2009 Gladiators and Monomachoi: Greek Attitudes to a Roman “Cultural ­Performance.” International Journal for the History of Sport 29:298–322. Coleman, Kathleen M. 1990 Fatal Charades: Roman Executions Staged as Mythological ­Enactments. Journal of Roman Studies 80:44–73. Dunbabin, Katherine M. D. 1978 The Mosaics of Roman North Africa. Oxford University Press, New York. Edmondson, Jonathan C. 1996 Dynamic Arenas: Gladiatorial Presentations in the City of Rome and the Construction of Roman Society during the Early Empire. In Roman Theater and Society, edited by William J. Slater, pp. 69–112. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. Flaig, Enon 2007 Roman Gladiatorial Games: Ritual and Political Consensus. In Roman by I­ ntegration: Dimensions of Group Identity in Material Culture and Text, edited by Roman Roth and Johannes Keller, pp. 83–92. Journal of Roman Archaeology Suppl. Series no.66, Portsmouth. Friedländer, Ludwig 1965 [1864–1871] Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire. Translated by J. H. Freese and L. A. Magnus. Routledge and K. Paul, London. Frilingos, Christopher 2004 Spectacles of Empire: Monsters, Martyrs, and the Book of Revelation. ­University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Guss, David 2000 The Festive State: Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism as Culture. University of ­California Press, Berkeley. Kyle, Donald 1998 Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome. Routledge, New York. Kyle, Donald 2007 Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World. Oxford University Press, New York. Lafaye, Georges 1896 “Gladiator.” In Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines d’après les textes et les monuments, Volume II, edited by Charles Daremberg and Edmond Saglio, pp. 1563–1599. Hachette, Paris. MacAloon, John (editor) 1984 Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals toward a Theory of Cultural Performance. Institute for the Study of Human Issues, Philadelphia. McKenzie, Jon 2001 Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance. Routledge, New York. Musurillo, Herbert 1972 The Acts of the Christian Martyrs. Oxford University Press, New York. Potter, David 1993 Martyrdom as Spectacle. In Theater and Society in the Classical World, edited by Ruth Scodel, pp. 53–88. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. Potter, David 1996 Performance, Power, and Justice in the High Empire. In Roman Theater and Society, edited by William J. Slater, pp. 129–159. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.

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Robert, Louis 1971 [1940] Les gladiateurs dans l’Orient grec. Hakkert, Amsterdam. Shaw, Brent 1993 The Passion of Perpetua. Past and Present 139:3–45. Schechner, Richard 1977 Essays on Performance Theory: 1970–1976. Drama Book Specialists, New York. Singer, Martin 1972 When a Great Tradition Modernizes: An Anthropological Approach to Modern Civilization. Pall Mall Press, New York. Thompson, Leonard L. 2002 The Martyrdom of Polycarp: Death in the Roman Games. The Journal of Religion 82:27–52. Turner, Victor 1974 Social Dramas and Ritual Metaphors. In Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: ­Symbolic Action in Human Society, edited by Victor Turner, pp. 23–59. Cornell University Press, Ithaca. Wiedemann, Thomas 1992 Emperors and Gladiators. Routledge, London.

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Chapter Nine

Past War and European Identity

Making Conflict Archaeology Useful John Carman

Abstract  The emergence of the European Union has led to European states no ­longer making war on each other. The long history of war in Europe, however, has had an inevitable impact upon European identities: from the emergence of city-states in Greece and Italy, through the rise of Athenian, Alexandrian, and Roman Empires, to medieval feudalism and the modern nation-state. However, the new peace that prevails has meant that in formulating a new sense of pan-European identity, past wars are treated as matters best left untouched lest they revive old hostilities. The emergence of Conflict Archaeology as a subdiscipline has also meant, however, a renewed interest among archaeologists in Europe in past conflict. Drawing upon the aims and objectives of the newly established ESTOC group, this paper develops an approach to the archaeological study of conflict in Europe’s past that can contribute to the creation of a sense of identity in Europe that owes nothing to supra-nationalism, but meets the conditions of the era of pan-European concord. At the heart of this work lies the recognition that war creates as well as destroys: and it is by focusing upon the new things that conflict makes that its study can play a part in constructing new senses of identity.

Introduction

W

arfare has played a significant role in the historical development of Europe: it has helped shape and disperse European political forms, such as the nation-state; it has decided the borders of polities that survive today; it has frequently provided the context within which scientific and technological advances were made; and it determined longlasting patterns of enmity and friendship that went across national and other ­boundaries. 169

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To deny the importance of past warfare in Europe is inevitably to deny us access to an important part of that past. Nevertheless, there is a tendency to do that when it comes to setting out research agendas at the European level. This is understandable, since war is essentially a process that divides people from one another, and we live in an era where we prefer to emphasize the similarities of peoples rather than their differences. This paper outlines an initiative to overcome this difficulty.

Conflict Archaeology The study of past conflict as a distinct strand of archaeological research has a very short history—less than ten years in Europe; less than 20 years in the UK; and no more than 30 years in the United States. Although the archaeological study of individual conflict sites can claim to be part of quite a long tradition—with the earliest work dating from either the late s­eventeenth century or the 1840s (depending on how you judge these things) (Foard 2008), the 1960s (do Paço 1963), and into the 1970s (Newman 1981)—the real breakthrough came with work at the Little Bighorn site in the United States in the mid-1980s, where the specific technique of using metal detectors to locate battlefield archaeology was developed (Scott et al. 1989). Although the Little Bighorn work was the inspiration to a new generation of scholars to start looking especially at historic battle sites, Conflict Archaeology coalesced as a distinct field only with the first international conference dedicated to the topic in Glasgow in 2000 (Freeman and Pollard 2001), and which has now grown into the ­leading conference series Fields of Conflict, which have been held since in ­Finland, the United States (Scott et al. 2007), again in the UK, in Belgium, in Germany, and most recently in ­Hungary. The establishment of the Journal of Conflict Archaeology in 2005 (another Glasgow initiative; Pollard and Banks 2006) marked the full emergence of Conflict Archaeology as a legitimate area of specialization. However, the field also has a wider set of origins. In the 1990s and into the early 2000s, numbers of prehistoric archaeologists in the United States, the UK, and Scandinavia developed simultaneously and largely independently a revived interest in the origins and form of conflict in societies without writing and state organization (Arkush and Allen 2006; Carman 1997b; Haas 1990; Keeley 1996; Otto et al. 2006). At the same time, others— mostly in the UK—recognized the impending loss of the material evidence of twentiethcentury warfare (especially World Wars I and II), and concerted efforts were put into place to record what remained, to find ways of conserving what was important, and of studying it (Saunders 2004; Schofield 2005). Others were also interested on the material culture of twentieth-century conflict—including the Cold War and the many “brushfire” wars it spawned (Schofield et al. 2002; Schofield et al. 2006; Schofield and Cocroft 2007). Consequently, Conflict Archaeology as it has developed over the past two decades has three distinct strands based around historic periods, each deriving its agenda from a different disciplinary base: Prehistoric warfare and conflict, which draws upon anthropological insight, and where research questions concern issues of the origin of war, and how to identify war from other forms of violence in the distant past;

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Historic (pre-twentieth-century) warfare and conflict, which derives largely from military historical interests and agendas, where concerns are largely methodological, and research questions concern the specifics of the movement of troops across battlefield spaces; and Twentieth-century conflict, which derives largely from heritage management concerns, is interested in issues of conservation and preservation, and has a particular interest in retrieving the remains of those killed, still lying where they fell. The interactions between these fields tend to be limited in scope: the problems of dealing with the material evidence from each period are different; and the research ­questions also differ quite significantly. Any sense of a unified Conflict Archaeology community would therefore be misleading. Anyone who has managed to publish in all three areas can be seen either to bestride these difficulties or to be heavily enmeshed in them. A necessary task for proponents of the field is to pass beyond the narrow confines of archaeology to consider the contribution a Conflict Archaeology could make to wider discussions and thereby to give Conflict Archaeology something potentially important to say about a significant issue of our time (see also Carman 1997a; Carman and Carman 2007). The following are some issues with the field of Conflict Archaeology as it has developed in relation to pre-twentieth-century historic periods: First, the focus is almost entirely upon the form of conflict under investigation rather than other aspects: whereas prehistoric studies focus also on ritual and symbolic aspects of warfare, and on the context for conflict, these are generally excluded from any consideration of later periods where warlike behavior is deemed to be grounded in a functional rationality. Battlefield and siege studies in historic periods focus upon weaponry and its use, the pattern of deposition of material across conflict sites, and what this can tell us about movement through the space of conflict. It is an approach that is closer to military history than anthropological approaches (and has been defended as such: Foard 2006). It also seeks to explore sites of historical significance as defined on the basis of historical criteria—the presence of major historical figures, strategic or political importance, etc.—rather than those sought out on archaeological criteria (see Carman 2005). Second, it is a highly nationalistic enterprise. Although there is some effort at international research (Carman and Carman 2006) and cooperation among particular individuals, in general the focus of such studies operates entirely at the national level: Americans study sites where Americans fought, British study sites where ­British soldiers fought, Swedes study sites where Swedes fought, and Catalans study sites where Catalans fought (e.g., Foard 2008; Geier and Porter 2000; Knarrström 2006; Rubio 2008). At the same time, efforts to determine management strategies for this category of site are limited to the interior of individual countries, and even where cross-border cooperation is taking place (as between the nations of the British Isles), the focus remains on historically significant sites for those countries. There is some limited effort to internationalize interest in conflict sites but this remains limited.

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The net result of these shortcomings is a rather limited approach that does little to equip us to operate in the context of a united (or at least uniting) Europe.

Identifying What War “Makes” What may be required is an alternative way of looking at past war, and to begin the ­process of creating a new agenda and purpose for conflict archaeology and related studies—­ especially in heritage, in cultural resource management, and in public archaeology and ­history. Nicholas Saunders (2004:8–9) has written about how World War I made things as well as destroyed them. It made, he says: New kinds of landscapes, ripped apart by explosive devices and the construction of trench lines, with woods and fields destroyed and rivers poisoned; New kinds of experience of death, in a space where the dead and the living cohabited for considerable periods; New experiences of the material world, with the great abundance of war matériel littering the landscape, but everything in it broken—both things and people, “the ­differences between war materiel and human beings elided” (Saunders 2004:9); A different way of viewing the world through senses other than sight—through smell, sound, and touch, any of which could warn of danger or confirm security; New ways of expressing the fragmentation of earth and experience through new forms of poetry and prose; and New senses of place created through the sacralization of the battlefield itself and the “found” and made objects from the landscape. One of the aspects Saunders fails to discuss is the new forms of relationship the e­ xperience of war forges between those involved. The formation of a shared sense of experience among those who fought or were otherwise directly caught up in the fighting—as participants or as willing or unwilling observers—is something that war (or any powerful experience) will always create. If so, then an anthropologically informed archaeology should be capable of exploring this aspect of what war “does” in a way that historical approaches alone perhaps cannot. A shared past of shifting alliances and enmities is ­something that has contributed to the idea of Europe as a continent-wide unity: frequently—only too frequently given the number of civil wars the states of Europe have experienced over the centuries—divisions within the populations of states have derived from or contributed to much wider conflicts between states. In such a case, it is not A ­ nglo-French or ­Franco-German rivalry that drives the process of war: it is differences within populations over religion or choice of sovereign that have forced the pace. Cross-border friendships can in these circumstances be of greater significance than cross-border enmities: examples include the French Wars of Religion (1560–1598) and Fronde (1648–1653) and the War of the Spanish Succession, in Spain (1702–1715). The Battle of Oudenaarde in Flanders, Belgium, exemplifies these considerations. The Battle of Oudenaarde (Lachaert 2008) was fought in July 1708 as part of the War of the Spanish Succession. It lasted less than a day and involved two polyglot armies: an allied coalition army of British, expatriate French, Irish, Dutch, Danish, Hanoverian,

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Hessian, and Prussian troops, part of which was led by a Prince of the (Austrian) Empire, against a French army also containing “Spanish” (probably southern Netherland—what we would call “Belgian”), Irish, Bavarian, Swiss, and possibly Italian contingents. The battle was fought in the sixth year of the war of which it was part, and it was the third battle where such forces had met; there had also been other operations in which they had all been involved, such as sieges and marches. We can assume that the soldiers in both armies knew who their friends and allies were, and who the enemy was. These knowledges and understandings had been forged over a series of years involving shared hardship and mutual support with allies, and in a climate of hostility toward the common enemy. They would also have been created over a longer period: Franco-German hostility was a phenomenon that had its roots in the Middle Ages and would persist into the twentieth century; ­Anglo-French hostility was rather newer but again had deeper roots than more recent events; and ­Franco-Spanish, Anglo-Dutch, and Dutch-Spanish hostility were factors that some in the military of both countries would remember from a few years previously, and would serve to temper any ties of alliance. These types of knowledges and understandings would be common to the soldiers on both sides: the difference would lay in an appreciation of who was a friend and who an enemy. These structures of enmity and friendship would be part of the experience of soldiering and in turn would inform future constructions of such frameworks. The same is true of civilian onlookers: whereas the people of Ghent and Brugge had abandoned the allies in favor of Spanish rule, the people of Oudenaarde had held to the allied cause. Old rivalries between the cities of Flanders would have informed and inflamed such ­decisions: so would newer bonds of loyalty and friendship. We can expect that the experienced soldiers on both sides knew what was expected of them and what to expect, as would those attached to them. This too would be common on both sides. The experience of marching, of camps, and of combat would be similar whether from France or Britain or elsewhere. Those attached to the armies—the “camp followers” who provided so much in the way of welfare and medical aid, not to mention replacements for those lost from the firing line—would also have shared experience and comprehension of their involvement. The landscape of conflict was also something well known to the soldiers and followers of both armies: the main theatre of the war had been its seat since the opening campaign, and for some it would also have been the space of experience in previous wars. It was also the homeland of a few of the combatants. For the civilian inhabitants, the experience of living there would inevitably be altered by the presence of the armies. In 1708, Oudenaarde was a town with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants: the armies that fought—one of which marched through the town to the battle—each numbered some 80,000 soldiers. The impact upon the region of the descent of such large numbers would have been highly noticeable, even for the short space of time it took for them to pass through.

Ideas of “Security” The inspiration that drives much of archaeology is anthropological, and it is to ­anthropology that archaeologists most frequently turn for an understanding of conflict in the deep past. The idea that “war made the state and the state made war” is one with a long history in anthropological (and indeed other) thinking, and there does seem to be a good ­cross-cultural

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connection that can be made between states and warmaking. However, it is not a simple correlation: while states may well make wars (as they still do), it is not so evident that the state as an institution is anything like an inevitable outcome of previous states of conflict (Claessen 2006). Rather, the state is a relatively rare occurrence until quite recent times, and the nation-state as we know it is a purely European invention from (mostly) the nineteenth century (Gellner 1997; Hobsbawm 1990). What does seem to correlate quite well is the relationship between state formation and conflict in the region beyond its borders. In other words, not only are states well structured to fight wars, their presence encourages the outbreak of wars on their borders: in the Tribal Zone, as Ferguson and Whitehead (2000) have put it in their important edited volume. From this perspective, the state represents not the thing that must be secured, but rather the threat to the security of others. Archaeology may perhaps be able to contribute something to our understanding of the connection between the state and security by its examination of conflict in the more distant past where the state is a rare or nonexistent phenomenon. Despite some claims that the prehistory of Europe was a very violent place (Keeley 1996), there is very little evidence for large-scale conflict for the period from 30,000 years ago to 3,000 years ago (no more than twenty sites from all over Europe; Chapman 1999:102). While absence of evidence is not evidence for absence, one viable interpretation of this past, at least until more clear evidence for violence emerges, is that this was a long period of relative peace. The rise of states, however, appears to have changed this: the Iron Age (ca. 3,000 to 2,000 years ago, corresponding to the age of Greek city-states and then Rome) is well recorded as an age of warfare. The so-called Pax Romana (although of course nothing of the kind: it can be understood more usefully as the successful exportation of warfare beyond the borders of the Empire) is well known, and by the fourth century AD the “pax” was experienced to be breaking down as those outside the borders of the Empire increasingly wanted inclusion (Steuer 2006). One interpretation of the rise of states—Greek, Etruscan, then Roman—in Europe is that they served to increase the amount of violence present, to maintain it by their presence, and as these states declined, to encourage it further. The recent development of the idea of “human security” in critical security studies changes the object of security from the state to people. From this perspective, the state, its agents, and their activities can be seen as potential threats—among others—to the lives and welfare of individual human beings, families, and other human communities. While much Conflict Archaeology does concern the activity of the military, some also turns its attention elsewhere. In particular, the HALBARDE project (Histoire, Archéologie et Littérature des Batailles en Artois au Règne D’Espagne) based in Lille, France, also investigates those places where noncombatants took refuge while armies roamed the region in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These refuges take two forms: fortified churches (a phenomenon also recorded in Romania and northern England); and underground villages, rather akin to the underground refuges of civilians in some areas as a response to aerial bombardment in the twentieth century, but with some significant differences (Dewerdt and Willman 2003; www.muches.fr.st). The archaeological study of such places—especially the underground villages—­provides valuable insight into a number of different aspects of life during this period. In ­particular, the physical organization of the space provides an idea of social structure ­during times of

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conflict-induced stress: the establishment of or changes in economic and social hierarchies; gender relations; human-animal relations; and of the priorities given in relation to people, material culture, or landholdings. It is also clear from such work, however, that the occupation by communities of churches (either as strongholds or as convenient lookout points) or underground complexes is not a passive activity: ­communities are highly active in the process, denying not only “the enemy” of resources but also the army of one’s own monarch; and being also willing to fight the soldiers of any army as they defend their goods and lives. From this perspective, the straightforward distinction between ­“civilian” and “combatant” begins to dissolve, as does the simple distinction between ­“soldier” and “brigand.” At the same time, the wars of these periods cease to be a (simple) struggle between the professional armies of competing states, to be assessed in terms of battles won and cities taken—although they are that too—but also a much more complex phenomenon at the experiential level. The armies do not merely move through the areas of northern France and the southern Netherlands: they inhabit them as fully and for almost as long as the farmers, traders, and city dwellers of the region. It is at once an intensely militarized area, but at the same time it may be possible to see the “civilianization” of the military as they occupy the territory. There may be lessons—or at least parallels—here for any long-term military occupation. It must be clear that nearly everyone in Oudenaarde in 1708 knew that a major E ­ uropean war was taking place. For the civilian inhabitants of Brabant and Flanders, the experience of armies marching and countermarching would have been common: towns were largely under military control and garrisons were permanent. Changes of control were also quite frequent: in Ghent, for example, rule changed from Spanish to French in 1702, to Dutch in 1706, to French again in 1708 and later that year back to Dutch, and in 1714 to Austrian. The same must also be true of the members of the armies that marched back and forth across the area of Belgium and those that followed them, and of the garrison troops occupying the major towns, and indeed the populations of town and country alike as they supplied, fed, and were preyed upon by those armies. In short, throughout the period—and before and after—a common understanding of the wider historical process of which they were a part would have been developed by all those involved—protagonists and onlookers, soldiers and civilians, governors and governed, Flemish, Walloon, French, Dutch, British, and German—alike. This common appreciation of the historical context would have informed behavior and found expression in every aspect of life, including—one can assume—material culture.

Conflict and Identity Out of the wider field of Historical Archaeology—especially as it has developed in North America—have emerged approaches to study the lifeways of people of the relatively recent past through an anthropological perspective (and for its application in Britain, see Tarlow and West 1999). Conflict archaeology as it has developed so far has the capacity to join in this wider endeavor and to study not just the practice of warfare but also its wider social context, its consequences and products, and its ritual and symbolic aspects. It follows that a truly developed Conflict Archaeology of the historic period in the context of a ­growing European Union has the capacity to explore aspects of the development of ­European

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i­ dentities that arise from past conflict in a way that does not merely reconfirm old hostilities but contributes to our understanding of identity creation and our willingness to build new forms of identity. These things—drawing upon anthropological inspiration rather than a somewhat narrow conception of military history—should be amenable to archaeological investigation if we ask the right questions. It would give archaeology a specific role in relation to the construction of new ideas of what it means and has meant to be “European.” It is for this reason that the ESTOC group (European Studies of Terrains Of Conflict) was formed at Oudenaarde, Belgium in November 2007 as guests of the Ename Center for Public Archaeology and Heritage Interpretation, organizers of the Oudenaarde 1708 commemoration. It is a mixed membership of archaeologists, architects, historians, and heritage interpreters, from Britain, Ireland, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Catalonia, ­Sweden, Finland, Hungary, Poland, and Portugal. Its aims are: To promote the study of past conflict, especially from a material culture ­perspective; To develop a clear comparative framework for the study of past conflict sites, and therefore to move beyond their study as individual or unique examples of military success or failure; To identify locales of conflict in the European past and the evidence they contain: and of course to categorize the kinds of places that represent different forms of conflict; To provide detailed case studies of past conflict in a clear comparative framework; To compare the remembrance and commemoration of locales of past conflict across ­territorial, temporal, and ideological boundaries—to identify not only similarities between places, but also differences, and especially those differences that are not exclusively material, but also ideological or ritual; To involve stakeholders and policymakers in the process of researching, preserving, and commemorating sites of past conflict, not to rekindle old enmities but to investigate the other kinds of relationships such places may represent; and To disseminate results to the wider academic and stakeholder community for the benefit of the wider community (however that community may be defined). (ESTOC 2007) Overarching these, the purpose is to promote the study of past conflict as part of the wider project of remembering all of Europe’s past, not merely the most convenient. For reasons both practical and ideological, interest is currently restricted to the historic periods up to but not beyond around 1900 A.D. ESTOC actively seeks new members and an expanded membership that will take it beyond Western Europe. Immediate plans are to obtain funding that will allow regular meetings at places where members are currently undertaking work to facilitate meaningful knowledge exchange.

Conclusion: ESTOC as a Way Forward Historic Conflict Archaeology needs go beyond current approaches to find a wider purpose for the study of those places that are indicative of past intergroup hostility. At present, such studies focus on the study of war—and sometimes other conflicts—as events in the past.

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However, they have much more to teach us than just that people can be violent toward one another: instead, it is possible to emphasize the complex social relationships that lie behind warfare and its practice. Conflict archaeology can be a more “bottom-up” way of studying the past than is conventional among other students of conflict, who are often more interested in leaders than in followers, and far less in the consequences of conflict than its causes. In looking to see how past conflict has created identities—rather than disrupting them—it becomes possible to make useful statements about what it is, and has been, to be “European.” This approach specifically addresses the problems of Conflict Archaeology as it has developed over the past decade or so. The interest is far less in the form of ­conflict than in what that has to tell us about how people understood their world and how ­phenomena such as war fitted into that worldview. The focus shifts away from sites of conventional historical significance to those that represent the more typical conflict sites of their time—which also means looking beyond the well-known sites to find those more typical sites. Since they are the ones most likely to have been forgotten by conventional historical approaches, there is a need to develop specific research methods. As a European grouping, a nationalist focus is closed to ESTOC: instead, recognition of the inherently international nature of conflict in the past is forced upon us. Oudenaarde—a battle that included contingents from most areas of Western Europe—is a case in point. At the same time, it provides a counterpoint to the study of conflict in periods before and after it, and to those that were contemporary but distant. Working together as Europeans—rather than as British (or English and ­Scottish), French, Belgian, Spanish (or Catalan), German, Finnish, ­Swedish, Dutch, or Hungarian—members of ESTOC can provide a model for cross-border cooperation that replicates and supports research and other aims. It has taken a while, but the possibility now emerges of achieving an aim given voice some years ago: that of “the development of a ‘voice’ for archaeology in [one of ] the important debates of our time” (Carman 1997a:220).

References Cited Arkush, Elizabeth N., and Mark W. Allen (editors) 2006 The Archaeology of Warfare: Prehistories of Raiding and Conquest. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. Carman, John 1997a Giving Archaeology a Moral Voice. In Material Harm: Archaeological Studies of War and Violence, edited by John Carman, pp. 220–239. Cruithne Press, Glasgow. Carman, John (editor) 1997b Material Harm: Archaeological Studies of War and Violence. Cruithne Press, Glasgow. Carman, John 2005 Battlefields as Cultural Resources. Post-Medieval Archaeology 39(2):215–223. Carman, John, and Patricia Carman 2006 Bloody Meadows: Investigating Landscapes of Battle. Sutton, Stroud. Carman, John, and Patricia Carman 2007 From Rhetoric to Research: The Bloody Meadows Project as a Pacifist Response to War. In Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory: Papers from the 2003 and 2004 CHAT Conferences, edited by Laura McAtackney, Matthew Palus, and Angela Piccini, pp. 109–114. BAR International Series 1677. Archaeopress, Oxford.

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Chapman, John 1999 The Origins of Warfare in the Prehistory of Central and Eastern Europe. In Ancient Warfare: Archaeological Perspectives, edited by John Carman and Anthony Harding, pp. 101–142. Sutton, Stroud. Claessen, Henri 2006. War and State Formation: What’s the Connection? In Warfare and Society: Archaeological and Social Anthropological Perspectives, edited by Ton Otto, Henrik Thrane, and Helle Vandkilde, pp. 217–226. Aarhus University Press, Aarhus. Dewerdt, C., and F. Willman 2003 Concepteurs et Conception d’Espaces Souterrains. Actes du ­Colloque International Subterranologie (Auxi-le-Chateau, 8–10 May 1999). Bulletin Spécial du Cercle Historique d’Auxi-le-Chateau 2. ESTOC (European Studies of Terrains of Conflict) 2007 Aims and Objectives Statement. ­Unpublished, Oudenaarde, November 2007. Ferguson, R. Brian, and Neil L. Whitehead (editors) 2000 War in the Tribal Zone: Expanding States and Indigenous Warfare. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Foard, Glenn 2006 Review of Bloody Meadows by John Carman and Patricia Carman. Post-Medieval Archaeology 40(2):424–425. Foard, Glenn 2008 Conflict in the Pre-Industrial Landscape of England: A Resource Assessment. Unpublished report. University of Leeds, Leeds. Freeman. P. W. M., and A. Pollard (editors) 2001 Fields of Conflict: Progress and Prospect in Battlefield Archaeology. BAR International Series 958. Archaeopress, Oxford. Geier, Clarence R., and Stephen R. Potter (editors) 2000 Archaeological Perspectives on the American Civil War. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. Gellner, Ernest 1997 Nationalism. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London. Haas, Jonathan (editor) 1990 The Anthropology of War. Cambridge University Press, New York and Cambridge. Hobsbawm, Eric J. 1990 Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ­ niversity Keeley, Lawrence H. 1996. War before Civilization. The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. Oxford U Press, Oxford and New York. Knarrström, B. 2006 Slagfältet: om bataljen vid Lanskrona 1677 och finden från den första arkeologiska undersökningen av ett svenskt slagfält. Efron & Dotter, Saltsjö-Duvnäs. Lachaert, P-J. (editor) 2008 Oudenaarde 1708: een stad, een konig, een veldheer. Davidsfond, Leuven/ Oudenaarde, Stad Oudenaarde. Newman, Peter 1981 The Battle of Marston Moor. Anthony Bird, Chichester. Otto, Ton, Henrik Thrane, and Helle Vandkilde (editors) 2006 Warfare and Society: Archaeological and Social Anthropological Perspectives. Aarhus University Press, Aarhus. do Paço, Afonso 1963. The Battle of Aljubarrota. Antiquity 37:264–269. Pollard, Tony and Iain Banks (editors) 2006 Past Tense: Studies in the Archaeology of Conflict. Brill, Leiden. (= Journal of Conflict Archaeology 1). Rubio, Xavier 2008 Almenar 1710: victòria anglesa a catalunya. Camp de Mart 1. DIDPATRI, ­Barcelona. Saunders, Nicholas. J. 2004 Material culture and Conflict: The Great War 1914–2003. In Matters of Conflict: Material Culture, Memory and the First World War, edited by Nicholas J. Saunders, pp. 5–25. Routledge, London.

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Schofield, John 2005 Combat Archaeology: Material Culture and Modern Conflict. Duckworth, ­London. Schofield, John, William Gray Johnson, and Colleen M. Beck (editors) 2002 Matériel Culture: The Archaeology of Twentieth Century Conflict. One World Archaeology 44. Routledge, London. Schofield, John, Axel Klausmeier, and Louise Purbrick (editors) 2006 Re-mapping the Field: New Approaches in Conflict Archaeology. Westkreuz-Verlag, Berlin. Schofield, John, and Wayne Cocroft (editors) 2007 A Fearsome Heritage: Diverse Legacies of the Cold War. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, California. Scott, Douglas, Richard A. Fox Jr., Melissa A. Connor, and Dick Harmon 1989 A ­ rchaeological ­Perspectives on the Battle of the Little Big Horn. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, ­Oklahoma, and London. Scott, Douglas, Lawrence Babits, and Charles Haecker (editors) 2007 Fields of Conflict: Battlefield Archaeology from the Roman Empire to the Korean War. 2 vols. Praeger, Westport, Connecticut. Steuer, Heiko 2006 Warrior Bands, War Lords and the Birth of Tribes and States in the First Millennium AD in Middle Europe. In Warfare and Society: Archaeological and Social ­ ­Anthropological ­Perspectives, edited by Ton Otto, Henrik Thrane, and Helle Vandkilde, pp. 227–236. Aarhus University Press, Aarhus. Tarlow, Sarah, and Susie West (editors) 1999 The Familiar Past?: Archaeologies of Later Historical Britain. Routledge, London.

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SECTION III

Sanctified Violence

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Introduction

Peter F. Biehl

I

n the third section of this volume, Anne Porter, Mary Voigt, Eamonn Kelly, and John Pollini discuss the use of violence in the context of ritual and religion. The case studies used in these chapters stretch across time and place, moving from the Bronze Age of the third millennium Iraq (Ur) and Turkey (Arslantepe) to the third century B.C. also in ­Turkey (Gordion), and from Ireland (Clonycavan and Oldcroghan) to eighth-ninth c­ entury A.D. Greece. The case studies are well researched and presented and as such, I will not repeat the work of my colleagues. Rather, I will add a brief discussion about place—that is, the space within which the violence occurred and the space on which it occurred, namely, the human body. In her introduction, Sarah Ralph points out that “the relationship between violence and religion (and ritual) has become an increasingly significant subject for discussion” and human sacrifice and ritual killings have attracted a lot of attention recently. In fact, the topic of the fourth IEMA postdoctoral conference was the “Worlds of Sacrifice” (Murray forthcoming), and sacrifice was discussed “as performance by exploring the essential components involved in these practices through material culture, iconography, literary sources, and ethnographic observation” (Murray 2011). Sacrifice, ritual killing, or sanctified violence transforms the human body from one stage to the other in a communicative act. “Were these actions perceived as violent? Toward whom were they directed and why?” (Ralph, this volume). These questions can archaeologically only be approached in rare cases, as in the ones discussed in this section. When looking at the famous Linear Pottery site of Herxheim/ Germany, it seems self-evident that violence played a crucial role in sacrifice “in which the individuals were intentionally killed, in very violent ceremonies, systematically butchered and their bones then destroyed” (Lanz-Zeeb 2011). The same is true for the bodies “deposited” in Gordion and in the Irish peat bog or buried in Ur and Arslantepe. All authors in 182

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this section demonstrate how important contextual analysis of these events of violence is but they also agree that without modern scientific analyses—including modern dating methods (Whittle et al. 2010)—of the human remains and material culture “the exact cause of the violent deaths remains speculation” (Voigt, this volume). In all these case studies the key problem is the concept of context. The problem is that “we are all aware of the difficult issues surrounding contexts and that easy-to-read contexts are more of a rarity than a norm” (Conkey and Tringham 1998). This is especially true for special places such as Herxheim or enclosures with their multiphased ditches and wooden palisades and depositions of human bodies or body parts (Biehl 2007). How can we methodologically approach the places where we only find the “end products” of violent acts? Elsewhere I have argued that they should be analyzed as a contextual structure of meaningful attributes, or a “structural context” (Biehl 2010). This complements a chaîne opératoire approach, but differs significantly in that the technological choices and the nature and role of technical activities are not the principal focus. Though this procedure does caution us to view the special place (or monument) or burial, sacrifice, etc. as a physical end product, we can study it as the material reflection—or the “coming into form/being”—a vast variety of individual and collective decisions that were both practical and symbolic (Biehl 2010). These decisions underscore and may help us read and reconstruct the cultural rules to which the participants in ritual actions such as sacrifices of human bodies had to conform. Only most recently, archaeologists have turned to the body, as it is a key theme in recent theory not only in Bourdieu’s practice theory and Foucault’s cultural analysis, but also in phenomenology, feminism, anthropology, and other strands of recent thought (Boric´ and Robb 2008). As John Robb recently formulated, “[T]he body is the locus of experience and social reproduction: human’s ability to think and act emerges from the embodied organism. The body is the locus of habituated and routinized action and of much non-discursive action. Moreover, it is through the body that one interacts with, understands oneself, and is understood by other people” (Robb 2007:11). If we use this concept of the body within the context of the various forms of violence inflicted on the body discussed in this section, bodily actions—e.g., sacrifices—become a means of communicating between people as well as with the supernatural. The violent annihilation of the human body is not only restricted to the living human body but is also evidenced in the destruction of its representation in material culture, as John Pollini reminds us impressively in his paper on “The Archaeology of Destruction: Christians, Images of Classical Antiquity, and Some Problems in Interpretation.” Though literary and epigraphic records allow him to suggest that “Christian mutilation of the hands, feet, and genitals of images was directly inspired by actual contemporary Christian judicial punishments,” he still pleads for contextual analysis—examining and problematizing the data regarding time, place, and circumstances—when investigating Christian desecration. The written sources normally do not reveal whether we are looking at intentional attacks and accidental or natural damage of images and monuments, and his “Archaeology of Destruction” is innovative both theoretically and methodologically. But the destruction of representations of the human body goes back several millennia and played a central role in the function and meaning of Neolithic anthropomorphic clay figurines (Biehl 2010).

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The destruction of the figurine’s body is embedded in a whole set of ritual activities ­emerging during the Neolithic, such as dance or masking and transformation rituals. This destruction could have been ritual killing or sanctified violence and was most likely an integral process in defining personhood in many societies: becoming human was not a static identity assumed at birth, but the result of continued specific behavior in the face of exterior risks. While concepts of interpersonal violence would be continually produced or reproduced, ritual and sanctified violence provides a site of production culturally charged, and as such it is likely that ritual elements are made manifest along with the human body. References Cited Biehl, Peter F. 2007 Enclosing Places: A Contextual Approach to Cult and Religion in Neolithic Central Europe. In Cult in Context: Reconsidering Ritual in Archaeology, edited by Caroline Malone and David A. Barrowclough, pp. 173–182. Oxbow, Oxford. Biehl, Peter F. 2010 Representing the Human Body: Figurines of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic of Southeast Europe. In Zeiten—Kulturen—Systeme. Gedenkschrift für Jan Lichardus, edited by V. Becker, M. Thomas, and A. Wolf-Schuler, pp. 103–110. Schriften des Zentrums für ­Archäologie und Kulturgeschichte des Schwarzmeerraumes Bd. 17. Beier und Beran, L ­ angenweißbach. Boric´ , Dusan, and John Robb (editors) 2008 Past Bodies. Body-Centered Research in Archaeology. Oxbow, Oxford. Conkey, Margaret W., and Ruth E. Tringham 1998 Rethinking Figurines: A Critical View from Archaeology of Gimbutas, the “Goddess” and Popular Culture. In Ancient Goddesses. The Myths and the Evidence, edited by Lucy Goodison and Christine Morris, pp. 22–45. British Museum Press, London. Murray, Carrie (Editor) 2011 Worlds of Sacrifice: Exploring the Past and Present of Gifts for the Gods. State University of New York Press, Albany. Robb, John 2007 The Early Mediterranean Village: Agency, Material Culture, and Social Change in Neolithic Italy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Whittle, Alasdair, Alex Bayliss, and Frances Healey 2010 Event and Short-Term Process: Times for the Early Neolithic of Southern Britain. In Eventful Archaeologies: New Approaches to Social Transformation in the Archaeological Record, edited by Douglas J. Bolender, pp. 68–87. The Institute for European and Mediterranean Archaeology Distinguished Monograph Series Vol 1, State University of New York Press, Albany. Zeeb-Lanz, Andrea 2011 Human Sacrifices as Crisis Management? The Case of the Early Neolithic Site of Herxheim, Palatinate, Germany. Abstract for The Fourth IEMA Visiting Scholar ­Conference, University at Buffalo SUNY, April 16–17, 2011. http://iema.buffalo.edu/­conference/ [Accessed February 21, 2011].

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Chapter Ten

The State of Sacrifice

Divine Power and Political Aspiration in Third Millennium Mesopotamia and Beyond Anne Porter Abstract  In focusing on the sociopolitical ramifications of sacrifice, the human manipulations of diverse bodies in the accomplishment of human goals, we ignore to our detriment the power of the divine and the ontological frameworks in which sacrifice is constituted. The two, of course, are by no means mutually exclusive, but neither is one more real, more important, than the other. Recent work shows that the bodies created through practices known as “retainer sacrifice,” traditionally understood as the manifestation of social status and political power by dominant elites who could command the very existence of those beneath them, were critical to the performance of funerary and post-funerary mortuary rituals that included parades, pilgrimages, and feasts. But that those rituals were in the first place considered necessary has little to do with only secular concerns because they produced and reproduced proper relationships between the living and the dead, the divine and the mundane, cosmological relationships that for the Mesopotamian constituted daily reality. Living people usually comprised the processional and feasting components of mortuary ritual, so the question then is: Why sometimes were the dead deliberately made in order to fulfill this role?

I

n focusing on the sociopolitical ramifications of sacrifice, the human manipulations of diverse bodies in the accomplishment of human goals, we ignore to our detriment the power of the divine and the ontological frameworks in which sacrifice is constituted ­(Goslinga 2012). The sacred and the secular are of course by no means mutually exclusive, but neither is one more real, more important, than the other. Recent work shows that the bodies created through practices known as “retainer sacrifice” in Mesopotamia,1 traditionally understood as the manifestation of social status and political power by dominant elites who could command the very existence of those beneath them (Cohen 2005; Dickson 185

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2006), were critical to the performance of funerary and post-funerary mortuary rituals, which included parades, pilgrimages, and feasts (Porter 2007/8; Baadsgaard et al. 2012). But that those rituals were practiced in the first place has little to do with only secular concerns, because ritual produced and reproduced proper relationships between the living and the dead, the divine and the mundane, cosmological relationships that for the ­Mesopotamian constituted daily reality. These relationships were not only historically contingent, however, they were socially and politically contingent, too. That is, in a well-ordered world, and order was deeply significant to Mesopotamians, people in different walks of life, in different positions, with different roles to play and obligations to fulfill, had different kinds of relationships with beings in other worlds that were accomplished in different ways. One of those ways was death, usually the mortuary practices associated with natural death but on some very rare occasions, unnatural deaths, realized through socially sanctioned killing. And yet, in contrast to other parts of the world, killing, the essence of discourses where sacrifice is power, seems not to be foregrounded in third millennium Mesopotamian practice. It never occurs in art or text,2 in marked contrast to parts of the Americas, for example, where grotesque iconographic representations of killing far exceed its archaeological reality (Hill 2008). In Mesopotamia instead, evidence for sacrifice only comes from the last part of the event—the final deposition of the bodies of the human and animals so dispatched. While sacrifice might be presumed to have taken place in certain contexts—on a temple altar, in a public square—there is no evidence known from the location of the main act, the moment of killing, with one possible exception to be discussed below. We are left, then, with burials and perhaps foundation deposits (Moses 2012) and their opposite, ritual closures (Oates et al. 2008). This is actually not a bad thing as it give us access, rather than only to the practices of sacrifice, to its ontological context. If we understand the way people are buried to convey information about their social, political, intellectual, and ideological worlds, in various ways, then the burials of those who were sacrificed surely also carry the same kind of information. Although archaeologists tend to focus on the social and political aspects, burials simply cannot be extracted from their ideological context because understandings of life and death utterly underpin associated practices and rituals. This is a contentious matter. As is often noted, what we have in the archaeological record is the remains of ritual that may or may not relate directly to religious belief (Cohen 2005; Fogelin 2007). Yet the archaeological record does not always stand alone. There is considerable documentation as to how the ancient world thought about life, death, divinity, and the relations between them that needs to be brought to bear on the identification of sacrifice, before even its explanation or interpretation. Because if the evidence for sacrifice lies in burials, then burials provide the context through which sacrifice is distinguished from other ways of dying (Porter 2012b). I am not suggesting we reconstruct details of a system of faith, or that there is a one-to-one relationship between mortuary deposit and belief, although the suggestion that the remains of ritual found in the record may be understood as “ritual enactments of symbolic meaning rather than as simple statements of ritual power” (Fogelin 2007:63 on Brown 2003) is a profitable avenue to explore (see for example Laneri 2002). Because I am suggesting that basic conceptions of human existence are approachable through the proper incorporation of textual material and that these conceptions illuminate burial remains generally and sacrifice in particular.

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To date, however, it is the earthly aspect of mortuary practice, and of sacrifice, that has predominated in Near Eastern archaeology, vested in particular in considerations of grave goods as representing the status or identity of the interred. Until very recently indeed, Near Eastern archaeologists have paid far more attention to the number and type of grave goods placed in a burial, including even the costumes and adornments in which the body was clothed, than they have to the human constituents—the significance of primary versus secondary burial for example, the way bones are placed, or not placed, in relation to each other, the relationship to associated animal bones and objects. In nonevolutionary studies, especially those that turn to texts for insight, grave goods are provisions for the dead, feasts for the living, and gifts for the gods all at the same time; they are remains of ritual ­(Winter 1999). Yet none of these functions, ­ eaning inheres in why provisions, feasts, whether or not they are valid, is in itself meaning. M and gifts are considered appropriate, in what they are thought to accomplish, in what relationships they establish. Similarly with sacrifice, itself both function and meaning. Sacrifice cements alliances, creates passageways between this world and the next, and is a political tool, but its meaning ultimately lies elsewhere. It is why sacrifice is understood to be the proper way to do these things that is the ultimate object of inquiry. In the land of the four riverbanks in the third millennium, the answer lies in the significance of blood. This may seem contradictory to my earlier statement that it is not killing that is at stake, but burial, and yet it is not, for it is what blood means, and not the substance itself, that lies at the heart of the matter. Sacrifice is archaeologically difficult to determine (Porter 2012b; Schwartz 2012) and there may be much more of it than we are will ever recognize. As it stands, the kind of ­evidence required depends on the definition of sacrifice. I start from the position that sacrifice is best understood as a range of practices that produce and reproduce relationships between this world and other worlds. This definition is broader than some, which are focused on the idea of a gift or offering and would thereby exclude retainer sacrifice as being about the ruler and not the god, yet narrower than others, especially those that subsume all forms of socially sanctioned killing such as execution, into one (Campbell 2012). ­Archaeologically, then, explicit evidence for unnatural death, and unnatural death that is not simply murder or execution, is required because there is a philosophical distinction. Murder, ritual killing, and sacrifice may easily look the same but they are hardly synonymous categories; that which separates ritual killing from sacrifice must surely lie in the intent, for while recent work has tended to see the ritualization of killing as sufficient in itself to indicate sacrifice, one may dispose of one’s enemies in a highly ritualized way with absolutely no involvement of beings on other planes of existence. One may kill a human or an animal with little to no ritual (Humphrey and Laidlaw 2007) and every intention of connecting with otherworldly beings through that death. On the other hand, sacrifice may not be ritualized if the death of the animal is not what is at stake, but the extraction of its blood is. But intent is not archaeologically manifest, or at least not readily, so instead our attention turns to details that indicate a sacral, rather than secular context for unnatural death. For me the sacred is constituted by networks of interactions and relationships between humans, otherworldly beings, and beings with otherworldly powers, such as gods, ghosts, shades, ancestors, familiars, and totems, in whose company humans work on the world and on themselves. Here I am liberally paraphrasing Robert Orsi’s (2005) somewhat more

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succinct definition of religion. When understood as a network of interactions and relationships across planes of being, the realm of the religious is dynamic rather than reified, and interdependent with, rather than independent of, other aspects of human existence. In this context, sacrifice is a range of practices that constitutes but one means of establishing and perpetuating those relationships. Killing in order to make manifest a religious idea is as much an act of sacrifice as is killing to provide a gift for the gods, because sacrifice is in both cases a means of producing and reproducing relationships between humans and otherworldly beings. Whether they are accompanied by ritual or not is therefore immaterial. This then means that killing of animals to give food to the gods, which in many respects is absolutely no different to the killing of animals to feed humans whether or not it is highly ritualized,3 is subsumable as sacrifice. There are only four situations in the third millennium of greater Mesopotamia that go some way to fulfilling these requirements, evidencing unnatural death intended to produce and reproduce relationships between humans and other powers, and that so may be called human sacrifice. These examples are at first glance quite different, but underpinning them are some common aspects. I have discussed all four in a previous paper (Porter 2012b), here I want to focus on a close examination of only two of them, but two that I think have sufficient physical evidence to allow for a more detailed reconstruction of both function and meaning of sacrifice in the land of the four riverbanks. The first case is found at a site called Arslantepe4 and dates to the very beginning of the third millennium (Figure 10.1). Here a rather simple stone-built chamber tomb contained a primary, articulated male 35–45 years of age, wrapped in a shroud and placed on a wooden board, traces of which still remained. The body was adorned with silver spiral pins and two necklaces, one silver, one mixed stone and metal, and was also wearing some sort of beaded

figure 10.1 Map of ancient Near East.

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garment over the head and torso. Placed at the back of the body was a collection of 64 metal objects (Frangipane et al. 2001), including copper, silver, and copper-silver alloy objects. One of these last was a decorated belt. Because the roof of the tomb had collapsed, crushing the bones, detailed skeletal information is lacking and cause of death was not ascertainable. It was, however, evident that the body had been placed in a fairly standard flexed position on its right side (Schultz and Schmidt-Shultz in Frangipane et al. 2001). It is worth describing this burial complex in some detail, even at the expense of some of the other examples, because its significance has been, on the one hand, largely ­exaggerated,

figure 10.2 Patterns in the deposition of human remains on top of Arslantepe Tomb 1 (after Frangipane et al. 2001).

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and on the other hand, entirely underestimated. But it is not what is inside the tomb that is of interest so much as what is outside it. Recovered from on top of the collapsed stone lid and the surface around it were four individuals, represented by two full, and two half, skeletons, in pairs at each end of the tomb (Figure 10.2). On top of the tomb lid itself is a complete female and a partial male. On the ledge around the lid is a parallel pair, although both bodies here are female. The male/female pair was wearing copper-silver alloy objects that connected to the single male inhumation inside the structure, including headbands decorated in the same manner as the belt. The headbands carried veils, traces of which still remained, and cloth was also found on the two pins that each of them was wearing. The female pair was unadorned. This burial group has been interpreted as a case of retainer sacrifice, as indeed have all the instances read as sacrifice in greater Mesopotamia. The inhumation within the tomb is a chief, or king, who was accompanied to the afterlife by two high-status attendants, those with metal grave goods—possibly even family members, because of the similarity in costume (Frangipane et al. 2001:111)—and their servants, who lacked grave goods. There are two elements indicative of sacrifice: one, the fact that five individuals appear to have died relatively closely together, sufficiently so to appear to be interred at the same time, and the excavators have certainly interpreted this as a single burial event. The second is the position of the bodies, some of which are lying face down, and especially the hands, which appear to have been bound, but which equally may have been placed in the position of prayer.5 In retainer sacrifice, when a member of the ruling elite dies, they are accompanied to the Netherworld by their entourage so that their condition in life is reproduced for the afterlife, but such beliefs are supposedly really about displays of power and status in furtherance of political ends, where the performance of violence intimidates and controls (Carrasco 1999; Dickson 2006) or where conceptions of personhood configured through status render some people of less value than others, chattel, and so readily disposable (Campbell 2012). And such may be the case in other contexts, but it is not quite the case here, for certain depositional features give evidence of something far more complicated. And it starts with the skeletal remains. Although Frangipane et al. (2001:121) state that the lower half of the male skeleton had fallen into the tomb when the roof collapsed, the absence of the lower portion of one body, from pelvis to toes, in both pairs can hardly be a mere coincidence.6 The presentation of the four bodies is far too patterned for that (Table 10.1). One aspect of this group that stands out is that these individuals are all young, but within this age bracket there is a very clear opposition set up in the positioning of the b­ odies— each pair contains the two ages, and each age is diagonally opposite each other (Figure 10.2). Another aspect worthy of note is that none of the violence evident in the remains of these adolescents seems to have been the cause of death, nor did it occur right at the time of death; rather, it occurred sufficiently before death for healing to have commenced, and indeed some of the hemorrhaging might have been caused by disease rather than blunt force. The third thing to observe is that although the male skeleton contributes to some patterns, he does not contribute to all of them—indeed, he stands out as being remarkably healthy, at least as far as his skull and torso go.

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Complete

Partial

Partial

Complete

222

223

224

Completeness

221

Skeleton No

F

M

F

F

Sex

12–14

16–18

12–15

16/17

Age

Yes

Yes

—

—

Diadem

—

—

—

—

Clothing

Weeks prior to death One year prior to death

?Blunt force trauma to right side of face Lesion on arm

—

Weeks prior to death

Broken ribs —

Weeks prior to death

Two years prior to death

Trauma to back of head

Broken foot

Blunt force trauma to Weeks prior to left side of face death

Trauma

Ante- and Peri-Mortem Injury

—

—

—

Meningeal

Disease

Table 10.1 Patterns in the Biographies and Depositions of Arslantepe Tomb I

3,4,5 yrs

—

4 yrs

2,3,4,6 yrs

Childhood Illness (Age Occurred)

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Moreover, the sequence of events giving rise to this picture may have been more ­complicated and certainly more prolonged than a single funereal episode. Analysis of the tomb’s soil layers shows a distinct difference between that which is inside the tomb and that which is among and over the bones on top of the tomb. The interior material is “clean,” consisting of a 10–15 cm layer of dirt over the burial, on top of which was a sandy layer of 2–3 cm depth. The exterior material contains the kind of detritus associated with remains of living contexts—bits of sherd, charcoal, stone, and clay. The paleo-pathologists working on the bones (Schmidt and Schulz-Schmidt in Frangipane et al. 2001) suggest this means that the people on top of the tomb were “not regularly buried” and that earth covering them accumulated gradually as debris from the adjacent settlement, but in fact the first thing it suggests is that the sealing of the tomb and the deposition of the bodies on top of it were not a single event, but a series of events, perhaps two, perhaps three, that took place over a prolonged period of time. Because if a single deposit that was covered over by natural processes such as wind and rain washing materials off the slope behind the tomb, it is this same material that would have filtered down into the tomb below, before and after the lid was broken. In my experience, the lid does not act as a sieve for small fragments of debris, but the material that finds its way in through cracks or settling is the same as that which is on top. It is possible that the interior of the tomb had been lightly backfilled, but if so, then this clean material would have to have come from some distance, as the tomb itself was dug into earlier habitation layers covered by fill layers (Frangipane et al 2001:106) and the material taken out of the original pit, and thereby the adjacent spill, convenient for backfilling, would have contained just such detritus. But the tomb contained lighter, cleaner material, which, typically, is silt blown, or more rarely (and quite detectably) washed in to the empty space inside the tomb, suggesting that the tomb, while closed by the limestone slabs, was left uncovered by dirt backfill. Although this might seem counterintuitive to us, in the later third millennium certainly, aboveground tombs, tombs with the lids forming part of the surface, and semisubterranean tombs become common (Porter 2007/8). Subsequently (and just how much subsequently could perhaps, in ideal circumstances, be ascertained by precise analysis of the depth and deposition history of the soil inside the tomb), a ritual was enacted on top of it. The amount of dirt filling the tomb would suggest to me that it was exposed for more than a few weeks, less than a decade, probably, I would hazard a guess, about a year. So the tomb was constructed, the bodies and goods placed in it, the lid closed, and then it was left.7 Some time later, another event took place on the tomb and from here at least two scenarios are possible. In Scenario One, three ill or injured women and one healthy man were brought to the outside of the tomb. They were costumed appropriately for the performance of a ritual, which they enacted, and then they were either bound, placed on and around the tomb and left to die of starvation, which in their debilitated state would have been quite rapid, the people who put them there returning at a later date when they extracted the lower halves of two of the individuals and filled in the pit on top of them; or two of the individuals were cut in half and their lower portions removed, while the two complete bodies were pushed into the pit, and all were buried immediately, perhaps while still living, since there is no obvious cause of death. The collapse of the tomb’s roof, without

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significant wash through into the tomb below, as well as the undisturbed nature of the two complete skeletons, which, while broken up by the weight of soil, do not seem to have been disturbed by carrion-eating animals, suggests to me that the tableau on top of the tomb was indeed backfilled soon after, although not necessarily immediately—perhaps as the bodies started to decompose. But they were not left exposed to fill in through wash and wind over a lengthy period of time. That the tomb’s lid was smashed by the weight of soil also implies a heavy deposit at one time, and not a gradual accumulation over years, which settles over, and often actually preserves, skeletal material, so that even though the weight might ultimately crack the stones of the tomb’s lid, the burials would not be quite so badly damaged. The second, although ultimately somewhat less likely, scenario, is that the four bodies were deposited in two separate events, the second event replicating, although perhaps poorly, the first. This scenario is suggested by the location of the female pair, not on the lid itself, but on the ledge slightly above the lid. It is also suggested by the chronological difference in the pots associated with the various stages of inhumation, itself a complex matter, and would explain both the duplication and the disparity between the two pairs of bodies, because ritual is rarely enacted exactly from one time to the next, for a number of reasons, some of which have to do with changing circumstances, some of which have to do with the passage of time. So if, for example, the lower half of the male skeleton did indeed fall into the crack between the two stones when the lid broke, replication of this situation might explain the partial body in the second pair. It would also suggest that the lid was broken and that this was visible at the time of the second ritual which might have rendered the tomb susceptible to plundering. This also raises questions about the lack of significant disturbance to the complete body if it had been exposed for a while and why the tomb would not have been repaired. But the very exact mirroring of the bodies themselves, so that the two pairs if facing each other would be pretty well identical, matching torso with torso, facial damage with facial damage, does imply, to me at least, that the first scenario is the most likely, and all four bodies were players in the same scene, for there is nothing lost through memory here or varying contingent circumstances. The differences in costuming, then, and grave goods, would have other interpretations. Perhaps, as the excavators assume, they are a function of status. But perhaps they are a function of role. That the bodies are arranged in so careful a manner certainly suggests they have a story to tell. Additional support for choosing between these two versions of events at Arslantepe, both of which have their interpretative advantages and difficulties, comes from an examination of another situation of sacrifice with which it has a certain number of features in common. This is the so-called royal cemetery of Ur with its several “death pits” that comprises the example par excellence of human sacrifice in the ancient Near East. Several features warrant our long fascination with these inhumations—the number of people interred in primary burials, seemingly peacefully disposed, and the extraordinary wealth of grave goods. Although it has widely been assumed that the richness of these graves is clear evidence that these were the burials of kings and queens accompanied by their retainers, who were argued by the excavator, Leonard Woolley, to have gone loyally and quietly to their death (cf. Dickson 2006; Woolley 1934), this is because of specific views of the relationship

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between wealth, status, and power rather than because of any unambiguous evidence. There are a lot of “facts” that may be questioned, not least of which is the gender and rank of those interred in each of the sixteen tombs, or indeed whether there are sixteen “royal” tombs at all (e.g., Moorey 1977; Pollock 1991). What is clear, however, is the simultaneous deposition of many bodies in these death pits. Each “royal tomb” started with the excavation of a large rectangular pit, some as large as 13 m by 9 m, dug 10 m into the ground, in which a tomb was then built. A large space was left around the tomb, to be filled with people and things subsequent to the burial inside the tomb. Woolley imagined a procession calmly proceeding down the ramp into the pit, where they settled in, drank the Kool-Aid, and died. And just as there was far more violence in the mass death at Jonestown than initially realized, now it is increasingly clear that the human sacrifices in these tombs were forcefully dispatched with blows to the head by a pickaxe (Baadsgaard et al. 2012). What is more, they may have then been subject to postmortem preservation, for examination of a female body from the great death pit suggests that at least some of the bodies were heated in some way and/or dressed with cinnabar, a preservative that leaves residues of mercury on the bone (Baadsgaard et al. 2012). Then the bodies were clothed with their finery and carefully set up in place along with all the objects of a major feast: musical instruments, eating utensils, and food (Cohen 2005). Indeed, Andrew Cohen has argued from an examination of the vessels included in certain graves that everyone buried in the tombs, not just the “death attendants” were equipped with the remains of a feast they had just attended. Funerary feasting is an increasingly popular explanation for the deposition of grave goods in tombs and no doubt was an essential part of the ritual, but there is something more than a funeral going on here, and something more than display of wealth, because if this were the case then it would be a regular practice not just here but everywhere. Of the thousands of burials found throughout the land of the four riverbanks in the third millennium—there were 1,800 excavated from Ur alone—many of which are characterized as “elite,” there are only four examples of which I am aware that are even susceptible to reading as sacrifice. Killing people then to set up a funerary feast is an extraordinary event and one has to wonder at the peculiarity of this relationship if its underlying concerns are only about status, control, and power, which, as ubiquitous concerns of ruling parties, might be ubiquitously represented in this way. The question is in fact better posed differently—Why is the sacrifice of dozens of people in order to pose a funerary feast the means to address issues of status, control, and power? The answer lies in the difference between a living feast, which everyone presumably receives, and the production of a dead one, for in sacrificing people to create such a tableau one is creating a moment frozen forever in time, but a moment that may also be understood as playing out in perpetuity. Perpetuity is the essence of a mortuary-related practice that is attested in so many different sources, archaeological and textual, in so many places over the entire third m ­ illennium, with of course local specificities, that it is one of those few things we might understand as a shared cultural conception of the land of the four riverbanks. This is not a case of associating a specific text with a specific archaeological situation, a dubious undertaking at the best of times, both because one text a societal-wide situation does not make and because the most

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cited materials are stories that often have multiple agendas to which the details of the story are in service. From administrative texts at Ebla listing gifts to dead royal women (Archi 2002; cf. Porter 2007/8:206, n.34) to apportioning resources to the drinking ritual of Ur III royal mortuary cults (Sharlach 2004:52), to the Old Babylonian lists of stuffs consumed at such feasts, the dead might be gone but they are certainly not forgotten (Porter 2002b, 2012a; Peltenburg 2007/8), for they are regularly brought back into the realm of the living by post-funerary commemorative rituals, usually, but not only, involving feasting, feasting at which the living and the dead commingle. Indeed, in the Old Babylonian period, where it occurs monthly, we have a name for such commemoration: kispu. We also have royal genealogies that culminate in invitations to both the living and the dead to attend kispu (Charpin and Durand 1986). Texts give us a variety of emic views on the nature of the relationships between the living and the dead. Incantations suggest the dead are potentially dangerous, and need to be kept in the Netherworld, stories tell us there is no journeying back from that dark and dismal place, yet post-funerary commemorative rituals would seem to bring the dead back to be literally, not just metaphorically, present at these rites. I do not think it is a case of one view being what Mesopotamians actually think, and others being somehow wrong or misguided, as has from time to time been suggested, for it is safe to say that ideas of the dead are entirely contingent on the situation under consideration. The situation under consideration with kispu is descent as the essence of continuity between past and future. Kispu certainly gives an ordered and controlled means of interaction between the living and the dead, but that interaction is necessary or even just desirable is varyingly explained according to theoretical persuasion and/or source—taken from Ur III stories is the idea that without commemoration, in the absence of offspring, there is no afterlife; from the Ebla texts that legitimacy of rule is created by the invocation of ancestors; from in-house burials, that land ownership and relationship to place are also so established (Honca and Algaze 1998). All of the above are in some way, at some time, in evidence. But there is yet something more at stake, a meaning rather than function, which the dead embody. This meaning, I would suggest, lies in a fundamental principle of social existence, whether cosmic or mundane, in Mesopotamia, which is kinship. Kinship frames all relationships, between all kinds of beings, between state and state, between state and subject, between gods and humans; and it is manifest in a number of ways often at the same time: language, ritual, and responsibility. The precise relationship between states is evident in whether two kings address each other as brothers or as father and son; rituals establishing treaties require animal sacrifice in the shedding of blood (Porter 2009:208), which, while sometimes expressed as evidence of the violence that will be brought down upon he who transgresses the treaty (Schwartz nd), is more often about blood as the substance of kinship. Animal sacrifice is often understood as a means of sublimating innate human violence and as a proxy for human sacrifice. But in the ancient Near East there is another aspect to this multifaceted practice that we are only just now beginning to realize. Certain animals have very specific sacrificial functions because they apparently have very specific meanings. Donkeys of one kind or another in particular seem to have had an ontologically transformative power that was deployed in situations where blood as shared substance created the ties

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that bind. That is, the blood of donkeys was used to create human relationships of kinship as powerful as any biologically engendered, because it was considered in some way equivalent to human blood. Whole donkeys are found frequently in burials in Mesopotamia, and have in the past been thought of, as all other grave goods, as gifts for the gods or indicators of sociopolitical status. But at the site of Umm al Marra, where an example of human sacrifice has been found (Porter 2012b; Schwartz 2012), donkeys are given elaborate burials of their own. Some of them were accompanied by puppies and human infants that may have been themselves sacrificed to the equids. Jill Weber (2012) argues that the equids, a new and expensive hybrid breed of donkey and onager, were ritual substitutions for humans. But they did not take the place of human sacrificial victims, rather, they took the place of missing kinfolk, fulfilling the roles that kin would normally play in the ritual performances that accompany death. Donkeys are also employed as both foundation and closure sacrifices for significant buildings, buildings that are often religious in nature. In an instance of the former, an equid was interred at the base of a wall in a mortuary building at Tell Banat (Porter 2002a) in the same manner as a human burial, with the same kind of grave goods. In an instance of the latter, at the site of Tell Brak, the same donkey-onager hybrid was found in multiple closure deposits over the fill of a decommissioned public building in the same manner as a variety of truncated human bodies (Oates et al. 2001: Figures 45, 47, 57, 58). One of those bodies was an acrobat, a kind of performer that had a particular association with the hybrid breed (Oates et al. 2008). And it is a donkey that is to be sacrificed in the rituals mentioned above that establish political relationships. A hint to the deeper significance of this practice comes from one text, which bears witness to a shift in fundamental social identity: [A]nother thing: Uranum and the elders of Dabish are coming to find me to say to me: “Of ­extraction, we belong to Yahurra, but are not Yarradum. We have neither nomadic clan nor head-kadum in the steppe. We are of Yahurrean stock, but we want to become Simalites amongst the Nihadeans. Kill a donkey!…Should I kill the donkey of Dabish? (Durand 1992:118)

As Durand (1992:120) notes, “[I]t is the blood of the animal which transforms the ‘sons of the right’ into ‘the sons of the left,’” and this is not just a matter of the transferral of allegiance from one political ally to another. It is far more profound than that. It is a descent system—biological in conception even if ultimately social in creation—that is being replaced, and it is the donkey that is the vehicle for the replacement. Indeed, donkeys are consistently used in this kind of context. If donkeys can function as human kin, there must be some meaning to the donkey of which we are as yet unaware, a meaning beyond the value of the beast as a c­ ommodity. But the concept is hardly foreign to anthropologists at least—many societies equate a ­certain animal with humanness, often constructing descent relationships and ancestral ­communities through them. For the Nuer of the Sudan it is cattle (Evans Pritchard 1956), for the Tsembaga and Bedamini of New Guinea, it is pigs (Doring 1972; Rappaport 1968). I would argue, then, that in this instance at least, animal sacrifice is not just a ritual of ­substitution that tames the human beast, but a complex cosmological construct quite ­separate from the killing of animals to feed the gods or the dead.

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This is especially clear where the ritual of animal sacrifice accompanies the exchange of responsibilities for the maintenance of the other’s ancestor practices (Charpin 1993: 182–188; Durand 1992:117–120; Durand and Guichard 1997:40). The responsibility for funerary and post-funerary commemorative ritual in and of itself is a fundamental means of establishing social relationships in multiple contexts—when land is inalienable, would-be purchasers are adopted into the family and in exchange must provide for their new parents’ continued existence in the afterlife (Foxvog 1980; Stone and Owen 1991); when a couple is childless, they find means by which to bring someone into the family who will perform appropriate commemoration. This is not just about having someone to keep providing food so one continues to exist in the Netherworld, a too literal reading of the Ur III stories that provide the foundation of most discussions of life after death in the ancient Near East and which are fundamentally misinterpreted, but is much more profound—it is about fixing one’s place in the cosmic scheme of things, it is about the perpetuation of right order. And right order consists of everyone fulfilling their responsibilities, their roles, in the mutual endeavor that is existence in Mesopotamia. Gods rule, kings mediate, people owe various rights and obligations to others according to their position in kin-relations figured through both vertical—that is, descent—and horizontal—that is intragenerational—ties. This is why the relationship between state and subject is often represented in kin terms, for the obligations work in both directions—not just, as we always assume in the ancient Near East, from subject to state, but as well from state to subject. This is the ontological framework in which burial practices in general, and sacrifice in particular must be situated. Killing people to set up a funerary feast is to reproduce that feast continually, which is itself the nature of kipsu: it is to perform the responsibility of kin, and is ultimately the perpetuation of lineage, past and future. I do not think it necessary that the participants performed some ritual before death, rather, they were to depict ritual at death. The preserved bodies present a tableau of an eternally commemorative ritual. This seems particularly clear at Arslantepe where the sequence of events is such that it is not a case of sacrifice with the burial, but some time after the burial. It is not so evident perhaps at Ur, where we have little knowledge of the timing of the rites, but not only is it possible, there is strong evidence to suggest it is ongoing long after the mortuary group itself is covered up, for repeated surfaces on top of which are the remains of both bodies and feasts fill the shaft into the death pits (Woolley 1934). What is also evident at both Arslantepe and Ur is the fact that sacrifice is s­ ubordinate to the need to make the tableau, despite the apparent violence of this situation. At A ­ rslantepe, I suggest that the choice of people already injured or ill is not coincidental, but rather a way minimizing the social cost of producing this staging, which might in turn imply it was not something willingly done, but something that had to be done.8 At Ur, one of the reasons Woolley was so convinced that the members of the burial party had willingly drunk poison was the absence of any obvious violence, because it seems that those parts of the head that had been struck were turned down onto the floor and so were not visible. Violence here was hidden. Violence therefore is not the central concern in these situations, it is a means to an end, the end being blood; not its shedding, but rather, its creation, where blood is the substance

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of kin relationships. And it is an end that only extreme situations warrant. One obvious suggestion as to what those extreme circumstances might be is an absence of descendents to perform necessary rites for those important enough that the community seeks to take care of the problem another way, something that the sixteen or so such perpetual kispu at Ur would seem to negate however, although I not proposing that there must be a single explanation for every case by any means. It is thought that all these kinds of burials may belong to one family group, and although we do not know the relationship between the paramount burials of the different tombs, we do know that this kind of burial is confined to a comparatively short period of time, about one hundred years. This means that at least some of these burials are very likely to be intragenerationally contemporaneous. Another possibility is that the individual for whom the rites were performed somehow transgressed in such a way that this was the remedy. Ur does not negate this proposal, for the same treatment for a family group would imply that the transgressions of one were considered to fall on all. But what might such transgression be? Accumulated textual evidence, again from a variety of sources, indicates that a particularly disturbing event to Mesopotamian consciousness is royal usurpation. We do not know enough about Early Dynastic history to know who might have done such a thing (although there are some very famous usurpers thereafter, Sargon of Akkad being the first), and usurpation certainly does not have to be addressed in this manner. The later kings of Ur, for example, go to great lengths to promulgate popular propaganda that gives them a divine mandate to rule (Porter 2012a). I would not even necessarily say it has to be usurpation of secular rule, for self-deification, again not attested until later, might also be considered usurpation. But usurpation is an extreme affront to right order, even though, or perhaps because, it happens all the time, because the king was divinely chosen as mediator between gods and people (Michalowski 2008) and so in ­removing him one essentially severs and then steals a divine contract. One way this contract was established was through sacred marriage (the union of king with goddess), a controversial concept because we are not sure if it was ever actually practiced or was just a literary fiction.9 But even if a literary device, sacred marriage is the epitome of the creation of a set of kin-relations that produced and reproduced social order because it “functions to reestablish annually a whole set of mutual obligations between the people and the gods who have become in-laws as a result of the marriage” (Cooper 1993: 91). Establishing kinship, especially divine kinship is even more important than ever in times of usurpation for oneself, and one’s descendents, whose fixity in time and space is also at threat if their predecessor cut the mooring ties in any way. Sacrifice as kispu repairs those ties in multiple ways all at the same time. The sacrifice itself produces and r­ eproduces relationships between this world and the world of the divine, while descent, reproduced through post-funerary commemorative ritual and as the link between ancestors and the l­iving, is another avenue of mediation. Ancestors occupy a place somewhere between humans and gods—they are otherworldly but not divine—and as such are intercessors between them. The usurper may be in particular need of intercession. But ancestors also establish legitimacy through depth of time and attachment to place (Porter 2002a, 2002b), bringing us back to the sociopolitical concerns of the secular sphere.

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As scholars, we tend to be deeply cynical about explanations based in the realm of the ideo/philosophical, seeing them as a self-conscious manipulation of subordinates by elites, the creation of an ideology that justifies the unequal distribution of power, ­legitimating those who hold it and appeasing those who do not. But we should not assume that, one, nonelites did not think about these things, were not able to penetrate the motivations of others, and were inevitably passive victims; two, that elites were not as trapped by ­structure as anyone else—that their actions were not constrained by belief systems, that the ­materiality of their actions were not shaped by them, equally that they did not shape their materiality to conform to them; and three, and most importantly, that concerns with the other worlds were not very real factors in the concerns of this world.

Notes 1.

2.

3. 4. 5. 6.

7.

8.

9.

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I use the term Mesopotamia here in its broadest possible sense, as representing “the land of the four riverbanks” – that is, the area between and beside the Tigris and Euphrates from their headwaters in Turkey to their discharge in the Persian Gulf. It is thought by some writers that the Sumerian story “The Death of Gilgamesh” indicates this practice in a broken and problematic passage of the text. However Marchesi (2004) has provided a convincing argument against this interpretation. As Humphrey and Laidlaw 2007 have pointed out, sacrifice and ritual are not coterminous categories by necessity, only by contingency. For further discussion of Tomb 1 at Arslantepe and its historical context, see Porter 2012a. I thank Mary Voigt for reminding me that hands before the nose is the traditional attitude of prayer in the ancient Near East. Moreover it seems highly unlikely, although not of course impossible, that the small bones of the hand lying behind the back of the male, over the lower spine and pelvis, would remain in place while the lower bones slid down the slab and into the space below. Palumbi (2008: 153) suggests that the two individuals lying on top of the tomb itself, those attributed high status because of costuming, were victims of a coup, killed and tossed onto the tomb on their way home from the burial, now that their protector was dead. Appealing as this scenario might be, it would seem to be obviated by the sequence outlined here; if the product of a coup taking place sometime later, one might ask why the tomb was exposed, for in the other instances where this is the case, commemorative rituals were in evidence. The male figure duplicates but breaks pattern at the same time, standing out because of his health so there is something significant about him, perhaps to do with gender, or it may ­simply be that there were no other ill people at that time. Alternatively, the paleo-pathologists (Schmidt and Schulz-Schmidt in Frangipane et al. 2001) note that gender attribution is not certain, so this body may also in fact be female. At least until the Ur III period when it does seem it was actually practiced (Sweet 1994; ­Steinkeller 1999:130).

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References Cited Archi, Alfonso 2002 Jewels for the Ladies of Ebla. Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 92/2:161–199. Baadsgaard, A., J. Monge, and R. L. Zettler 2012 Bludgeoned, Burned, and Beautified: Re-­evaluating Mortuary Practices in the Royal Cemetery of Ur. In Sacred Killing: The Archaeology of Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East, edited by Anne Porter and Glenn M. Schwartz. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, Indiana. Brown, J. A. 2003 The Cahokia Mound 72-sub 1 Burials as Collective Representations. Wisconsin Archaeology 84:83–99. Campbell, Rod 2012 On Sacrifice: An Archaeology of Shang Sacrifice. In Sacred Killing: The ­Archaeology of Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East, edited by Anne Porter and Glenn M. Schwartz. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, Indiana. Carrasco, Davíd 1999 City of Sacrifice: The Aztec Empire and the Role of Violence in Civilization. Beacon, Boston. Charpin, D. 1993 Un souverain éphémère en Ida-Maras: Išme-Addu d’Ašnakkum. Mari: annales de recherches interdisciplinaires 7:165–91. Charpin, D., and J.-M. Durand 1986 “Fils de Sim’al”: les origines tribales des rois de Mari. Revue d’Assyriolgique 80:141–183. Cohen, Andrew C. 2005 Death Rituals, Ideology, and the Development of Early Mesopotamian ­Kingship. Brill, Leiden. Cooper, Jerrold 1993 Sacred Marriage and Popular Cult in Early Mesopotamia. In Official Cult and Popular Religion in the Ancient Near East, edited by Eiko Matsushima, pp. 81–96. Papers of the First Colloquium on the Ancient Near East—The City and its Life held at the Middle Eastern Culture Center in Japan, March 20–22, 1992. Universitätsverlag C. Winter 21, Heidelberg. Dickson, D. Bruce 2006 Public Transcripts Expressed in Theatres of Cruelty: The Royal Graves at Ur in Mesopotamia. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 16(2):123–44. Doring, Su 1972 The Spirit World of Tidikawa. Documentary Educational Resources, Watertown, Massachusetts. Durand, J.-M. 1992 Unité et diversités au Proche-Orient à l’époque Amorrite. In La circulation des biens, des personnes et des idées dans le Proche-Orient ancien, edited by D. Charpin and F. ­Joannès, pp. 97–128. CRRAI 38. Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations, Paris. Durand, J.-M., and M. Guichard 1997 Les rituels de Mari (texts no. 2 à no. 5). In Recueil d’études à la mémoire de Marie-Thérèse Barrelet, edited by D. Charpin and J.-M. Durand, pp. 19–78. Florilegium Marianum 3. Société pour l’Étude du Proche-Orient Ancien, Paris. Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan 1956 Nuer Religion. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Fogelin, Lars 2007 The Archaeology of Religious Ritual. Annual Review of Anthropology 36:55–71. Foxvog, D. A. 1980 Funerary Furnishings in an Early Sumerian Text from Adab. In Death in ­Mesopotamia: Papers Read at the XXVIe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, edited by Bendt Alster. Mesopotamia 8. Akademisk, Copenhagen. Frangipane, M., G. di Nocera, A. Hauptmann, P. Morbidelli, A. Palmieri, L, Sadori, M. Schultz, and T. Schmidt-Schultz 2001 New Symbols of a New Power in a “Royal” Tomb from 3000 BC Arslantepe, Malatya (Turkey). Paléorient 27(2):105–139. Goslinga, G. 2012 On cacti-filled Bodies and Divinities: An Ethnographic Perspective on A ­ nimal Sacrifice and Ritual in Contemporary South India. In Sacred Killing: The Archaeology of

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Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East, edited by Anne Porter and Glenn M. Schwartz. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, Indiana. Hill, Erica 2008 Good to Think: Sacrifice in Myth and History. Paper presented at the first North American meeting of the Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG), May 2008, New York. Honça, M. and G. Algaze 1998 Preliminary Report on the Human Skeletal Remains at Titris¸ Höyük: 1991–1996 Seasons. Anatolica 24:1–38. Humphrey, Caroline, and James Laidlaw 2007 Sacrifice and Ritualization. In The Archaeology of Ritual, edited by Evangelos Kyriakidis, pp. 255–276. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, Los Angeles. Laneri, Nicola 2002 The Discovery of a Funerary Ritual: Inanna/Ishtar and Her Descent to the Nether World in Titris¸ Höyük, Turkey. East and West 52(1-4): 9–51. Marchesi, Gianni 2004 Who Was Buried in the Royal Tombs of Ur? The Epigraphic and Textual Data. Orientalia 73(22):153–197. Michalowski, Piotr 2008 The Mortal Kings of Ur: a Short Century of Divine Rule in Ancient ­Mesopotamia. In Religion and Power. Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond, edited by Nicole Brisch, pp. 33–46. Oriental Institute Seminars 4. University of Chicago, Chicago. Moorey, P. R. S. 1977 What Do We Know About the People Buried in the Royal Cemetery? ­Expedition 20(1):24–40. Moses, Sharon 2012 Socio-political Implications of Neolithic Foundation Deposits and the P ­ ossibility of Child Sacrifice: A Case Study at Çatalhöyük, Turkey. In Sacred Killing: The Archaeology of Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East, edited by Anne Porter and Glenn M. Schwartz. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lakes, Indiana. Oates, David, Joan Oates, and Helen McDonald 2001 Excavations at Tell Brak. Vol. 2, Nagar in the Third Millennium BC. British School of Archaeology in Iraq. McDonald Institute ­Monographs, Cambridge. Oates, Joan, Theya Molleson, and Arkadiusz Soltysiak 2008 Equids and an Acrobat: Closure Rituals at Tell Brak. Antiquity 82:390–400. Orsi, Robert A. 2005 Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds that People Make and the ­Scholars Who Study Them. Princeton University, Princeton. Palumbi, Giulio 2008 The Red and the Black: Social and Cultural Interaction between the Upper Euphrates and Southern Caucasus Communities in the Fourth and Third millennium BC. ­ ­Universita degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza.” Rome. Peltenburg, E. 2007/8 Enclosing the Ancestors and the Growth of Socio-political Complexity in Early Bronze Age Syria. In Sepolti tra i vivi, Buried Among the Living: Evidenza ed interpretazione di contesti funerari in abitato. Atti del Convegno Internazionale, edited by G. Bartoloni and M.G. Benedettini, pp. 215–247. Scienze dell'Antichità 14/1. Universita degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza,” Rome. Pollock, Susan 1991 Of Priestesses, Princes, and Poor Relations: The Dead in the Royal Cemetery of Ur. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 1:171–189. Porter, Anne 2002a The Dynamics of Death. Ancestors, Pastoralism and the Origins of a Third ­Millennium City in Syria. Bulletin of American Schools of Oriental Research 325:1–36. Porter, Anne 2002b Communities in Conflict: Death and the Contest for Social Order in the Euphrates River Valley. Near Eastern Archaeology 65(3):156–173. ­

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Porter, Anne 2007/8 Evocative Topography: Experience, Time and Politics in a Landscape of Death. In Sepolti tra i vivi, Buried Among the Living: Evidenza ed interpretazione di contesti funerari in abitato. Atti del Convegno Internazionale, edited by G. Bartoloni and M. G. Benedettini, pp. 195–214. Scienze dell'Antichità 14/1. Universita degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza,” Rome. Porter, Anne 2009 Beyond Dimorphism: Ideologies and Materialities of Kinship as Time-Space Distanciation. In Nomads, Tribes, and the State in the Ancient Near East: Cross-­Disciplinary ­Perspectives, edited by Jeffrey Szuchman, pp. 199–223. Oriental Institute Seminars 5. U ­ niversity of Chicago, Chicago. Porter, Anne 2012a Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Eastern Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Porter, Anne 2012b Mortal Mirrors: Creating Kin through Human Sacrifice in Third Millennium Syro-Mesopotamia. In Sacred Killing: The Archaeology of Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East, edited by Anne Porter and Glenn M. Schwartz. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lakes, Indiana. Rappaport, Roy A. 1968 Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People. Yale University Press, New Haven. Schwartz, Glenn M. 2012 Archaeology and Sacrifice. In Sacred Killing: The Archaeology of Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East, edited by Anne Porter and Glenn M. Schwartz. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lakes, Indiana. Steinkeller, Piotr 1999 On Rulers, Priests and Sacred Marriage: Tracing the Evolution of Early ­Sumerian Kingship. In Priests and Officials in the Ancient Near East: Papers of the Second ­Colloquium on the Ancient Near East, The Middle East Culture Center in Japan, edited by K. ­Watanabe, pp. 103–137. Winter, Heidelberg. Stone, Elizabeth C., and David I. Owen 1991 Adoption in Old Babylonian Nippur and the Archive of Mannum-mesu-lissur. Mesopotamian Civilizations—MC 3. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, ­Indiana. Sweet, R. 1994 A New Look at the “Sacred Marriage” in Ancient Mesopotamia. In Corolla ­Tornontonensis: Studies in honor of Ronald Morton Smith, edited by E. Robbins and S. Sandahl, pp. 85–104. TSAR, Toronto. Weber, J. 2012 Restoring Order: Death Display and Authority. In Sacred Killing: The Archaeology of Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East, edited by Anne Porter and Glenn M. Schwartz. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, Indiana. Winter, I. 1999 Reading Ritual in the Archaeological Record. In Fluchtpunkt Uruk: ­Archäologische Einheit aus Methodischer Vielfalt. Schriften für Hans Jörg Nissen, edited by H. Kunhe, R. Bernbeck, and K. Bartl, pp. 229–256. Marie Leidorf, Rahden. Woolley, C. Leonard 1934 The Royal Cemetery, Ur Excavations, Vol. 2. Trustees of the British Museum and the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, London.

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Chapter Eleven

The Violent Ways of Galatian Gordion

Mary M. Voigt

Abstract  Much of the evidence for the presence of Celtic immigrants or Galatians in central Anatolia during Hellenistic times comes from texts. Livy clearly places one group at Gordion, which he described as an “oppidum” or fortress and a market town in the early second century B.C. Excavations carried out on the Citadel Mound at Gordion between 1950 and 2002 have exposed large areas of a Later Hellenistic settlement that was founded in the mid-third century BCE and finally abandoned in the second century. Material remains that can be linked to Iron Age sites in Europe include a La Tène button, iron fibula, iron shears, and shield iron strap, as well as sculptures in a style that can be paralleled at La Tène sites in France. In a low, walled area adjacent to the settlement were found deposits of human and animal bone that can only be interpreted as the physical remains of violent ritual practices. These practices include decapitation and the display of trophy skulls, the careful rearrangement of body parts, incorporation of human remains with those of a large number of domestic animals, and strangulation. Most of the human remains were left on the ancient land surface, eventually buried by silt washing off a nearby enclosure wall. The individuals represented within these structured deposits included males, females, and some very young children. This chapter presents the material evidence for interpersonal violence at Celtic Gordion, and possible interpretations of this evidence in the light of documentary sources that describe Celtic practices in Europe and Anatolia.

Introduction

I

n the early third century BCE, a group of Celtic speakers who called themselves ­Galatai moved into Macedonia (Mitchell 1993:13–15, Map 2). Although d ­ ocumentary sources emphasize military activities carried out by the Galatai (hereafter Galatians), most 203

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modern historians argue that the primary purpose of this journey was a search for land that could be controlled for permanent settlement (Darbyshire et al. 2000:75–78; see also Strobel 1996). The ancient historians tell us that in 278 BCE a group of 20,000 Galatians accompanied by 2,000 baggage wagons that held women and children crossed the Bosporus (Mitchell 1993:14–16).1 They were headed for the kingdom of Bythinia where they had been solicited as allies by King Nicomedes (Mitchell 1993:15–16). Once in ­Anatolia, the Celts took advantage of unstable political conditions under the Seleucids and soon resumed raiding, primarily along the west coast. After several military defeats they e­ ventually settled in central Anatolia (Mitchell 1993:16–20; see also Rankin 1987:190–194). One of the places that they settled was the ancient capital of the ­Phrygians, ­Gordion. We have a long and rich archaeological record for Gordion during the fourth to second centuries BCE as a result of large-scale excavations on the Citadel Mound carried out by Rodney Young between 1950 and 1973 (DeVries 1990:400–405; Stewart 2010; Voigt 2011; Winter 1988), and careful stratigraphic excavation in four areas on the Citadel Mound and two areas in the adjacent Lower Town carried out between 1988 and 2002 (Voigt 1994, 2002, 2003, 2011; Voigt et al. 1997; Voigt and Young 1999). Historically, the beginning of the Hellenistic period at Gordion is clear: it is marked by the arrival of Alexander the Great in 333 BCE. The date of arrival of Celtic-speaking Galatians, on the other hand, is not attested by texts, but, extrapolating from the archaeological data, it is most likely to have been late in the second quarter of the third century BCE. Determining the archaeological correlates of these events is neither easy nor precise, but occupation levels on the Citadel Mound dated between the late fourth and second century BCE by ceramic parallels have been assigned to two major phases: Early Hellenistic or Phase 3B in the Yassıhöyük Stratigraphic Sequence (YHSS); and Later Hellenistic or YHSS Phase 3A (Table 11.1). The presence of at least some ethnic Celts at Gordion in the third and second centuries BCE (i.e., YHSS 3A) is certain, based on the presence of Celtic names written with the Greek alphabet (DeVries 1990:402 with refs; Roller 1987:106). The number of ethnic Celts present at the site and their role within the settlement has been disputed (Stewart 2010; Winter 1988), but widespread and significant changes in material culture between the Early and Later Hellenistic settlements provides a strong argument for significant changes in the way of life of people at Gordion ca. 250 BCE (Voigt 2003; 2012). That these changes are related to the immigration of ethnic Celts can be argued based on the presence of a small number of artifacts in La Tène style from Later Hellenistic contexts, and the account by Livy who describes Gordion in 189 BCE as a Galatian oppidum (Livy 38.18). More dramatic, and for most scholars, convincing evidence for a Celtic presence are deposits of human and animal remains that provide evidence of ritual activities of a type associated with Celts in Europe, but not found previously at any Anatolian site (Dandoy et al. 2002; see also Darbyshire et al. 2000:84–85). These structured deposits and the evidence of interpersonal violence that they document are the focus of this paper. In order to provide a cultural and historical context for the situations and actions that resulted in these deposits, I will first briefly describe the archaeological sequence for Hellenistic Gordion.

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Table 11.12 The Yassıhöyük Stratigraphic Sequence (YHSS) YHSS Phase

Period Name

Approximate Dates

0 1

Modern Medieval

1920s 10–15th century CE

2

Roman

1st–4th century CE

3A

Later Hellenistic

260?–100 BCE

3B

Early Hellenistic

333–?260 BCE

4

Late Phrygian

540s–333 BCE

5

Middle Phrygian

after 800–540s BCE

6A–B

Early Phrygian

900–800 BCE

7

Early Iron Age

1100–900 BCE

9–8

Late Bronze Age

1400–1200 BCE

10

Middle Bronze Age

1600–1400 BCE

The Hellenistic Period at Gordion (YHSS 3) When the Galatians arrived at Gordion, they found a place that had been thoroughly ­Hellenized. Most of the people who lived at Gordion in the early third century were probably indigenous Phrygians, but they had given up their own language and alphabet in favor of Greek, and had adopted Greek styles in ceramics and other aspects of material culture (DeVries 1990:400–401; Roller 1987; Stewart 2010; Voigt 2012; Winter 1988:61–64). The form of the city in the third century would have consisted of a single flat-topped mound that was not fortified (DeVries 1990:400–401; Voigt 2002:188).3 For immigrant European Celts, Gordion would have presented a landscape with advantageous characteristics that were also found in their homeland as well as places visited on their way to ­Anatolia. First, the Citadel Mound was a suitable high place with an excellent view over the countryside (Figure 11.1). Second, a large series of tumuli or burial mounds built by the Phrygians surrounded Gordion, which must have appeared as a potential source of wealth since they could reasonably be assumed to contain rich burials. Finally, Gordion lay astride major routes of trade and transportation leading both east-west and north-south, providing a strategic advantage militarily and economically. During the first construction phase of the Later Hellenistic period (YHSS 3A:1) a large structure with stone foundations made of ashlar blocks and a tiled roof was erected in a space that until this time had been used for ordinary houses (Figure 11.2; Voigt 2003; Henrickson and Blackman 1999). Next to the tiled building was at least one workshop for the manufacture of pottery and perhaps figurines. This complex, which surely represents the residence of a Galatian leader with one or more attached craft specialists, was separated from the rest of the community by a huge wall built from distinctive large stone

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figure 11.1 Aerial View of the Citadel Mound and Lower Town at Gordion, 1989. Photo by Will and Eleanor Meyers.

blocks robbed from Middle Phrygian (eighth century) walls (Voigt 2007). Elsewhere on the ­Citadel Mound there are changes in house plans and construction methods, as well as house contents, and there is some evidence that the transition from YHSS 3B to 3A represents a significant shift in ideology on the part of at least some of Gordion’s inhabitants (Voigt 2003, 2012).

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figure 11.2 Plan of the earliest Later Hellenistic (YHSS 3A:1) buildings in the ­Northwest Zone of the Gordion Citadel Mound. A monumental wall built of ashlar blocks separates this complex from the rest of the settlement, which lies to the east. To the west of the wall is a large ashlar building with tile roof (Building 1). Built up against the monumental wall was a workshop used by a potter, with a small kiln and other pyrotechnic features preserved to the north.

The extent to which Galatians were present in the countryside is totally unknown, but two aspects of the archaeological sequence for Later Hellenistic/YHSS 3A in the Northwest Area suggests that political control in the early years of the Galatian settlement may have been weak. First, the fact that the elite buildings are separated by a massive wall from the rest of the community during YHSS 3A:1 might be symbolic, but might also indicate a need for protection from a population not united in their loyalty to the new rulers. Second, YHSS 3A:1 ended with an abandonment—a scatter of artifacts left in situ on the w ­ orkshop

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floor and adjacent surfaces—suggesting the flight of the Galatian elite. A rebuilding of the workshop and reoccupation of the ashlar building (Building 1) took place after a substantial interval, and when the ruling elite did return, there was a modification of the settlement plan that may be politically significant. At the start of YHSS 3A:2 the great wall that initially lay between the elite complex and the settlement as a whole was demolished, robbed out down to its lowest courses over much of the area excavated, and refilled with ash and trash (Voigt 2003:17). This strongly suggests that when they reoccupied Gordion, the elite were secure and no longer needed/wanted segregation or protection from the rest of the ­population. What the Galatians did not have was protection from outside armies. YHSS 3A:2 ended with a true catastrophe, which is generally linked to a historical event. In 189 BCE, the Roman consul Manlius Vulso campaigned against the Galatian settlements. A history of this campaign written by Livy states that Gordion was a thriving market town, but when Vulso entered it the place had been abandoned, its inhabitants having fled to a mountain fortress which has not yet been identified archaeologically (Mitchell 1993:23–24; Darbyshire et al. 2000:89). Vulso’s arrival is represented by excavated remains found across most of the excavated areas of the Citadel Mound, an occupation often referred to as the “Deserted” or “Abandoned Village” (DeVries 1990:401–402). Some buildings were burned and looted (Voigt 2003) but most of the houses of YHSS 3A:2 were filled with pottery, loomweights, and ground stone tools (e.g., Dandoy et al. 2002:46; Sams and Voigt 1990:Figures 4–9),4 and more valuable goods were found in some of the houses excavated by Young (DeVries 1990:401–405). After an interval of unknown duration, the monumental Building 1 in the Northwest Area was modified and put back into use and metallurgical processes were carried out nearby (YHSS 3A:3). The date of this final occupation phase is still uncertain,5 but it did not last long. At some point before ca. 100 BCE Gordion was again abandoned, not to be reoccupied until the Romans arrived in the mid-first century CE (Andrew Goldman, personal communication 2009).

The Lower Town Structured Deposits In the third century BCE, what had been a fortified area with houses to the south of the ­Citadel Mound was abandoned. Deposits of human and animal bone were recovered from this southern Lower Town, from contexts that can be dated to the Later Hellenistic/ YHSS 3A period. These deposits provide evidence of a variety of ritual practices, some of which can be categorized as “human sacrifice,” and all of them documenting some form of ­interpersonal violence. Context The remains of at least 20 humans and a large number of animals associated with these humans were recovered from two areas excavated between 1993 and 1995 (Areas A and B; Figure 11.3).6 We initially thought that these collections of bone lay in shallow depressions or perhaps pits that had not been defined during excavation, but continued excavation and

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stratigraphic analysis showed conclusively that in both Area A and Area B the bone lay on an ancient land surface that can be traced from one trench to the next through distinctive deposits recorded in the stratigraphic sections. On this surface in Area B was a diagnostic sherd (a local imitation of Attic black glazed pottery) dated to the mid-third century by Keith DeVries, and two coins of a type commonly found in Later Hellenistic contexts on the Citadel Mound;7 one of these coins was directly associated with a bone deposit (Bone Cluster 1, see below). The bodies in Area A are less securely dated. They can be assigned to the Hellenistic period based on stratigraphy, but a Later Hellenistic/YHSS 3A date is based on the assumption that the unusual forms of bone deposition in the two excavated areas are related and roughly contemporary. A study of stratigraphy also provides information on the topographic context for the Gordion bone deposits. The Lower Town fortification walls, built in the eighth century BCE, were substantial, constructed of mudbrick on stone foundations. When the Lower Town was abandoned (after Alexander the Great took the city), maintenance of its walls presumably ceased, but there is no evidence that they deteriorated rapidly. Thus, in the third century BCE the Lower Town “burial ground” was a large open space surrounded by high walls running around to the east, south, and west. The fortification walls would not have hidden activities and material remains that resulted from these activities, which were easily visible to people living on the adjacent high mound.

figure 11.3 View of excavated areas within the southern Lower Town from the ­Citadel Mound. To the left (east) lies Area A, while to the right (west) lies Area B. The large mound in the center was formed by a fortress built in Middle Phrygian/YHSS 5 times, and by a Persian siege mound built ca. 540 BC. To either side of this fortress (the Küçükhöyük) extend massive walls standing since the 8th century BCE.

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One issue that must be considered before turning to a more detailed description of the structured deposits is the seeming anomaly of well-preserved and articulated skeletons and body parts lying undisturbed for long periods in an outside area away from the settlement. If the bone was carefully placed, and the arrangement of human remains found and recorded during excavation is to be considered significant, we have to rule out the possibility of post-depositional disturbance. That carnivores were present soon after the human and animal bone was deposited is clear from telltale tooth marks on human pelvic bones, areas of the body with large muscle mass or meat. The most likely predators are wolves or dogs,8 but these animals caused minimal damage to the human remains, and the only evidence for their presence comes from Area B (see below). A specialist in animal behavior could perhaps explain this, but I can only cite an observation drawn from my own experience. At Gordion, Jeremiah Dandoy spotted a dead dog near the excavation house. Thinking about the problem of the Lower Town bodies, he decided to leave the dog in that location and it remained undisturbed for weeks, until only bits of skin and nearly dry bone remained. The Bone Deposits In this section of the paper I will present a brief description of each deposit, summarizing the results of archaeological, physical anthropological, and zooarchaeological studies. All information on human age, sex, and trauma in the descriptions that follow comes from the work of Page Selinsky (2004; 2005). Information on the faunal remains was provided by Jeremiah Dandoy. A preliminary interpretation of each deposit will be offered based solely on these data, to be followed in the next section by a reassessment based on information provided by texts and archaeological evidence from Iron Age Europe. Area B  Beginning with the securely dated Later Hellenistic contexts from Area B, three distinct types of bone deposits can be defined, each representing a different behavioral sequence: (1) human heads with small quantities of animal bone; (2) a group of three humans with heads displaced and rearranged with some animal bone; and (3) a large pile of animal bone with a few human bones intermixed. We referred to the deposits in Area B as “bone clusters,” but they correspond well to what European archaeologists refer to as “structured deposits.” Easiest to understand are two examples of isolated human heads. Bone Cluster 4 (Figure 11.4) consists of the cranium and jaw of a young adult (15 +/- 36 months), its sex undetermined. The upper two vertebrae of this individual were found in anatomical position, providing strong evidence of decapitation at or soon after death rather than an arrangement of dry bone. This interpretation is strengthened by damage to the vertebrae that is ­consistent with cases of animal butchery in which “the neck is weakened by cutting to the point where it can be forcibly snapped to crack through the bone and remove the head” (Selinsky 2004:36–37). The human head was carefully arranged with the cranium of a dog, a dog pelvis, and a dog long bone, all of which rested on a pelvic bone from a 2­ 0–35-year old male. Weathering was present on the upper surface of the teenager’s head, testifying to its ­ eavily weathered, exposure on an outside surface.9 The older man’s pelvis was even more h

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despite the fact that it was partially protected by the rest of the bone. This suggests that it had been lying exposed for some time, and was gathered up and included with the dog parts and newly decapitated teenager, an action that clearly can be interpreted as a display of power and domination over individuals. The collection and display of human and animal bones can also be seen as some form of ritual, defined here as acts that have a social meaning and are designed to communicate with an audience. Such acts are not necessarily related to the supernatural and thus are not necessarily part of religion (e.g., Kyriakidis 2007); however, based on accounts provided by the ethnographic record, I consider formal and repeated actions that result in the death of humans and/or modification of their remains to be tied in some way to beliefs in a supernatural world (Ucko 1969:264 ff.). A second isolated head was present in Bone Cluster 2. In this case the cranium of a 20–35-year-old male lay in a scatter of animal bone, but the depositional circumstances differ from Bone Cluster 4. When the cranium in Bone Cluster 2 was cleaned by Gordion conservator Ellen Salzman, she found that the foramen magnum (the hole at the base of the skull) was filled with wood. It therefore seems likely that this adult male skull was placed on a stake for display. The animal bones within this cluster were presumably arranged around the stake; they were identified by Dandoy as the lower jaw of an ass, the lower jaw of a pig, the upper jaw and two pelvic bones of a cow, and the foreleg of a dog. Again, decapitation

figure 11.4 Bone Cluster 4, found within Area B, consists of the skull of a young adult with the first two cervical vertebrae still intact, placed above dog bones and a pelvic bone from an old adult.

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and ritualized treatment of a human skull can be documented, but there is no reason to see decapitation as the cause of death. The fact that the person was male, and that his skull placed so that it could be seen from a distance, suggest that Bone Cluster 2 represents some kind of a trophy; whether the head was taken in battle or under other circumstances remains unknown. More chilling to the modern scholar is Bone Cluster 1 which is several layers deep and includes three humans as well as disarticulated animal bone (Figures 11.5 and 11.6). In the top layer of this deposit we found the articulated post-cranial skeleton of a 16–21-year-old female; her head was missing, but carefully placed at the top of her spinal column was the lower jaw of a man who was at least 50 years old. When these two individuals had been removed during excavation we found the body of a 35–45-year-old female whose spinal column was truncated just below the head, and whose legs had been bent up or rearranged so that they lay to either side of her torso. A complete head lay above the spinal column of this older woman, but the associated neck vertebrae were aligned at a right angle to the more complete spinal column. Decapitation was clear, but it was not until the bone was studied by Jarvis and Selinsky that we realized that the head belonged to the young (upper) female, not the lower older female. Disarticulated human and animal bone was found at the southern end of this deposit, the animal bone bearing cut marks. No signs of butchery were found on the human bone, but pelvic bones bore the distinctive tooth marks of a carnivore.

figure 11.5 Bone Cluster 1 (Area B) includes the remains of three humans plus ­disarticulated animal bone. At the top of the deposit was the body of a young woman with the mandible of an old male where her skull should have been. Below the young woman was the body of an old woman with the young woman’s skull set in place of her own.

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figure 11.6 Detail of the lower layer of Bone Cluster 1 showing the old woman’s torso with the young woman’s skull placed at the top of the old woman’s spine.

Although we cannot determine the cause of death for any of the humans in Bone Cluster 1, we can be quite definite about what happened to them after death. Decapitation followed by rearrangement of body parts before the flesh has decayed constitutes mutilation of a type that is unique within the Gordion sample, and in this case the victims of such ritual acts are female. It is important to note that the head of the older woman was not recovered.10 While it is possible that it was placed somewhere outside the excavation area, we can certainly say that this woman’s head was treated in a special way, an example of curation if only for a brief period of time. Also unique within the Gordion sample is Bone Cluster 3, the largest of the structured deposits and also the most controversial. Bone Cluster 3 (Figures 11.7 and 11.8) is made up of more than 2,100 animal bones and fragments and bits of three humans. The animal bone was sometimes articulated, including nearly complete torsos. The human bone was weathered, and the pelvic bones had the conical tooth marks that document carnivore gnawing, presumably because these remains lay at the top of the heap of animal bone. Two human adults, a male of 40–44 and a female who was 35–39, were represented by three pelvic bones, a sacrum and several long bones; a child of around six was represented by a mandible or lower jaw. That these people were the victims of violence is suggested by an adult human femur (upper leg bone) that was found about a meter away from the main bone mass and shows a spiral fracture (Selinsky 2004:34–35). Spiral fractures can only occur when bone is fresh and it would require great force to break open a femur, one of the strongest bones in the human body. The possibility of an accidental break seems to be nil.

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figure 11.7 A plan of the mass of human and animal bone that makes up Bone Cluster 3.

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figure 11.8 Detail of Bone Cluster 3. Two human pelvic bones are clearly visible as is the mandible of a child at the upper left.

Area A  Area A lies in the eastern part of the southern Lower Town and again produced three distinct kinds of Later Hellenistic bone deposits: (1) bodies lying on an outside surface; (2) bodies deposited in pits; and (3) a formal grave. The people represented include adult males and females whose skeletons were articulated and more or less intact, and two children who were disarticulated and thus more like the bodies in Area B. At the western end of Area A the articulated bodies of four adults were laid out in the form of a U, each sprawled on an uneven outside surface that was covered with small amounts of trash. Two of these people showed a dislocation of the spinal column between head and torso. Individual 2, a 30–45-year-old male, had his head thrown back in a position that seems impossible unless the neck was broken before death; the body rests on an uneven surface, with the head in a shallow pit (Figure 11.9). Individual 3, a 15–20-year-old female, looks relatively intact at first glance, but the uppermost cervical or neck vertebrae lie in a line at a right angle to the rest of the neck (­ Figure 11.10). In an orientation parallel to that of Individual 3 is Individual 1, a 20–35-year-old male. He lies face down, but does not bear any sign of injury; his pelvic area is missing, but this is apparently the result of the construction activities of later people who built a hearth on the surface of a thin layer of soil that covered the Early Hellenistic bodies. A fourth body (Individual 9, a 30–45-year-old male) lay on the same outside surface but only his head and shoulders fell inside the excavated area and no sign of trauma was noticed d ­ uring excavation. As an archaeologist who observed the excavation of these bodies and photographed them, I have interpreted the distorted position of the vertebrae of Individuals 2 and 3 as evidence of broken necks, presumably as a result of hanging or garroting. Selinsky, who worked from the bones and photographs, is a little more cautious, pointing out that “[o]ther

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figure 11.9 In Area A, articulated human skeletons lay on an ancient land surface. Here a 30–45 year old male (Individual 2) is shown with his head lying in a shallow pit. The twists in his spinal column and dislocation of the neck are quite clear.

figure 11.10 Individual 3 in Area A is a 15 to 20 year old female whose cervical vertebrae are dislocated indicating hanging or garroting.

e­ vidence for manual strangulation, such as broken hyoid bones…or strangulation where is with a cord or wire such as fractured laminae of cervical vertebrae…was not observed,” and that the possibility of postmortem settling of bones must also be considered (Selinsky

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2004:33). Given the position of the bodies on a relatively flat ancient surface, I think that postmortem settling is highly unlikely. Also found in Area A and contemporary with the bodies sprawled on the surface were two pits that contained humans. Individual 4, a female more than 50 years old was placed in a pit and shows no sign of violence. She is linked to the other bodies first by proximity: the pit in which she lies closes a rectangle formed by the bodies of Individuals 1–3. Second, the position of her body and its orientation is the same as that of two adult women in a pit located ca. 10 meters to the east whose remains were subject to ritual treatment. ­Discovered in a balk that had badly eroded between excavation seasons was a large and deep pit (ca. 1.5 m in diameter and 1.1 m deep) that stratigraphically is either Hellenistic or Roman in date, but the pit contents strongly suggest an association with the other Later ­Hellenistic remains.11 The uppermost body in the pit fill (Individual 5) was a woman aged 30–45 whose neck was bent at an unnatural angle (Figure 11.11). Settling after death seems more likely in this case than in the western bodies with displaced necks, and the displacement of the mandible certainly suggests some disturbance, presumably by rodents. But whether or not she was strangled does not really matter, since the woman’s skull bears clear testimony of trauma: at least two and perhaps three depressed cranial fractures that were caused by blows to the right side of the skull provide certain evidence of interpersonal violence (Selinski 2004:34). Lying below the old woman was a second younger woman (Individual 6), aged 18–23. In this case there is no evidence of physical trauma, but the body was pinned down securely beneath two heavy grinding stones.

figure 11.11 Within Area A was found a large and deep pit with the remains of four people, two adult women and two children. In this photograph the two women are shown. The upper body has an angled spine as well as skull fractures. The lower body has been weighted down with two large grinding stones.

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Along the western edge of the pit, next to the two women, was found the semi-­ articulated body of a child that Selinsky placed at age 3 +/- 12 months (Figure 11.12). The head is roughly in place at the top of the trunk of the body, but one leg has been twisted up in a position that seems impossible in a living body and it seems likely that the child’s bones had been exposed on an exterior surface, and were later gathered up and placed with the bodies of the two women. This theory was confirmed when Selinsky found that the lower jaw or mandible came from a second child aged 6 +/- 24 months. The cause of death for the two children is unknown. An important aspect of this burial is that all of the bodies have not simply been thrown down into a convenient pit, but have been carefully arranged. The young woman was laid on her side, with her legs drawn up; the line of the torso is along a line running from the southeast to the northeast, with the head at the southeast facing northeast. After the pair of grinding stones had been carefully placed over the young woman’s body, the second woman was arranged in the same position. This position parallels that of Individuals 1 and 3, but in these cases the head is at the northeast facing northwest. This pattern in orientation within Area A is potentially useful in the interpretation of disposal practices. A cross-cultural study of ethnographic data on mortuary practices made by Christopher Carr found that in 31 of 32 cases, there was an association between body orientation and “philosophical-religious factors, including beliefs about the afterlife, the soul’s journey to the afterlife, and universal orders and oppositions“ (Carr 1995:190).

figure 11.12 At the feet of the two women shown in Figure 11.11 lay most of the ­skeleton of a child of two to four. Placed with this child’s skull, in approximate anatomical ­position, is the mandible of a child of four to eight.

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The rearrangement of the children’s body parts within the pit is unique within the Area A sample, but consistent with the kind of actions that produced the bone clusters in Area B. This spatial separation may not be significant. In the 1950s, Machteld Mellink excavated a few small trenches within the Lower Town to the east of Area A. The exact location of her excavation units has not been mapped, and her notebooks have not been studied in any detail, but a preliminary reading of Mellink’s records suggest that the area with disarticulated human and animal bone deposits was large, and that the number of humans deposited in the Lower Town during Hellenistic times is significantly greater than 20 (Mellink 1961). Note that if there are similarities between Mellink’s bone deposits and those described above for area B, the cluster of complete bodies lying on the surface in the western part of Area A becomes a striking anomaly in the overall depositional and thus behavioral pattern. The degree to which the disposal of the bodies already described within Area A is aberrant is demonstrated by the recovery of one “normal” burial. Located to the southeast of the other bodies is the grave of a woman 17–22 years old. She had been placed in a wooden coffin, oriented northwest/southeast; the woman lay on her back, facing southeast. The date of the grave is based on stratigraphy and associated finds. Although the coffin was in a very shallow pit, it was partially cut away by a deeper Roman burial. The woman wore lion-headed gold earrings, duplicates of a single earring found in a domestic context on the Citadel Mound which has been dated to YHSS 3A:2 or the early second century BCE (compare Voigt et al. 1997:Figure 31j with DeVries 1990:401–402, Figure 40). An iron nail associated with the coffin is also paralleled on the Citadel, recovered from the hard-packed surface to the east of the monumental stone wall in the Northwest Zone, YHSS 3A:1. Unfortunately, it has not been possible to trace a surface from which the grave was cut, so its precise stratigraphic and chronological position relative to the other bodies is not certain.

The Gordion Later Hellenistic Remains in Historical Context Using strictly archaeological data and methods, the bodies deposited in Gordion’s southern Lower Town date to the third-second centuries BCE,12 a period for which we have abundant archaeological evidence for a Galatian settlement on the Citadel Mound. The contents of their houses show that these European immigrants had adopted many aspects of Greek culture, but retained an identity as a culturally bounded group with its own traditions and customs (Voigt 2012). Although the number of Galatians who were biological descendants of European Celtic speakers is open to debate (e.g., see Campbell 2009), membership in ethnic groups is primarily based on nonbiological criteria including traditions, language, and individual choices about group affiliation traditions. At Gordion we have evidence of Celtic names and rare items of material culture in the distinctive La Tène style. Moreover, Livy (38:18) explicitly designates Gordion as a Galatian settlement in the early second century BCE. It is therefore reasonable to look at the archaeological remains found at Later H ­ ellenistic Gordion within the context of textual and archaeological evidence from Iron Age Europe, a strategy adopted by Steven Mitchell in his history of Galatia as a whole (1993:42–58).13

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Documentary Sources According to the ancient historians, the Celts were a warlike people from the time of their earliest encounters with the peoples of the Mediterranean world (see texts cited by Freeman 2002). Associated with warfare was the practice of taking heads, a ritual act that is certainly related to the warrior status of the victim, but that within the context of textual evidence is neither murder nor sacrifice. The most detailed account was provided by Posidonius (ca. 135–50 BCE) whose work does not survive, but was widely cited by later historians. For example, Diodorus (5.29) tells us: The Gauls cut off the heads of their enemies killed in battle and hang them from their horses’ necks…. The heads of their enemies they then preserve in cedar oil, storing them carefully in chests. They will proudly show these to visiting strangers and relate how an ancestor of their father or they themselves turned down a large sum of money for the head. (trans. Freeman 2002:11–12)

There are, however, actions that documentary sources do describe as human sacrifice, sometimes as part of warfare. The earliest text attesting to this practice comes from the third century BCE but provides no details: “Among them is the custom, whenever they win victory in battle to sacrifice their prisoners to the gods” (Sopater, quoted by Athenaeus; Koch 2003:7). More informative is the work of Diodorus Siculus, a historian who was decidedly unsympathetic to the Celts, again working within the Posidonian tradition: It is fitting to their savage nature that they practice a particular impiety in their sacrifices: they keep criminals in custody for five years and then impale them in honour of their gods. They also construct enormous pyres and burn prisoners on them along with many first fruits. They use war criminals as sacrificial victims to honour their gods. Some even sacrifice the animals captured in war in addition to the human beings, or burn them in a pyre or kill them through other means of torture. (Diodorus Siculus 32, trans. Philip Freeman; see Koch 2003:14)

Caesar, perhaps following Posidonius, adds to the list of victims: “It is judged that the punishment of those who participated in theft or brigandage or other crimes are more pleasing to the immortal gods; but when the supplies of this kind fail, they even go so low as to inflict punishment on the innocent” (Caesar16, trans. Anne Lea: see Koch 2003:22). One passage from Diodorus (31.13) has been interpreted by Steven Mitchell as evidence for the sacrifice of war captives by Anatolian Celts: In about 166 BCE the Galatian chieftain responsible for a victory over Eumenes II [ruler of the kingdom of Pergamon] gathered together his prisoners from the battle, and had the most handsome among them garlanded and sacrificed. The religious implications of this act are shown up by the fact that the rest of the captives were simply put to the sword without ceremony. (Mitchell 1993:48)

A special kind of human sacrifice was intended to foretell the future: They have highly-honoured philosophers and theologians [those who speak to the gods] called ­Druids. They also make use of seers, who are greatly respected. These seers, having great authority, use auguries and sacrifices to foresee the future. When seeking knowledge of great importance, they use a strange and unbelievable method: they chose a person for death and stab him or her in the chest above the diaphragm. By the convulsion of the victim’s limbs and spurting blood, they foretell the future.…They do not sacrifice or ask for favors from the gods without a Druid present, as they believe sacrifice should be made only by those supposedly skilled in divine communication. (Diodorus 31, trans. Philip Freeman; Koch 2003:13–14)

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A Not-So-Skeptical View of the Texts Both archaeologists and historians are consistent in their view that ancient documentary sources on the Celts must be viewed with caution, since they are accounts by Greeks and Romans who had good reason to dislike a long-term enemy. Discussions of ancient historical sources stress that the ancient authors were trying to depict Celts as “barbarians” or “the other,” and that this desire led to exaggeration or even fabrications within their accounts; rejection is especially common for passages that strike the modern reader as particularly bloody and repellant (see for example Alt and Jud 2007). Negative reporting and stereotyping of the enemy and the alien is a well-known phenomenon and cannot be ruled out in the case of Greek and Roman accounts of the Celts. On the other hand, I would argue that the documentary sources recounting Celtic head-taking and sacrifice are plausible (if not entirely accurate) and that the Greeks and Romans were perhaps less horrified by such practices than we are. The Greeks certainly hated and vilified the Celts who invaded Delphi in 279 BCE. Accepting their desire to distance themselves from the “barbarians,” and thus to exaggerate negative aspects of their behavior, we cannot ignore the fact that in their myths and literature the Greeks describe human sacrifices performed by Greeks on Greeks. In his careful and comprehensive review of all references to human sacrifice in Greek sources of the classical and earlier periods, Dennis Hughes (1991) concludes that all such accounts of ritual killing and sacrifice are fiction rather than historical reality. The following quote illustrates assumptions often used in rejecting evidence for ancient sacrifice: It should…be clear that the modern conception of human sacrifice as a primitive practice gradually replaced by more humane customs (such as animal sacrifice) is not really modern at all, but was modeled on views held by the ancients themselves. But few people if any would believe that Greek writings on cannibalism reflect actual conditions of prehistory, or the actual practices of non-Greek peoples. Rather these passages demonstrate that a custom may indeed exist, removed to a distant past or the spatially distant present, in the world of the imagination alone. Myths of human sacrifice and cannibalism served to answer the needs of the culture which invented them, differentiating the Greeks and their sacrificial alimentary customs both from the peoples around them and from an imagined past, and having conceptual value quite independent of the existence of the customs in reality. (Hughes 1991:188–189)

Granting the merits of Hughes’s very cautious approach, and acquitting the Greeks of actual human sacrifice, the evidence for Roman blood-letting is unambiguous. Leaving aside practices such as the beheading of political enemies and their display in public places, or the ritual murder of people at important funerals and the possible sacrifice of wayward vestals, there are three well-documented examples of human sacrifice in Rome in the third and second centuries BCE. In 228, 216, and 114/113 BCE pairs of male and female Gauls and Greeks were buried alive in public ceremonies in the Forum Boarium (Verhelyi 2007). That these were not isolated or unique events is implied by the fact that the Romans passed a law explicitly prohibiting human sacrifice (immolatio) in 97 BCE (Varhelyi 2007:284 with refs). One way to assess the veracity of the documentary sources on the Celts is to ­compare them with the archaeological record. If the archaeological record from Iron Age ­(fourth-second

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century BCE) Europe is compatible with the texts, it seems just plain silly to reject the ancient sources out of hand. We must also deal with the geographical and sometimes chronological differences between Europe and central Anatolia. The migration that most scholars believe was undertaken by the Galatians could have resulted in very different practices once they had settled in Anatolia, but ancient texts that do refer to the Anatolian Celts support the hypothesis of broad continuity (Mitchell 1993:42–58). Given the immense literature on the archaeology of Iron Age Europe, this discussion will be brief and will focus on evidence that is directly relevant to the Gordion Later Hellenistic bone deposits. Proceeding from the most straightforward cases to the most complex, we will start with Bone Clusters 2 and 4 as possible evidence for the practice of head-taking and curation. In Europe, sites dating to the La Tène period and generally identified with ethnic Celts (Cunliffe 1997) have produced abundant evidence for the display of isolated human heads, both real and as sculptured images (e.g., the shrines at Entremont and Roquepertuse: Aldhouse-Green 2001:97–110; Garcia 2006); the Entremont sculptures are very explicit in the depiction of domination and control of the skulls by living people (Garcia 2006: 160–163. Human heads were found in domestic contexts at Danebury (Walker 1984:452, Table 44), and in an elite house at Montmartin (Brunaux 2006:111). From the collection of skeletal material recovered from La Tène itself, a cranium that was cut and broken open at its base has recently been identified, suggesting that it may have been displayed before being deposited in water (Alt and Jud 2007). The two isolated heads from Gordion’s Lower Town (Bone Clusters 2 and 4) represent young adults, one identified as male and the other of indeterminate sex. It seems most likely that these represent trophy heads taken from dead enemy warriors, with the possibility (though not probability) that one warrior was female. Mirroring the European iconographic evidence is the presence of images of isolated heads from the YHSS 3A settlement at Gordion. These include a “Janus” head in stone (a motif found in Europe, e.g., at Roqueperteuse; Garcia 2006:153, 155; Aldhouse-Green 2001:Figure 36) and molded heads that have been carefully chipped from pottery vessels. The historical evidence from Europe suggests a long-term curation of enemy heads, and the recovery by the Young excavations of a single head from the Citadel Mound (i.e., within the Galatian settlement at Gordion) can be taken as confirmation of this practice in Anatolia.14 Why heads were deposited in the Lower Town (rather than the settlement) is not certain, but it is possible that this entire area was an arena for the display of human remains that demonstrated the power of a Galatian elite who ruled the town (Voigt 2012). The decapitated female victims in Bone Cluster 1 are unique at Gordion, and do not correspond to anything we might predict from the European documentary sources. There is plentiful evidence for the postmortem dismemberment and mutilation of humans from European sites, for example Danebury, and Gournay and Ribemont in France (Brunaux 1988, 2001, 2002, 2006; see also Knüsel et al. 1996; Craig et al. 2005), but I have not found another example of a bone deposit with the same careful rearrangement of skulls. The women in Bone Cluster 1 are clearly the product of a ritual sequence. First the older woman was killed and her head removed. Since her legs were not in anatomical position, her body must have been partially decomposed when the second younger woman was put in place, her head substituted for that of the older women. Finally, the disarticulated mandible of a

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male was substituted for the youngest woman’s head. The animal bone is not articulated and could have been added at any point within the sequence. In attempting to identify the reasons for the treatment of these bodies, the archaeological record on its own might suggest a relationship to warfare, given the proximity of Bone Cluster 1 to the isolated “warrior” heads. Certainly there were Celtic women who went to war (see Freeman 2002:58–59; Redfern, this volume), and females were found amidst the male bodies presumed to be sacrificed prisoners of war at Gournay (Brunaux 1988:134, 2006:111) so a female head as war trophy is possible. Moreover, the Vix burial, in which a woman is buried with drinking gear and a wagon—items normally placed in the graves of elite males—shows that in Iron Age Europe females could be treated as males, even high-status males (Arnold 1996; Knüsel 2002). In the case of the women in Bone Cluster 1, curation of heads links males and females deposited in close proximity, and replacement of one female head with a male mandible strengthens this gendered link. More interesting is the fact that the women were singled out for body mutilation. This certainly suggests that they had significant social or religious roles in life or inspired sufficient fear in the captors to merit ritual decapitation after death. Women did have important roles Celtic societies, including perhaps those as shamans and seers (Knüsel 2002), and such roles have to be considered for the women found at Gordion; alternatively, they could have been the kin of defeated warriors and were mutilated and perhaps sacrificed because of that association. On a more general level, we have to consider the possibility that the treatment of the two women in Bone Cluster 1 might have resulted from their status as honored victims, just as the isolated male heads reflect respect for warrior males. There is one ancient text that stresses female honor and it comes from Anatolia. Plutarch, drawing on an earlier text by Polybius (21.38.1–60), tells us about a Galatian woman named Chiomara. C ­ hiomara was captured by Vulso’s troops in 189 BCE. She was raped and a large ransom was demanded by her captor. A group of Galatians met this man and paid the ransom, but as he left, C ­ hiomara gave a signal and the Galatians beheaded him. What happens next is best ­understood by quoting Plutarch: She took the head, wrapped it in her cloak, and went home. When she returned to her husband she threw the head down at his feet. [He] was amazed and said, “My wife, it is important to deal honorably.” “Yes,” she said, “but it is more important that only one man who has slept with me should remain alive.” Polybius says he met and conversed with Chiomara later in Sardis and that he was struck by her intelligence and indomitable spirit. (“The Virtuous Deeds of Women” 22, trans. ­Freeman 2002:55).

A second story from Plutarch, again set in Galatia, reiterates the theme of righteous anger and revenge on the part of a high-status woman (Freeman 2002:55–56). If certain women could legitimately destroy men who trespassed on their honor, they might well have been treated as a threat by anyone who captured them, and treated in a way that was ­especially demeaning and that would rob them of power. The large pile of human and animal bone in Bone Cluster 3 as well as scattered human bone found nearby remains enigmatic. The distribution of body parts by species within Cluster 3 is striking. Humans, horses, and pigs are represented primarily by cranial and pelvic bones, while cows, sheep, goats, and asses show a high proportion of torsos and

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limbs, which are sometimes articulated (Jeremiah Dandoy, personal communication). All of the domesticated animals in this deposit have been recovered as food debris from the Later ­Hellenistic/YHSS 3A settlement on the Citadel Mound, and if one considered only the animal bone, Cluster 3 should be related in some way to food. If we accept that all of the deposits in Area B represent some form of ritual action, then the animal bone deposited in Cluster 3 was presumably food left for the spirit world while the missing parts were consumed by the human participants. In this scenario, the choice parts of cows, sheep, goats, and asses were reserved for the living, but bones with substantial meat content from humans, horses, and pigs were given to the gods. If the living consumed parts of the ordinary “food animals” (i.e., cows, caprines), then similarities in the process of deposition and context between food animals and people raise the possibility of cannibalism (Dandoy et al. 2002). This interpretation has not been accepted by other scholars (e.g., Strobel 2002), but the reason for rejection is not based on the archaeological record, but on a reading of the documentary sources from Iron Age Europe. The textual evidence for cannibalism by Celts in Europe is not at all convincing, but archaeological evidence for this practice may come from Danebury where the deposition of at least one butchered human (Walker 1984:453–454) led Cunliffe to speculate about cannibalism (1988:41; see also Aldhouse-Green 2001:56–61). Also paralleled at Danebury as well as other sites in Britain is the fracturing of human long bones while still fresh, and again the suggestion of marrow extraction has been raised (Walker 1984:455). Finally, two “charnel pits” found at Danebury are physically similar to Bone Cluster 3 in that they contained multiple human bones (men, women, and children) along with both carefully arranged/articulated and disarticulated animal bone (Walker 1984:451–452). The charnel pits do not exhibit butchery, and variation in the degree of articulation led the excavators to suggest at least some of the bodies had been exposed elsewhere (presumably on an outside surface) before they were thrown into the pits. Further support for the existence of cannibalism in Celtic Europe comes in the form of a sculpture called the “Tarasque of Noves,” found near Avignon and dated to the fourth or third century BC (Aldhouse-Green 2001:42; Loicq 2006:Figure 12; Megaw 1970:78, Figure 76). The Tarasque, more than a meter in height, is an animal with sharp teeth, claws, a ruff, deeply grooved ribs, a fat tail, and an erect penis. The beast sits with his torso upright, extending each of his front paws over a human head; in his mouth is a human limb, apparently a surviving element of a body that once extended out of each side of the mouth but is now broken away (Loicq 2006:Figure 13). With minimal interpretation this image can be seen as some kind of a spirit associated with head-taking and with cannibalism. We know that headtaking was a common practice by Celtic humans, and it is entirely reasonable to suppose that the animal’s consumption of flesh also represents human activity. Returning to Gordion, a sculpture found in the Later Hellenistic settlement by the Young excavations seems to represent the same being. Although the Gordion animal stands on four feet, it has the same attributes as the Tarasque: clawed feet, pronounced ribs, fluffy tail, and fierce sharp teeth, which in this case bear traces of red ochre rather than human flesh (Voigt 2012:Figure 27). It is difficult to say much about the status of the humans deposited with the mass of animal bone in Cluster 3, but the age and sex determinations would certainly be c­ ompatible

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with kinship bonds, most likely a nuclear family. Certainly it is hard to see why a child would have been treated in this way unless he or she had an inherited status of some kind. Given the preference for criminals and war captives, it is at least possible that these three people were taken in some kind of conflict. The behavior represented by the bodies on the surface in Area A is quite different from that in Area B. The only evidence of mutilation comes in the form of displaced neck vertebrae exhibited by at least two individuals. Although the documentary sources do not mention strangulation as a method of dispatching people there is clear evidence for garroting in the sample of European Iron Age bog bodies (Asingh and Lynnerup 2007; Glob 1969), and it is not difficult to see two of the Gordion bodies as having met the same fate. This leaves open the question of why these people were killed. Given the evidence for political disruption in the history of settlement at Gordion, warfare and the taking of war captives seems a likely cause. Whether this conflict occurred as the Galatians attempted to secure their position at Gordion or during raids on other settlements cannot be determined at present (Voigt 2012). The final group of bodies consists of those deposited in the two Area A pits, which have no analogs in the texts. Little can be said about the isolated female (Individual 4), but the group of four individuals in the second pit has striking parallels at Danebury, a roughly contemporary site in England, where “special deposits” of human and animal bone were found in large grain storage pits (Cunliffe 1984, 1988:40; Walker 1984). The ­Gordion group includes two adult females who were clearly victims of ritual killing and who apparently died at the same time. The upper female in this pit was perhaps strangled and certainly bashed in the head, a phenomenon that has been called “overkill” when observed in Europe (Aldhouse-Green 2001:51–53). The lower female was weighted down with heavy grinding stones, behavior that is found at Danebury where people were sometimes crushed by a layer of stones (Aldhouse-Green 2001:53 with refs, Figure 26; Cunliffe 1988:41). The bodies of these children had partially decayed before deposition (again, a common phenomenon at Danebury). So we can say nothing about the cause of death, and time of death dissociates them from the women. If we ask who these victims were in life, we have to consider two aspects of this deposit: (1) the timing of the killings; and (2) the material culture that was deposited with them in the pit. First, the children had clearly been dead for some time before they were included with the two women, who seem to have died together. That there was some kind of relationship between women and children seems likely; they could have been close kin, or perhaps the artifacts found in this grave are sending a message. Although this context cannot be earlier than Hellenistic times, the pots placed at the women’s feet were old when they were deposited, having been manufactured several centuries before, during Middle or Late Phrygian times (R. Henrickson, personal communication). The grinding stones are also distinctively Phrygian, found in the Early Phrygian/YHSS 6A Destruction Level as well as in later contexts. We know that the Galatians dug down into Early and Middle Phrygian deposits while hunting for building materials, and perhaps while looting tumuli. Depositing items of “antique” Phrygian material culture with people who were descendants of indigenous Phrygians still living at Gordion or in the Gordion region makes sense, but

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it does not tell us why they were killed. That they were captives of some kind seems likely, but they might have been killed at the time of capture, or they could have been resident at Gordion for some time, perhaps as slaves.

Conclusion Based on texts from both Europe and Anatolia, most if not all of the bodies found in ­Gordion’s Lower Town can be considered as either direct or indirect victims of warfare. There are three specific periods that can be linked to political instability in the archaeological sequence for the Later Hellenistic at Gordion: (1) the time of the Galatian takeover or conquest of the settlement, probably in the second quarter of the third century BCE; (2) a time when the elite quarter of the Galatian settlement was briefly abandoned, probably in the third quarter of the 3rd century BCE, perhaps as the result of raiding or warfare; and (3) 189 BCE when the entire site was abandoned as the Galatians fled before a Roman army led by Manlius Vulso. In Europe, defeated Celtic warriors were memorialized as trophy heads, so the isolated heads at Gordion may have been collected after death and later deposited in a place where they were highly visible. But it seems likely that most of the people found mutilated or slaughtered at Galatian Gordion were killed during sacrificial rites. The victims could have included members of an indigenous population conquered by the Celts, other Celts captured in intertribal warfare, and/or Celts who were categorized as criminals (and thus suitable for sacrifice). The people who were strangled could have been killed in divinatory rites, in an attempt to foretell the future as the Roman army moved across Anatolia. Closer dating of the bodies and information on their place of birth potentially recoverable through scientific analysis might strengthen our interpretation, but for the time being the time and exact cause of the violent deaths remains speculation.

Acknowledgments Excavation and survey at Gordion since 1988 has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH, a U.S. federal agency), the Social ­Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the National Geographic Society, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Kress Foundation, the IBM Foundation, the Tanberg Trust, and by gifts from generous private donors. All modern archaeological research at ­Gordion ­(1950–2006) has been sponsored and supported by the University of P ­ ennsylvania Museum; the College of William and Mary has been a co-sponsor since 1991, and the Royal Ontario Museum co-sponsored work carried out between 1994 and 2002. In addition to Sarah Ralph and the participants in the conference at the Institute for European and M ­ editerranean ­Archaeology at the University at Buffalo, I would like to thank the following scholars for assistance in the excavation and analysis of the skeletal materials from Later H ­ ellenistic Gordion: Jeremiah Dandoy, Sondra Jarvis, Page Selinsky, G. Kenneth Sams, Keith DeVries, C ­ arrie Alblinger, Brendan Burke, Andrew Cohen, Praveena Gullapalli, Sabina ­ Sharokizadeh, ­Debbie ­Whitney, and T. Cuyler Young Jr. Publication drawings were prepared by Sondra Jarvis and ­Carrie Alblinger, and some of the burial photos were taken by Maria Daniels.

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Notes 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

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Both the number of people and the presence of families during the migration into Anatolia is disputed by Campbell (2009), who argues that the total number of Galatai could not have been greater than 2,000 men, all of them part of a “fighting force.” In order to account for the presence of significant numbers of Galatai in Anatolia after 280 BCE, Campbell suggests that people who carried this identity were already in Anatolia (2009:273ff ), some of them arriving as mercenaries with Alexander. His arguments are complex, highly speculative and in part rest on an assertion/assumption that he has “been unable to find any reports of evidence of La Tène artifacts from this area or any indication of a change in the region’s material cultural [sic] over this period” (Campbell 2009: 279–280). While he does not specify the time period he is examining he is presumably referring to the first half of the third century BCE. Since ­Gordion supplies Celtic personal names, La Tène artifacts and a break in material culture in the third and second centuries BCE, all described in this chapter, I prefer to use more traditional interpretations of the sources on the movement and establishment of Galatian settlements in Anatolia as cited above. Two deep soundings excavated in 1988–1989 were used to define a new chronological sequence for the site based on breaks in the depositional process and significant changes in material culture. The Yassıhöyük Stratigraphic Sequence or YHSS is parallel to, but in some cases significantly different from, the sequence constructed by Rodney Young which was based on assumed links between archaeological deposits and historical events (see Voigt 2009). For a summary of the results of the 1988–1989 soundings see Voigt 1994. Geoprospection has recently produced evidence of a northern segment of the Lower Town (Sams 2010) mirroring that to the south of the Citadel Mound. Our working hypothesis is that the low-lying fortified area to the north of the Citadel Mound is contemporary with and complementary to that lying to the south, but archaeological deposits have been buried by recent alluvium and excavation is needed to confirm this hypothesis. Anomalous within the Later Hellenistic sample excavated since 1988 are Later Hellenistic houses located along the southern edge of the Citadel which had little or no evidence for abandonment. This material (Operation 46) is being analyzed by Brendan Burke (Sams and Burke 2008). A large number of imported molded bowls were found on the floor of the house dated to YHSS 3A:3 in the Northwest zone. At present there are no close dates for such bowls at other sites, although they occur widely in the Near East and Greece. Human and animal bone deposits recovered from the Lower Town between 1993 and 1995 were excavated and recorded by Sondra Jarvis and Jeremiah Dandoy. An analysis of the human bone from these seasons was completed by Page Selinsky (2004), while an ongoing study of the animal remains is being conducted by Jeremiah Dandoy. The coins are dated to the Early Hellenistic period by Kenneth Harl, but coins that were minted in the early third century BCE are common in material left on house floors when the settlement was abandoned at the end of YHSS 3A:2; these houses are dated by imported pottery (amphoras) to the late third and early second century BCE and are generally agreed to represent Gordion at the time of its invasion by Manlius Vulso.

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228 8. 9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

Sanctified Violence Wolves still roam the area around Gordion, and have been sighted near the excavation house as well as in the surrounding region, even in summer. The large hole in the side of the skull was made during excavation. Two cranial fragments were found in the general area of Bone Cluster 1, but human bone was broadly scattered over the Later Hellenistic surface in Area B, and there is no way of connecting these fragments in any meaningful way to the younger woman. The circumstances under which this context was discovered and excavated were less than ideal. The children’s bodies were found first while clearing away the deposit at the bottom of the slope of debris eroded during the winter. As we moved east to obtain a clean vertical face or balk, we found the adults. Because of erosion and later disturbance of this area, the top of the pit cannot be documented. A series of Roman graves were found in Area A but these are very different in form as well as in orientation and the position of the body (Sams 1996:436–437, Figure 10). The fact that the Gordion bodies have been dated and associated with historic Galatians based on archaeological evidence alone is critical. For many years, interpretations of the ­Gordion sequence privileged documentary sources, and archaeological remains were fitted into a framework created by those sources. The problems and errors associated with this methodology were significant (Voigt 2009). The same kind of process—using texts to interpret archaeological finds without a serious consideration of the date and context of these finds was demonstrated by Professor Karl Strobel, who was at Gordion when the Lower Town bodies were being excavated. When he saw the bones he immediately linked the bone deposits to European texts describing the Celts, seeing examples of Galatian headhunting and human sacrifice. The results of my analysis are similar, and I am indebted to Professor Strobel for his insights. Nevertheless, intuition and a leap of faith cannot substitute for solid archaeological evidence. This methodology—a comparison of texts and archaeological remains in a “methodologically rigorous manner”—has been effectively used by a group of European scholars as a means of interpreting evidence from a La Tène cemetery in Switzerland (Muller et al. 2008:462). A structured deposit from the settlement was recognized by Gareth Darbyshire while ­reading field notes from the Young excavations. It contained a human skull and a La Tène style ­button (personal communication 2009).

References Cited Aldhouse-Green, Miranda 2001 Dying for the Gods: Human Sacrifice in Iron Age and Roman Europe. Tempus, Stroud. Alt, Kurt, and Peter Jud 2007 Die Menschenknocken aus La Tène. In La Tene: die Untersuchung, die Fragen, det Antworten, edited by M. Betschart, pp. 46–59. Museum Schwab, Beil. Arnold, Bettina 1996 Honorary Males or Women of Substance? Gender, Rank and Status in Early Iron Age Europe. Journal of European Archaeology 3(2):153–168. Asingh, Pauline, and Niels Lynnerup (editors) 2007 Grauballe Man: An Iron Age Bog Body Revisited. Jutland Archaeological Society Publications, Vol. 49. Moesgaard Museum, Moesgaard.

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Brunaux, Jean-Louis 1988 The Celtic Gauls: Gods, Rites and Sanctuaries. Translated by Daphne Nash. Seaby, London. Brunaux, Jean-Louis 2001 Gallic Blood Rites. Archaeology 54(2):54–57. Brunaux, Jean-Louis 2002 Neue Untersuchungen zur Kulten un rituellen Praktiken der Kelten in Nordfrankreich. Mitteilungen der Berliner Geselloschaft für Anthropoloigie, Ethnologie und ­Urgeschichte 23:19–28. Brunaux, Jean-Louis 2006 Religion et Sanctuarires. In Religion et Société en Gaule, edited by ­Christian Goudineau, pp. 95–115. Editions Errance, Paris. Campbell, Duncan R. J. 2009 The So-called Galatae, Celts, and Gauls in the Early Hellenistic Balkans and the Attack on Delphi in 280–279 BC. Unpublished PhD dissertation, School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester. Carr, Christopher 1995 Mortuary Practices: Their Social, Philosophical-religious, Circumstantial and Physical Determinants. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 2(2):105–200. Craig, Rebecca, Christopher J Knüsel, and Gillian Carr 2005 Fragmentation, Mutilation and ­Dismemberment: An Interpretation of Human Remains on Iron Age sites. In Warfare, Violence and Slavery in Prehistory, edited by Mike Parker Pearson and I. J. N. Thorpe, pp. 165–180. BAR International Series 1374, Archaeopress: Oxford. Cunliffe, Barry 1984 Danebury, An Iron Age Hillfort in Hampshire, Vol 2. The Excavations ­1964–1978: The Finds. Council for British Archaeology Research Report 52. Bootham, York. Cunliffe, Barry 1988 Celtic Death Rituals. Archaeology 41(2):39–45. Cunliffe, Barry 1997 The Ancient Celts. Penguin, London. Dandoy, Jeremiah, Page Selinsky, and Mary M. Voigt 2002 Celtic Sacrifice. Archaeology 55(1):44–49. Darbyshire, Gareth, Stephen Mitchell, and Levent Vardar 2000 The Galatian Settlement in Asia Minor. Anatolian Studies 20:75–97. DeVries, Keith 1990 The Gordion Excavation Seasons of 1969–1973 and Subsequent Research. American Journal of Archaeology 94:371–406. Freeman, Philip 2002 War, Women, and Druids: Eyewitness Reports and Early Accounts of the Ancient Celts. University of Texas Press, Austin. Garcia, Dominique 2006 Religion et Société: Le Gaule mérdionale. In Religion et Société en Gaule, edited by Christian Goudineau, pp. 135–163. Editions Errance, Paris. Glob, Peter Vilhelm 1969 The Bog People. Iron Age Man Preserved. Translated by Rupert BruceMitford. Cornell University Press, Ithaca. Henrickson, Robert C., and M. James Blackman 1999 Hellenistic Production of Terracotta Roof Tiles among the Ceramic Industries at Gordion. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 18:307–326. Hughes, Dennis D. 1991 Human Sacrifice in Ancient Greece. Routledge, New York. Knüsel, Christopher 2002 More Circe than Cassandra: The Princess of Vix in Ritualized Social ­Context. European Journal of Archaeology 5(3):275–308. Knüsel, Christopher J., Robert C. Janaway, and Sarah E. King 1996 Death, Decay, and Ritual Reconstruction: Archaeological Evidence of Cadaveric Spasm. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 15(2):121–128. Koch, John T. in collaboration with John Carey (editors) 2003 The Celtic Heroic Age: Literary Sources for Ancient Celtic Europe and Early Ireland and Wales. 4th edition. Celtic Studies Publications, Aberystwyth.

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Kyriakidis, Evangelos 2007 Archaeologies of Ritual. In The Archaeology of Ritual, edited by ­Evahgeos Kyriakidis, pp. 289–308. Cotsen Advanced Seminar 3. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, Los Angeles. Loicq, Jean 2006 Vie Religiuse en Gaule. Héritage celtique et courants Méditerranén. Folia Electronica Classica (Louvaine-la-Neuve) 11. http://bcs.fltr.ucl.ac.be/FE/11/GAUL/Gaule3.htm. Megaw, J. V. S. 970 Art of the European Iron Age. Harper and Row, New York and Evanston. Mellink, Machteld J. 1961 Excavation Fieldnotes, Gordion Notebook 75. Gordion Archives ­University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Mitchell, Steven 1993 Anatolia. Land, Men and Gods in Asia Minor I. The Celts and the Impact of Roman Rule. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Muller, Felix, Peter Jud, and Kurt Alt 2008 Artefacts, Skulls and Written Sources: the Social Ranking of a Celtic Family Buried at Münsingen-Rain. Antiquity 82:462–469. Rankin, H. D. 1987 Celts and the Classical World. Areopagitica Press, London and Sydney. Roller, Lynn 1987 Hellenistic Epigraphic Texts from Gordion. Anatolian Studies 37:103–133. Sams, G. Kenneth 1996 Gordion Archaeological Activities 1994. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı 17(1):433–452. Sams, G. Kenneth 2010 Gordion 2008. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı 31(3):289–302. Sams, G. Kenneth, and R. Brendan Burke 2008 Gordion 2006. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı 29(2): 329–342. Sams, G. Kenneth and Mary M. Voigt 1990 Work at Gordion in 1988. Kazı Sonuçlar Toplantısı, 11(2):77–105. Selinsky, Page 2004 An Osteological Analysis of Human Skeletal Material from Gordion, ­Turkey. Unpublished MA thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, ­Philadelphia. Selinsky, Page 2005 A Preliminary Report on the Human Skeletal Material from Gordion’s Lower Town. In The Archaeology of Midas and the Phrygians: Recent Work at Gordion, edited by Lisa Kealhofer, pp. 117–123. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and ­Anthropology, Philadelphia. Stewart, Shannan Marie 2010 Gordion after the Knot: Hellenistic Pottery and Culture. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati. Strobel, Karl 1996 Die Galater. Geschichte und Eigenart der keltischen Staatenbildung auf dem Boden des hellenistischen Klienasien, Bd 1. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und historischen G ­ eographie des hellenistischen und römischen Kleinasien 1. Berlin. Strobel, Karl 2002 Menschenopfer und Kannibalismus. Neue Erkenntnisse zur Kultpraxis und ­Kultur der Kelten-völker in Kleinasien. Antike Welt (33:55):487–491. Ucko, Peter 1969 Ethnography and the Archaeological Interpretation of Funerary Remains. World Archaeology 1(2):262–280. Varhelyi, Zsuzsanna 2007 The Specters of Roman Imperialism: The Live Burials of Gauls and Greeks at Rome. Classical Antiquity 26(2):277–304. Voigt, Mary M. 1994 Excavations at Gordion 1988–89: The Yassihöyük Stratigraphic Sequence. In Anatolian Iron Ages 3: The Proceedings of the Third Anatolian Iron Ages Colloquium held at Van, 6–12 August 1990, edited by Altan Çilingirog˘lu and David H. French, pp. 265–293. ­Monograph 16, The British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, Ankara.

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Voigt, Mary M. 2002 Gordion: Rise and Fall of an Iron Age Capital. In Across the Anatolian Plateau: Readings on the Archaeology of Ancient Turkey, edited by David C. Hopkins, pp. 187–196. Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Vol 57. Boston. Voigt, Mary M. 2003 Celts at Gordion: The Late Hellenistic Settlement. Expedition 45:14–19. Voigt, Mary M. 2007 The Middle Phrygian Occupation at Gordion. In Anatolian Iron Ages 6: The Proceedings of the Sixth Anatolian Iron Ages Colloquium held at Eskis¸ehir, 16–20 August 2004, edited by Altan Çilingirog˘lu and Antonio Sagona, pp. 311–334. Ancient Near Eastern Studies Supplement Series 20. Peeters Press, Leuven. Voigt, Mary M. 2009 The Chronology of Phrygian Gordion. In Tree Rings, Kings and Old World Archaeology and Environment: Papers Presented in Honor of Peter Ian Kuniholm, edited by Sturt Manning and Mary Jaye Bruce, pp. 219–238. Oxbow Books, Oxford. Voigt, Mary M. 2011 Gordion: The Changing Political And Economic Roles of a First M ­ illennium City. In The Oxford Handbook on Anatolian Archaeology, edited by Sharon Steadman and G ­ regory McMahon. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Voigt, Mary M. 2012 Human and Animal Sacrifice at Galatian Gordion: The Uses of Ritual in a Multiethnic Community. In Sacred Killing: The Archaeology of Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East, edited by Anne Porter and Glenn Schwartz. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, Indiana. Voigt, Mary M., Keith DeVries, Robert C. Henrickson, Mark Lawall, Ben Marsh, Ays¸e Gürsan, and T. Cuyler Young Jr. 1997 Fieldwork at Gordion: 1993–1995. Anatolica 23:1–59. Voigt, Mary M., and T. Cuyler Young Jr. 1999 From Phrygian Capital to Achaemenid Entrepot: Middle and Late Phrygian Gordion. Iranica Antiqua 34:192–240. Walker, Lucy 1984 Population and Behavior. In Danebury, An Iron Age Hillfort in Hampshire, Vol 2. The Excavations 1964–1978: The Finds, edited by Barry Cunliffe, pp. 442–474. Council for British Archaeology Research Report 52. Bootham, York. Winter, Frederick A. 1988 Phrygian Gordion in the Hellenistic Period. Source 7(3–4):60–71.

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Chapter Twelve

An Archaeological Interpretation of Irish Iron Age Bog Bodies

Eamonn P. Kelly

Abstract  In 2003, the discovery in Irish peat bogs of two well-preserved Iron Age ­bodies provided an opportunity to undertake detailed scientific analysis with a view to ­understanding how, when, and why the two young male victims were killed and their bodies consigned to the bogs. Research also looked at other Iron Age objects deposited ­ritually in peat bogs, including other bog bodies. The locations at which the bodies were discovered were researched and a wealth of historical, folklore, and mythological material was consulted to assist interpretation of the finds. A theory was developed that appears to explain not only the ritual killings in question but also the deposition of bog bodies and other objects in peat bogs in proximity to significant territorial boundaries. The theory links the bog bodies with kingship and sovereignty rituals during the Iron Age.

A

t the end of the last Ice Age, melt water from retreating ice sheets left the Central Plain of Ireland strewn with shallow lakes that, in time, developed into large expanses of raised bog. Following the removal of most of the country’s woodlands in the seventeenth century, peat from the bogs became an important source of fuel and over the next few centuries, peat cutters encountered many archaeological objects lost in the bogs or deposited deliberately in former times. Bog finds have included weapons, personal ornaments, horse harness, yokes, ploughs, quern stones, feasting equipment, large lumps of butter, and occasionally human remains. A number of these are on display at the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin. Bog bodies are rare survivals from earlier times. While many survive merely as ­skeletons, the preservative properties of bogs means that in exceptional cases the bodies are in spectacular condition with hair, skin, hands, internal organs, and other soft tissue preserved (Turner and Scaife 1995). Such discoveries make it possible literally to come ­face-to-face with a person who lived millennia ago and to view their features, see how they 232

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styled their hair, and wore their clothing. It is also possible to find out what they ate; what diseases they may have suffered in life; and the manner of their deaths. The remains of more than 100 men, women, and children, dating to a variety of periods, have been found in Irish bogs, representing accidental deaths as well as formal interment and more casual disposal. Finds of Iron Age date are of a rather more sinister nature and what characterizes them and sets them apart from other bog bodies is the fact that they represent ritual killings. Similar finds elsewhere demonstrate that the Irish Iron Age finds form part of a broader ­Northwestern European cultural tradition, with well-known examples from Tollund, D ­ enmark (Glob 1969), Lindow Moss, England (Stead et al. 1986), and Yde, Holland (van der Sanden 1996). Tacitus (Germania XII) notes how victims of execution were staked down in bogs, with no mention made of sacrificial ritual (Green 1998:179). However, the Irish evidence clearly favors the interpretation that the victims were the subjects of ritual killings, not execution. Despite the numbers of bog bodies found in Ireland, the discovery of well-preserved ancient remains is a relatively rare occurrence, so it was with considerable surprise that the National Museum learned in the spring and early summer of 2003 of two remarkable new discoveries. This paper provides an overview of the detailed investigations into these two individuals as well as other recent Irish bog body finds from other periods. A detailed analysis is being prepared as part of a larger review of all the dated Irish Iron Age bog ­bodies and their European background. (Working title: The Irish Bog Bodies Project, edited by E. P. Kelly and I. Mulhall, Forthcoming). In the debris of a peat-screening machine at peat extraction works in B ­ allivor (Co. Meath) workers discovered the preserved body of a young man (Figure 12.1). Investigation indicated that the body had lain originally in a deep bog at Clonycavan on the

figure 12.1 Clonycavan Man, Co. Meath found in the debris of a peat-screening machine in February 2003.

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county ­border between Meath and Westmeath. Although damaged from the waist down due to the action of a peat-harvesting machine, the internal organs were preserved partially. The head was intact with a clearly distinguishable face and a very distinctive hairstyle (Figure 12.2). On the back of the head the hair was cut to about 2.5 cm long with the rest of the hair, which was about 20 cm long, gathered into a bundle on the top of his head. Later analysis revealed that the hair had been held in place by the application of a sort of hair gel made from resin imported from France or Spain (Kelly 2006a). By contrast with Clonycavan Man, who was of slight build and diminutive stature, a second body found a few months later at Oldcroghan (Co. Offaly) was a tall and powerfully built man (Figure 12.3). Uncovered during the digging of a bog drain, the remains consist of a severed torso that had been decapitated in antiquity; however the surviving part of the body was in remarkable condition with superbly preserved hands (Figure 12.4) and internal organs still intact. On the left arm was a plaited leather armband with metal mounts decorated with designs in the Celtic La Tène style (Figure 12.5). The National Museum enlisted the expertise of an international team of specialists who undertook detailed analysis of both bodies. A wide variety of analyses was carried out including CT and MRI scanning, paleo-dietary analysis, fingerprinting, histological analysis, pathological assessment, facial reconstruction, and so on. Radiocarbon dating ­indicated that Clonycavan Man lived during the period 392–201 B.C. while Oldcroghan ­Man ­produced a date range of 362–175 B.C. The presence of expensive imported resin in

figure 12.2 The head of Clonycavan Man was intact with a clearly distinguishable face and a very distinctive hairstyle.

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figure 12.3 Oldcroghan, Co. Offaly was found during the digging of a bog drain in May 2003.

figure 12.4 Oldcroghan Man had superbly preserved hands.

the hair of Clonycavan Man indicated that he was a high-status person. This also seemed to be the case with Oldcroghan Man, who had carefully manicured fingernails and an absence of wear to his hands indicative of a person who did not engage in heavy manual work. Scientific analysis of the chemical constituents of the hair and fingernails provided information on the diets of the two men in the months preceding their deaths. C ­ lonycavan Man had a plant-based diet for four months prior to his death, suggesting that he may have died during the autumn before the onset of a meat-rich winter diet. By contrast, ­Oldcroghan

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figure 12.5 On the left arm Oldcroghan Man wore a plaited leather armband with metal mounts decorated in the Celtic La Tène style.

Man may have died in the winter or early spring, as he ate a diet with a s­ubstantial meat component during the four months prior to his death. A pathological examination revealed that Clonycavan Man was killed by a series of blows to his head and chest, from a heavy, edged weapon, probably an axe. He also suffered a 40 cm long cut to his abdomen suggesting disembowelment. A stab wound to the chest killed Oldcroghan Man; however a defense-wound on the upper left arm indicates that he tried to fend off the fatal assault. The deceased was then decapitated and his thorax severed from his abdomen. Like Clonycavan Man, Oldcroghan Man had his nipples cut partially but whether this was done before or after death is unknown (Figure 12.6). Examination revealed that withies had been inserted through cuts made in the upper arms of Oldcroghan Man (Figure 12.7) and may be the remains of a spancel (a type of animal hobble). There is a rich history and folklore associated with spancels, which appear to have had magical qualities that protected boundaries. This may have arisen from the

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figure 12.6 Oldcroghan Man had his nipples partially cut, but whether this was done before death is unknown.

use of spancels to hobble animals, which would have made it difficult to run them off in a raid. Spancels were also used when milking cattle, which led to associations with fertility and fecundity. A withy hoop found around the neck of an Iron Age bog body found in the nineteenth century at Gallagh (Co. Galway) may also be the remains of a spancel. In Ireland, modern boundaries may have a remarkable antiquity; in many instances barony boundaries appear to coincide with ancient tribal boundaries. It was noted that both ­Oldcroghan Man and Clonycavan Man were located on significant boundaries, which prompted an important new line of research. In addition to Oldcroghan Man and C ­ lonycavan Man, five other dated Irish finds of Iron Age bog bodies were found on significant boundaries, with up to forty likely Iron Age bog bodies that appear to fit the same pattern (Kelly 2006b). Some of the finds consisted only of body parts such as decapitated heads and severed limbs suggesting that some bodies, like that of Oldcroghan Man, were dismembered for interment at a number of different places along tribal boundaries. Until further systematic research has been undertaken it will not be possible to state whether there is also a correlation between the locations of the British and continental bog bodies and ancient boundaries. The deposition of bodies along boundaries might be interpreted as having a protective function, and while this may have been partly the case, a range of other Iron Age material uncovered along boundaries suggests that one is dealing primarily with sovereignty rituals associated with sacral kingship and kingly inauguration (Kelly 2006b). In the pagan era,

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figure 12.7 Withies inserted through cuts made in the upper arms of ­Oldcroghan Man may be the remains of a spancel.

as part of the king’s sacred marriage to the territorial earth goddess, it would appear that objects associated with inauguration rituals were buried on tribal boundaries as a statement and definition of the king’s sovereignty. The presence of items such as harnesses, yokes, and parts of wheeled vehicles suggest that candidates for kingship rode in procession to the place of inauguration (Kelly 2006b). Feasting was an integral part of inauguration ceremonies, as indicated by the presence of cauldrons and drinking vessels, and horned headdresses, collars, torcs, armlets, pins, and fibulae provide evidence of the nature of kingly regalia. The votive deposition of bog b­ utter, quern stones, plough parts, and, in one instance, a sickle are all reminders that a central function of the marriage of the king to the earth goddess was to ensure the fertility of the land and the well-being of the people; all of whom were dependant for survival on reliable yields of corn, milk, and milk products. These finds may also give an important context to the final meal of Oldcroghan Man, which consisted of cereals and buttermilk. There is a rich body of Irish historical and mythological material that can provide insights into the bog body phenomenon. One explanation is that the ritual deaths of bog bodies represent offerings made at times of famine or disease. In an Irish context, the consort of the goddess was the king, and when famine or plague indicated that she had ­withdrawn her benevolence, it was he who bore the responsibility. The king’s failure to ensure the continued goodwill of the goddess meant that he might be obliged to pay the ultimate price.

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Dalton (1970) proposed that, once every seven years, the kings of Tara faced the ­prospect of a ritual death, although the king might save his life by abdicating or by providing a substitute sacrifice. The Annals of the Four Masters record that Slanoll, a King of Tara during the pagan era, died in mysterious circumstances at Tara. On becoming king forty years later, Oilill, son of Slanoll, had his father’s body disinterred and the body was found to be preserved and free from corruption. This suggests that the king may have been buried in peat; in other words, Slanoll, King of Tara, is very likely to have been a bog body. Oldcroghan Man and Clonycavan Man may have been deposed kings, as is implied by the fact that their nipples were cut, thus rendering them ineligible for kingship. This is because the suckling of a king’s nipples was an important gesture of submission by subordinates, and the stylized representation of breasts and nipples on the terminals of gold gorgets indicates that this was a custom that extended as far back as the Late Bronze Age at least (Figure 12.8). There are other references in early written sources that link human sacrifice to the god Crom Dubh, who is associated with Lughnasa, the Celtic harvest festival. The rich field of research prompted by the discovery of Oldcroghan Man and ­Clonycavan Man is ongoing and many further important discoveries may lie in store. Based on the research to date, a special exhibition entitled “Kingship and Sacrifice” is currently

figure 12.8 Stylized representations of breasts and nipples occur on the terminals of Late Bronze Age gold gorgets that were worn on the breast.

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on display in the National Museum, Kildare Street, Dublin. This exhibition contains four bog bodies including the finds from Clonycavan and Oldcroghan. Also on display are other finds from bogs that help to provide insights into the rituals involved in the sacrifice of the men entombed in the bogs. References Cited Bermingham, N., and M. Delaney 2006 The Bog Body From Tumbeagh. Wordwell, Bray. Dalton, G. F. 1970 The Ritual Killing of the Irish Kings. Folklore 81:1–21. Glob, Peter Vilhelm 1969 The Bog People. Faber and Faber, London. Green, Miranda 1998 Humans as Ritual Victims in the Later Prehistory of Western Europe. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 17(2):169–179. Kelly, Eamonn P. 2006a Bog Bodies—Kingship and Sacrifice. Scéal na Móna 13(60):57–59. Kelly, Eamonn P. 2006b Kingship and Sacrifice: Iron Age Bog Bodies and Boundaries. Archaeology Ireland, Heritage Guide, No. 35. Wordwell, Bray. Turner, R. C., and R. G. Scaife (editors) 1995 Bog Bodies: New Discoveries and New Perspectives. ­British Museum Press, London. Stead, I. M., J. B. Bourke, and Don Brothwell (editors) 1986 Lindow Man: The Body in the Bog. ­British Museum Publications, London. van der Sanden, Wijnand 1996 Through Nature to Eternity: the Bog Bodies of Northwest Europe, ­translated by Susan J. Mellor. Batavian Lion International, Amsterdam.

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Chapter Thirteen

The Archaeology of Destruction

Christians, Images of Classical Antiquity, and Some Problems of Interpretation John Pollini

Abstract  Christian iconoclasm has long been a subject of great interest and ­scholarly discussion. The term Christian iconoclasm has generally been used to characterize Christian destruction of Christian sacred images as a result of the so-called Iconoclastic Debate, a euphemism for the “iconomachy” that raged during the eighth and ninth centuries. This “battle over images” was fought by iconophiles, who wanted to keep images of the Christian god and their saints as part of the Church’s tradition, and the iconoclasts, who felt that such sacred images were in violation of the biblical ban on images stated in the Ten Commandments. The iconomachy that ensued resulted in much violence and bloodshed, nearly tearing apart the Eastern Orthodox Church in the process. A great deal of scholarship has likewise been focused on the Christian iconoclasm that recurred periodically in the modern era, beginning with the Protestant Reformation. However, remarkably little attention has been focused on the considerable amount of Christian destruction and desecration of images of classical antiquity that took place in Late Antique times, roughly from the fourth to at least the sixth century. Although Christian violence against images of the gods and the polytheists who worshiped or revered them is recorded in various passages in the ­histories and hagiographies of the Late Antique period, there has been no ­comprehensive study of this phenomenon, especially from an archaeological point of view.

I

n both scholarship and popular culture, Christianity has generally been seen as a p ­ ositive force that was responsible for the preservation of the literature, art, and architecture of the classical past. Rarely acknowledged is the vast amount of literary and visual material that Christians destroyed and desecrated. In fact, some scholars have even interpreted the C ­ hristianization of the Roman Empire as a largely peaceful process. But even though 241

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the written and archaeological record tells a very different story, the material evidence for Christian destruction and desecration has often been overlooked or unrecognized even by archaeologists. This paper focuses on the question of the nature of the evidence for ­Christian violence against images of classical antiquity in the Late Antique period, as well as some of the attendant problems in detecting and making sense of this phenomenon. Based on our evidence for all forms of Christian destruction, the question that ultimately needs to be addressed is whether or to what extent the Christianization of the Roman Empire was a change for the better or worse from what had gone before. In the 1990s Christian fundamentalist minister Mel Perry and his ardent f­ollowers ­protested plans to place in the Nashville Parthenon a colossal recreation of Pheidias’s famous lost statue of the Athena Parthenos, which once stood in the Parthenon in Athens (The Tennessean, 21 May 1990).1 Carrying Bibles, Perry’s group held placards proclaiming that Athena was the “Anti-Christ” and that “Idolatry has come to Nashville in the guise of Art.” Most Americans would probably just be amused by this sort of protest, since the ­goddess Athena is regarded in a largely Judeo-Christian society not as a religious figure but as a character out of Greek mythology. More importantly, Americans’ own religion was not being threatened or attacked. However, in late antiquity, Christian fanatics would not have been carrying placards; instead, like the notorious fifth-century Christian abbot Shenoute and his gang of black-robed monks, they would have been carrying pickaxes and firebrands as they terrorized their polytheistic neighbors and destroyed their sacred images and shrines. Shenoute and his zealous followers not only destroyed images of the gods in Upper Egypt, but also killed polytheistic priests (Frankfurter 1998:especially 278; Frankfurter 2000; see also Libanius, Or. 30.8–9). Shenoute is reported to have said that “there is no crime for those who have Christ,” a belief shared and acted upon by fundamentalist Christians from late antiquity to the present (Gaddis 2005:1).2 More analogous in recent years to the destruction of images of classical antiquity is the Taliban’s assault on pre-Islamic sculpture in Afghanistan in 2001, with the most noted victim being the colossal Bamiyan Buddha (e.g., Flood 2002; Manhart 2001). In addition, the Taliban Ministers of Information and Culture and of Finance led a ­wrecking crew that destroyed with axes more than 2,750 precious works of art in the Kabul Museum (Web site 1). Since then, there have been attacks on other Buddhist images. In 2007, for example, pro-Taliban militants were only partially successful in trying to blow up another ancient colossal Buddha figure in the Swat Valley of Pakistan (Web site 2). Among the many to protest these acts of iconoclasm were Muslim leaders, who—in condemning the Taliban—insisted that such acts are not in keeping with Islamic tolerance or teachings. In destroying the Buddhas, however, the Taliban had a model to follow—the prophet Muhammed himself. He is said to have destroyed some 360 sacred images that had been set up in and around the Ka‘ba (as recorded in Ibn Ishaq: See Peters 1994:236), which was in origin an ancient temple of a number of gods of the polytheistic peoples who traded in Mecca. Allah, too, was worshiped here, but as only one of many gods (Peters 1994:105–132, especially 107–112). As known from the Hadith, the sayings and deeds of Muhammed, and the ‘Kita¯b al-Asna¯m, the “Book of Idols,” Muhammed was instrumental in the destruction of images sacred to other religions throughout the Arabian peninsula (Faris 1952:15, 21–22, 32–33, 34–53; Fregosi 1998:31–68). He in turn could look back

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to the Old Testament for inspiration, modeling himself on Moses, who is said to have destroyed the “Golden Calf ” of Egypt (Exodus 23). Biblical myths have been used throughout the centuries to justify such acts of violence and some of the worse crimes against humanity. Such notions as that of a “chosen ­people” and a “promised land” provided a model and justification for European colonizers to enslave and commit genocide against the inhabitants of the New World. In the minds of many Christian settlers, these native peoples were to be equated with the Canaanites; therefore, men, women, and children could be slaughtered at will, so that Christians could inherit from their god the “New Promised Land.” The centuries-long genocide of the native peoples of the Americas resulted in arguably the worst holocaust in recent history (Stannard 1992). These same biblical myths served to promote and justify the later c­ olonization and ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionists, both before and after the founding of the State of Israel (Pappe 2007). Such actions have led to an unending cycle of violence in the Middle East, promoting in part acts of Islamic terrorism against the West. In exploring the reasons for violence, it is important to consider not only how and why victimizers r­ ationalize and justify their actions but also the psychological process by which victims of v­ iolence, with their own ideological and political agendas, can themselves become victimizers. It is of course cliché today to speak of how “religion” (i.e., monotheistic religion) has received a bad name because of the crimes committed by individuals who have used and abused it to promote some perverse agenda. Although certainly true in part, this view s­ eriously underestimates the power and role that intolerant dogma played and continues to play as a ­catalyst in promoting hate crimes and other violent acts. Though it is generally said that ancient ­polytheistic religion was tolerant, the notion of “tolerance,” or for that matter “­intolerance,” does not enter into polytheism, since polytheistic religions make no dogmatic pronouncements about the validity of other religions. All gods are regarded as valid, even a god hostile to the gods of other people. We know, for example, that Augustus and his wife Livia sent as gifts golden vessels to Yahweh, the god of the Jews (Philo, Legatio ad Gaium 157, 319; Josephus, Bellum Judaicum 5.562–563; see also Smallwood 1981:90).3 Polytheists themselves, however, were not always tolerant toward those who practiced other religions if they felt that their own religion, political system, customs, and family values were being assaulted by adherents of alien religions. In this sense, polytheists, not polytheistic religion, were “re-active.” One of the fundamental problems with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam lies in the very concept of a universal monotheism, a system of belief that insists that there is only one God and one Truth equally valid for all peoples. Monotheism, as we know, began with the Pharaoh Akhenaten in the fourteenth century BCE. However, it was short-lived and apparently had no impact on later monotheistic religions. For the Western tradition, an intolerant monotheistic system of belief was reinvented in the late eighth century by Jews under Hezekiah, revived in the late seventh century BCE under Josiah (Finkelstein and Siberman 2001: 246–250 [Hezekiah]; 275–295 [  Josiah]), and eventually passed on to Christianity and to Islam. Among the more condemnable passages in the Old Testament is Yahweh’s demand that the Israelites destroy the temples, shrines, and the aniconic images of their neighbors, the Canaanites (see, e.g., Deuteronomy 7:1–6, 7.25; 12:2–3). In one case, 2 Kings 10: 26–27, not only was the sacred image of the Canaanite god Baal burned and his temple destroyed, but also the hallowed ground of his sanctuary was turned into a

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public latrine. This sort of dishonoring of ancient shrines is reminiscent of the fate of the Temple of Aphrodite in Constantinople, which was turned into a “garage” for Christian praetorian prefects’ chariots in 386 (Chuvin 1990:79). Such an attitude toward the sacred images and places of other peoples was taken up later on by Christian fanatics, some of whom have long been admired and even venerated as saints for their “good deeds” and “saintliness.” Yet from a polytheistic point of view these very individuals committed despicable and sacrilegious acts of destruction and desecration that a number of Christians still consider to be commendable and even justifiable. One of the most popular and cherished saints is St. Nicholas, who in modern Christian myth was transformed into a lovable, pot-bellied, jolly spirit of Christmas, goodwill, and giving. The St. Nicholas of late antiquity was in reality a composite of at least two individuals, a shadowy figure said to be bishop of Myra, who lived at the time of the Emperor Constantine in the fourth century, and Nicholas of Sion, bishop of Pinara, a true historical individual who lived at the time of Justinian in the sixth century (Ševcˇenko and Ševcˇenko 1984:11–19; Ševcˇenko 1983:18–24). Many of the stories about Nicholas of Sion were attributed to Nicholas, bishop of Myra. In reality, the composite St. Nicholas was anything but jolly or lovable; he was in fact an ascetic fanatic, admired for his destruction of the sacred images, objects, and temples of the gods of polytheistic peoples in Lycia in southwestern Asia Minor (modern Turkey). He is represented in several church frescoes attacking or directing others to attack the sacred images of the gods, sometimes represented as little demonic figures (Ševcˇenko 1983:34–35, 42, 44, 46, 49, 91–94, 130–133, 210 [Figure 10.14], 259 [Figure 22.9], 271 [24.8], 279 [Figure 28.6], 304 [Figure 34.16]). In the case of a little-known Medieval painting in a church in Boyana near Sofia, Bulgaria (Figure 13.1), Nicholas, accompanied by two of his followers, is shown destroying a seminude statue of the goddess of love, Aphrodite. She appears to wear a Phrygian cap, symbolic of Asia Minor (Ševcˇenko 1983:34–35, 210, 10.14).4 Nicholas’s follower on the left wields an ax, while the one on the right prepares to pull down the statue with a rope tied around the goddess’ neck. The West also had its share of religious fanatics. Among them was Saint Benedict, founder of the Benedictine Order and of the famous mid-sixth-century Benedictine Monastery at Monte Cassino, Italy, which was destroyed by the Allies in World War II. It is generally not known that Benedict first destroyed on this site a Temple of Apollo and its sacred cult image, when it was discovered that devout polytheists were still worshiping Apollo there (Dialogues of St. Gregory 2.8–9: Zimmerman 1959). Of the three major monotheistic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—it was Christianity that proved to be the most destructive to the polytheistic religions and material culture of not only the Old World but also the New World. However, especially among Christians, Christianity is generally viewed today as a positive force—one that is even responsible for the preservation of the classical past. And while it is true that a number of artifacts, buildings, customs, rituals, and myths were taken over and preserved in some form or other, Christianity was directly responsible for the loss of a great deal of the rich literature, art, architecture, and culture of the many polytheistic peoples who inhabited the lands around the Mediterranean. Of course, the degree and forms of destruction varied throughout the former Roman Empire. Even the notion of Christian “appropriation” is

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figure 13.1 Medieval fresco of St. Nicholas and followers destroying an image of Aphrodite, Boyana Church near Sofia, Bulgaria: From Ševcˇenko 1983, 10.14.

problematic, since the question that is generally not raised is whether and in what way appropriation of cultural property is itself a form of destruction and desecration, especially when this question is considered from a polytheistic point of view. Christian iconoclasm, or destruction of images, has long been recognized and studied by scholars. Yet when we speak or think about “Christian iconoclasm,” it is generally in terms of Christian destruction of Christian sacred images. Particular attention has been given to the so-called Iconoclastic Debate, a euphemism for the iconomachy, or battle over images, that raged during the eighth and ninth centuries, resulting in a bloodbath that nearly tore apart the Eastern Orthodox Church (e.g., Besançon 2000; Bryer and Herrin 1977; Gero 1973, 1978; Grabar 1957; Stein 1980). Even the periodic resurgence of Christian iconoclasm from the Middle Ages until the present has been well studied and documented (e.g., Besançon 2000:147–382; and in general Freedberg 1989). However, relatively little attention, especially in academic literature,5 has been paid to the Christians’ destruction and desecration of ancient images, behavior that in some circles was and still is considered justifiable because of the belief that what matters in the end is the so-called truth of the Christian message prevailing. Anchored in this belief is the notion of the “triumph” of Christianity, which modern scholarship has repeatedly cast in positive terms.

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There is a great body of evidence for Christian attacks on images of classical antiquity. This information is to be found in not only the written but also the archaeological record (e.g., for literary evidence: Trombley 2001; for the archaeological: Delivorrias 1991; Sauer 2003). Interestingly, a great deal of the material evidence that has come down to us has been largely overlooked by archaeologists, who have generally assumed that most of this damage was the result of war, accident, or natural causes. Yet even when this destruction is recognized for what it is, archaeologists and museum professionals have tended to downplay or avoid discussing what is regarded as a sensitive subject, especially in countries with a dominant and dominating Christian culture. For example, in the Archaeological Museum at Delphi, a museum label for two metopes from the so-called Tholos that were studiously effaced by Greek Christians (Figure 13.2) indicated only that they had been “already damaged in antiquity.”6

figure 13.2 Mutilated metopes from the Tholos at Delphi, Delphi Archaeological Museum: Photo Author.

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Similarly, after it was recognized that the Temple of Zeus at Nemea was not destroyed by an earthquake, as had long been thought, but by Greek Christians, who hacked away at the bases of the columns surrounding the temple to fell them like trees (Figure 13.3a) in an outward radiating pattern (Figure 13.3b), the didactic in the site museum was changed to read that the Temple “may not have been destroyed by Poseidon, the earth shaker.”7 In both these Greek examples, acknowledgment of Christian culpability appears to have been intentionally avoided.

figure 13.3a Remains of a hacked-at column shaft from the Temple of Zeus at Nemea: Photo Author.

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figure 13.3b Outward radiating pattern of fallen columns around the Temple of Zeus at Nemea: Photo author based on photo didactic in the Archaeological Museum at Nemea.

Recently, a short film by the noted Greek-born French filmmaker Constantinos ­Costa-Gavras on damage to the Parthenon over the centuries came under attack by the Greek Orthodox Church, which objected to a short segment showing black-robed Christians mutilating the metopes and pediments of the Parthenon.8 This film was ­produced as part of the didactics for the New Acropolis Museum, which was opened to the public on June 21, 2009. As a result of the Church’s displeasure with this element of the film, the Greek Cultural Ministry ordered that the “objectionable” segment be cut. The director of the New Acropolis Museum, who complied with this censorship, released a statement saying that the cuts in the film were “an effort to eliminate misunderstanding and not censorship at all” (Web site 3; for the uncensored version: Web site 4). However, it is aw ­ ell-established fact that Greek Christians did desecrate the Temple of Athena, as well as a great deal else of Greece’s classical heritage. After the Greek and foreign presses’ criticism of this attempted censorship and an injunction filed against the museum,9 the director of the museum recanted and agreed to the restoration of the segment on Christian destruction, but only after the filmmaker offered a “self-explanatory clarification.” The director of the museum said, “Mr. Gavras explains that in these scenes [of Christian mutilation] that he did not show or mean to say that the destruction was done by priests but by people

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of that time” (Web site 5). However, in the Late Antique period all temples became the property of the state, and to destroy and/or alter them, the leadership of the Church generally had to ­petition the emperor. As we know from other cases, it was principally fanatical bishops, priests, and monks who were behind the destruction and desecration of temples in late antiquity (Pollini 2007:210). The organized mutilation of the Parthenon by Greek Christians therefore had to have been set in motion by the Athenian Christian Church at that time. In addition to censorship to advance a religious agenda, the contemporary Greek Orthodox Church and its supporters have been attempting to squash a growing revival of ancient Greek polytheistic religion, or “Hellenic religion,” in contemporary Greece. These neo-polytheists are accused of being worshipers of idolatry and “poisonous New Age ­practices.” This sort of intolerant and antidemocratic view was expressed by a Greek Orthodox priest, Eustathios Kollas, who characterized Greek neo-polytheists as “a handful of miserable resuscitators of a degenerate dead religion who wish to return to the monstrous dark delusions of the past” (Web site 6; Web site 7 for the Greek polytheists’ ­protest against the destruction of the Church and the censoring of the Costa-Gavras film). Ironically, it was worship of the Greek gods that inspired most of Greece’s glorious monuments. Greek Christians have even resorted to pressure and violence in an attempt to squash this n ­ eo-polytheistic movement.10 Discrimination expressed in a variety of ways against polytheistic Hellenic religion, the original religion of Greece, as well as against other minority religions, is in violation of basic humans rights, according to the 2007 report by the U.S. State Department (Web site 8). Given the lack of separation of church and state in Greece and the anti-polytheistic stance of the Greek Orthodox Church, which represents 97 ­percent of the population, it is worth considering how Greeks can legitimately lay claim to the Elgin Marbles or other antiquities, when so much was destroyed and desecrated by Greek Christians. It is part of modern popular mythology and sociological propaganda in Greece that barbarians or Turks were largely responsible for the destruction and desecration of ancient Greek monuments and artifacts. Although barbarians on occasion rampaged through towns and villages, they would not have smashed into thousands of pieces sacred stone images of the gods, as in the case of the cult image of the Goddess Nemesis, along with its statue base at Rhamnous (Figures 13.4a-b) (Despinis 1970; Ehrhardt 1997). This sort of ­studious ­mutilation reflects, rather, the level of hatred shown by Christians for nonChristian sacred objects and spaces. There are a number of other examples of this sort of intensive, ­intentional damage, including that suffered by the grand open-air altar of the Augustan Victory Monument at Nikopolis in Greece, which was smashed into thousands of pieces (Zachos 2003, 2007).11 In all these sites, there is archaeological evidence for Christian occupation. The destruction of the Parthenon by fire in late antiquity, if not the result of natural causes, has often been blamed on the invading barbarian Herulians in the mid-third century CE or later on other barbarians, some of whom were Christians. Never considered, however, is the possible role of Athenian Greek Christians, who had the strongest motivation for destroying the Parthenon, especially in the late fourth century, after imperial decrees had

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figure 13.4a Line drawing of cult statue of the goddess Nemesis with base from Rhamnous: From Ehrhardt 1997: Figure 1.

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figure 13.4b Remains of smashed base of cult statue of Nemesis from Rhamnous: Photo Author.

been passed outlawing polytheistic religion and calling for the destruction of temples of the gods (e.g., Codex Theodosianus 16, 10, 2; 16, 10, 4; 16, 10, 6). Adding fuel to the fire, so to speak, was the destruction of the famous Serapeum in Alexandria in 391/392 along with its cult image at the instigation of Theophilos, the fanatical bishop of Alexandria. This act of violence sent a message throughout the Christian Empire that it was the duty of Christians to destroy sacred polytheistic shrines and images. It has long been recognized by scholars—though not the general public—that Christians mutilated most of the metopes on the East, North, and West sides of Parthenon. Despite weathering, we can still make out the hacked-off metope figures (e.g., North Metope no. 25: Figure 13.5) (Pollini 2007:212–216; Brommer 1979:23, 30, Plate 41). As for the Parthenon frieze, it has been assumed, even by scholars, that most of the damage to this great sculptural work occurred at the time of the Venetian bombardment of the Acropolis in 1687 under the command of Francesco Morosini, who was a Christian and obviously not respectful of classical antiquity. At that time, much of the north and south walls of the Parthenon with its frieze were destroyed. In a number of sections of the frieze are to be found the typical sort of incidental and irregular breaks, chips, and nicks that would

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figure 13.5 Mutilated North metope no. 25 of Eros, Aphrodite, and Helen with cult image of Athena: From Brommer 1979: Plate 21.

have occurred when blocks hit one another during the explosion (Pollini 2007:216–217, Plate 29.1). With the use of a ladder, I was able to study details of the frieze at close range and to d ­ etermine that all the heads of the Olympian gods and their mortal m ­ inistrants in the central block on the east side of the Parthenon were intentionally mutilated (Pollini 2007:217–221, Plates 29.2–32.1). It is possible to make out, for example, traces of diagonal hacking across Hera’s face (Figure 13.6) that would have been made with an adze-like implement by ­someone bent upon attack. This sort of mutilation has generally been overlooked in the past, at least in part because weathering tends to obscure bashing and hacking. In any case, the mutilation of heads in the central block undoubtedly occurred when it was removed from the building in order to put in the apse of the Christian church.

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figure 13.6 Detail of the mutilated and weathered face of Hera from the central east block of the Parthenon frieze: Photo Author.

Similar intentional damage to the heads of figures occurred in one of six sections of the north and south Parthenon frieze that were removed to create clerestory windows for the church. Of these six sections, only North Block 10 has come down to us in its entirety (Figure 13.7) (Pollini 2007:219–220). This block shows the same systematic bashing of

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figure 13.7 Detail of the heads of the “Elders” on north block 10 of the Parthenon frieze: Photo Author.

heads of the ­so-called elders in the procession that we find in the central block from the east side of the temple. Here, too, there is little to no damage to the areas around the heads. If this ­mutilation was not directly ordered by the Athenian Christian Church, the workers might have taken it upon themselves to do it, since superstitious Christians feared the gaze of such images and demonic possession by them (for Christian attitudes in general about demonic possession of images of the gods and other sacred objects, see, e.g., Cameron and Herrin 1984). Many small sacred votive reliefs that were set up in various temples and shrines throughout the Mediterranean show a pattern of damage that signals intentionality, though this has generally been overlooked. Such reliefs usually featured gods or divinized heroes and also quite often worshipers, represented on a smaller scale (e.g., Figure 13.8) (Delivorrias 1991:118, Plate 58b; Kaltsas 2002:140–141, Figure 268 [inv. no. 1338]). In a great number of cases, the figures are set within a surrounding frame that would have protected them to some degree in the event that the relief fell or was purposely knocked down. Making clear that many of these figures were defaced by a blunt instrument, rock, or a pick is the evidence

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figure 13.8 Votive relief of Asklepios and worshipers, Athens National Archaeological Museum: Photo Author.

of systematic attack, especially on heads or faces, as can be seen in a relief from Omega House in the Athenian Agora (Figure 13.9a-b) (Camp 1989:53–54; Riccardi 1998:266). I have also discovered, especially in Greece and Turkey, a great many funerary stelai that reveal a pattern of destruction similar to what is found on votive reliefs. In an Augustan/ Julio-Claudian flat-top naiskos relief in the British School in Athens that had been reused in the second century CE, the heads have been mutilated, as well as the joined right hands and the left hand of the man, who holds a walking stick (Figure 13.10) (Lambert 2000: 495–497, Plate 77).12 Attacks on gravestones were acts of sacrilege because grave sites were considered sacred places by polytheists (Routledge 2007). Overlooked, too, has been evidence of attacks on the many small busts that ­decorated the special sacred crowns worn by prominent citizens associated with the imperial cult. Usually represented on these bust-crowns are important divinities of a particular city, emperors, and various members of imperial families. In a number of studies of these bustcrowns, the principal interest has been in identifying which divinities and members of the imperial house are represented in the busts, as well as who wore these crowns (Pollini 2008:169–171 with notes 15, 21; Rumscheid 2000). Although the damage to the small heads has been noted by archaeologists, the question that has not been raised is why these

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figure 13.9a Omega House relief, Agora Museum, Athens: Photo Author.

figure 13.9b Detail of Omega House relief, Agora Museum, Athens: Photo Author.

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figure 13.10 Grave stele with mutilated heads and hands, British School of Archaeology, Athens: Photo Author.

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heads were broken off or bashed, with little to no damage to the bust forms or the crowns themselves (Pollini 2008). For example, in the case of a portrait statue of L. Antonius Claudius Dometeinos Diogenes from Aphrodisias (Brody 2007:26 [no. 15], Plate 11), all of the eleven heads of the small busts ringing the turban-like crown were systematically mutilated, a clear indication that this damage was intentional (Figure 13.11) (Pollini 2008:171, Figure 1a-d).

figure 13.11 Head of L. Antonius Claudius Dometeinos Diogenes from Aphrodisias, Aphrodisias Archaeological Museum: Photo Author.

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Highly relevant with regard to attacks on bust-crowns is the Christian martyr story of St. Thecla, preserved in the second-century Acts of St. Paul and Thecla (For the Acts: Bremmer 1996; for Thecla in Christian myth: Johnson 2006; Pollini 2008:181–182). According to the story, Thecla, who was supposedly a follower of St. Paul, attacked Alexander, a prominent citizen of Psidian Antioch and representative of the imperial cult, as he was taking part in a public religious procession. Rushing up to Alexander, Thecla tore at his official robes and dashed to the ground his golden priestly crown, which bore an image of Caesar. For this sacrilegious and criminal act, Thecla was sentenced to death in accordance with the law. The goal of such stories was to promote Christianity by demonstrating the martyrs’ virtues, beliefs, and willingness to die for their faith (see also Hopkins 1999:109–121; Stark 1996:164). However, like many such myths, Thecla’s tale was a ­fabrication: The noted late-second–early-third-century Christian apologist Tertullian tells us in his de Baptismo (17) that it was created by a second-century presbyter of Asia Minor who confessed that he had invented the story of Thecla out of his love for St. Paul (Hilhorst in Bremmer 1996:150–163). The fictitious nature of the tale is further borne out by the fact that Thecla is not mentioned in any of the writings attributed to Paul. That the story was recognized as false by knowledgeable Christians did not prevent it from becoming a reality for many other Christians, who even acquired parts of what they believed to be the invented saint’s body to worship as relics. For example, in the Medieval Cathedral of Santa Thecla and Santa Maria in Tarragona, Spain, the arm of some unknown person serves as a relic of the fictional saint. Once a year the arm is taken outside the Church and paraded around the city, whose patron saint is Thecla. A sculptural scene in the cathedral shows the appearance of her arm to a bishop and his flock when a rock miraculously opened up to give up the arm (Vicens 1970:46, Figure 156).13 Although a Christian myth, the tale of St. Thecla is nevertheless valuable not only in providing us with specific evidence for Christian attacks on sacred ­bust-crowns and the individuals who wore them but also in confirming hateful and contemptuous Christian attitudes toward the shrines, images, and religious beliefs of other peoples. In the Roman Empire, Christianity was a very aggressive missionary religion that eventually targeted even Roman citizens. Christians, most notably the leadership, ­verbally attacked the gods of others and created civic disturbances and violence, especially when proselytizing in Jewish communities throughout the Empire, preaching what many Jews considered a perversion and heresy. Under the Roman Empire people were generally free to believe in any religion, but to use dogmatic religious beliefs to promote civic turmoil and violence was against Roman law and the pax deorum (literally the “peace of the gods”), fundamental for the preservation of the Roman state. The Jews, for example, enjoyed religious freedom and a privileged status under Rome, as long as they did not use their religion to commit crimes or acts of terrorism or to foment rebellion. Provocative and criminal b­ ehavior by Christians over time was among the principal reasons why they were punished by the Roman state and why eventually Christianity came to be designated an “illicit religion,” or more accurately, a superstitio illicita. It was regarded in this way by the Romans because it went beyond the bounds of proper religious behavior not only in actively ­professing hatred

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of the gods and of the religious beliefs of other peoples but also in promoting zealotry and fanaticism among its ­adherents (Wilken 1984:48–67). The eventual success of Christianity in spreading throughout the Empire in the Late Antique period was not based on the validity of its message, as many Christians believe, but rather on its being backed and promoted by imperial power: under Constantine in the fourth century and his Christian successors, Christianity became the religion of the state. No longer a vulnerable minority, Christians were able for the first time to force their will and narrow view of the world on others. Accordingly, self-proclaimed “orthodox” Christians began persecuting not only non-orthodox Christians and Jews but also polytheists, many of whom were unwilling to convert to Christianity. When reason, economic sanctions, discrimination, and threats of violence did not convince people to change their ways or to convert, imprisonment, torture, and executions—including crucifixion—were often employed. As Ramsey MacMullen has shown in his book, Changes in the Roman Empire, the change from a Roman to a Christian Empire was not a change for the better; in fact, in many ways it was a change for the worse, especially when it came to religious persecution and the law (MacMullen 1990:especially 142–155, 204–217). For example, in the case of judicial punishments, the number of crimes that carried the death penalty, as well as the savagery of the punishments, continued to increase dramatically under Christianity. During the height of the Roman Empire—that is, before the year 200—there were 15 crimes punishable by death; by the time of the Christian Emperor Constantine’s death in 337, the number of these capital crimes had quadrupled to more than 60. To executions by crucifixion and being burned alive, Constantine added the novelty of having molten lead poured down the throats of those convicted of rather minor crimes related to sex (Codex Theodosianus 9.24.1; see also MacMullen 1990:148). Christian emperors who followed Constantine were likewise known for their judicial savagery (MacMullen 1990:204–217). Mutilation of body parts, including hands, feet, and genitals—unknown as a judicial punishment in the earlier Roman Empire—became a distinctive hallmark of Christian emperors. Because of negative Christian attitudes toward nudity, sex, and fertility, nude figures set up by the polytheistic peoples of the Empire were objects of Christian assaults. Telltale pick marks can be seen in and around the area of male genitals in a number of images (Figure 13.12a-b) (Tomei 1997:151 ([cat. 131]). Images of female divinities, especially nude ones, were also assaulted. We find both genitals and breasts intentionally mutilated, as in a statue of Aphrodite from the Baths of Faustina in Miletos (Figure 13.13) (K. A. Neugebauer and T. Wiegand in Gerkan and Krischen 1928:122–123, Plate XXXVI, right).14 In the case of a statue of Aphrodite from Aphrodisias, which appears to copy the lost cult image in the Temple of Aphrodite (Brody 2007:8–11 [no. 1], Plates 1–4), the goddess’ breasts, head, and all of the heads of the many figures on the front part of her e­ pendytes, a religious garment, were intentionally damaged (Figure 13.14) (Erim 1967:285, 292; 1986:58–59) and the figure broken up and used as a fill in a Middle Byzantine foundation wall. I would suggest that Christian mutilation of the hands, feet, and genitals of images was directly inspired by actual contemporary Christian judicial punishments. Although dating intentional Christian damage is often very difficult, most appears to have taken place between the fourth and sixth centuries, when polytheism, which continued

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figure 13.12a Statue of Herakles, Palatine Antiquarium, Rome: Photo Author.

Figure 13.12b Detail of mutilated genitals of statue of Herakles, Palatine Antiquarium, Rome: Photo Author.

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figure 13.13 Statue of Aphrodite from the Faustina Baths at Miletos with mutilated breasts and pubic area, Archaeological Museum, Istanbul: Photo Author.

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Figure 13.14 Mutilated statue of Aphrodite from Aphrodisias, Aphrodisias Archaeological Museum: From Erim 1967: 285.

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to thrive in some form or other within that period, was regarded by the Church as a major problem that had to be totally eradicated. In dealing with the subject of Christian destruction and desecration of images of classical antiquity, we are confronted with a number of issues. For example, although there is a good body of literary and epigraphic evidence for it, we often do not have specific written documents to go with particular monuments or ­artifacts that have come down to us. In some cases, it is difficult to distinguish between destruction by Christians or by others, especially in the case of lands that were later c­ onquered by Muslims, who had their own tradition of iconoclasm. The Muslims, however, appear to have been responsible for far less deliberate damage than the Christians, since by the time that the Muslims arrived Christians had already destroyed a great deal. There were also few polytheists left to be impressed by how powerless their gods were in protecting their own images from destruction. In any investigation of Christian desecration, it is important to distinguish between intentional attacks and accidental or natural damage of images and monuments. In short, there is a need for study of various forms of destruction, an “Archaeology of Destruction”— as it were—as an area of scholarly inquiry, in which the material evidence is examined and problematized, especially in light of any literary and epigraphic records. The process of Christian destruction and forced Christianization did not take place systematically throughout the former Roman Empire; it depended on time, place, and circumstances. There is a need, too, for localized or regional studies, as conditions and motivations of individuals and groups could vary considerably. These aspects of Christian destruction and desecration would, I believe, be fruitful avenues of exploration for scholars, as well as for graduate ­students looking for dissertation topics.

Notes 1. I thank Prof. Barbara Tsakirgis of the Classics Department at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, for bringing this to my attention and sending me a newspaper clipping of the story. I will be dealing with the subject of this paper in greater depth in Christian Destruction and Desecration of Images of Classical Antiquity: A Study in Religious Intolerance and Violence in the Ancient World (in progress). 2. We have seen this in fanatic Christians who have murdered doctors practicing abortion. 3. See also Smallwood in text (59, 88, 203) for gifts made by Sosius and Agrippa to the Jewish god. 4. I thank Konstantinos Zachos for bringing this particular painting to my attention. 5. Of course, in neo-polytheistic literature, which has little circulation, this topic is discussed. See, e.g., the works by V. L. Rassias in modern Greek, one of the most notable of which, ¢ ’Ez ’Edajoz Ferein .., was published in a second edition in 2000. 6. Based on personal observation at the museum before the renovation of the museum for the Olympics in 2004. 7. I thank Prof. Stephen Miller of the Department of Classics at the University of California at Berkeley for discussing with me the findings of the geologists who examined the temple and its columns.

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8. In protesting this flagrant example of censorship, Costa-Gavras demanded that his name be removed from the credits of the film. I thank Dr. Stefanie Kennell, Athens, for bringing this film and its controversy to my attention. 9. The injunction was filed by the Greek Helsinki Monitor, a nongovernmental rights organization. 10. This information was conveyed to me in an interview in April 2007 that I conducted with a member of one of the neo-polytheistic groups in Athens. He indicated that one of their ­members had his bookstore torched by intolerant Christians. 11. When I spoke with Professor Konstantinos Zachos in 2007 about the destruction of the Augustan Victory Monument at Nikopolis, he concurred that the Christians were probably responsible. 12. British School inv. no. S28. Although the inscription has been published, there is no study on the figurative relief, other than a basic description by Geoffrey Waywell in Lambert’s entry. I thank Robert K. Pitt, Asst. Director of the British School at Athens, for the reference to Lambert’s work. 13. Supposedly, her arm was acquired from Armenia in the fourteenth century. 14. I thank Troels Myrup Kristensen of the Department of Classical Archaeology at the University of Aarhus for this reference.

References Cited Web site 1: http://www.museum-security.org/01/191.html (Paul Watson), accessed August 26, 2009. Web site 2: http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:ceSM-dRyqW8J:www.atimes.com/atimes/South_ Asia/IL20Df02.html+Maulana+Fazlullah+Gandhara+Buddha+of+Jehanabad+Swat+Valley& cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us (Caroline Watson), accessed August 26, 2009. Web site 3: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/07/25/ap/europe/main5188666.shtml, accessed July 30, 2009. Web site 4:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rFgq7MsRe8&NR=1, accessed August 26, 2009. Web site 5: http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_politics_2_05/08/2009_109560, accessed August 26, 2009. Web site 6: http://www.elginism.com/20060505/430, accessed August 26, 2009. Web site 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kYd_ccTBrA, accessed August 26, 2009. Web site 8: http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:_qFWtO0vYF8J:www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2007/ 90178.htm+religious+freedom+in+greece&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us, accessed August 26, 2009. Besançon, Alain 2000 The Forbidden Image: An Intellectual History of Iconoclasm. Translated by J. M. Todd. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Bremmer, Jan N. (editor) 1996 The Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla. Peeters Publishers, Leuven. Brody, Lisa R. 2007 The Aphrodite of Aphrodisias. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz. Brommer, Frank 1979 The Sculptures of the Parthenon. Thames and Hudson, London. Bryer, Anthony, and Judith Herrin (editors) 1977 Iconoclasm. University of Birmingham, Birmingham. Cameron, Averil, and Judith Herrin (editors) 1984 Constantinople in the Early Eighth Century: The Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai: Introduction, Translation and Commentary. E. J. Brill, Leiden. Camp, John M. 1989 The Philosophical Schools of Roman Athens. In The Greek Renaissance in the Roman Empire: Papers from the Tenth British Museum Classical Colloquium (Bulletin of

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the Institute of Classical Studies Supplement 55), edited by Susan Walker and Averil Cameron, pp. 50–55. Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, London. Chuvin, Pierre 1990 A Chronicle of the Last Pagans. Translated by B. A. Archer. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Delivorrias, Angelos 1991 Interpretatio Christiana. In Euphrosynon: apheroma ston Manole Chatzedake I:107–123. Athens. Despinis, George 1970 Discovery of the Scattered Fragments and Recognition of the Type of ˜ n 3:403–413. Agorakritosí Statue of Nemesis. ’Arcaiologika ’Analekta e’ x ’Aqhnw Ehrhardt, W. 1997 Versuch einer Deutung des Kultbildes der Nemesis von Rhamnus. Antike Kunst 40:29–39. Erim, Kenan T. 1967 Ancient Aphrodisias and Its Marble Treasures. National Geographic 132(2):280–294. Erim, Kenan T. 1986 Aphrodisias: City of Venus Aphrodite. Facts on File Publications, New York. Faris, Nabih Amin 1952 The Book of Idols, Being a Translation from the Arabic of the Kitab al-Asnam by Hisham ibn al-Kalbi. Princeton University Press, Princeton. Finkelstein, I., and N. A. Silberman 2001 The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. The Free Press, New York. Flood, Finbarr Barry 2002 Between Cult and Culture: Bamiyan, Islamic Iconoclasm, and the Museum. The Art Bulletin 84:641–659. Frankfurter, David 1998 Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance. Princeton University Press, Princeton. Frankfurter, David 2000 “Things Unbefitting Christians”: Violence and Christianization in FifthCentury Panopolis. Journal of Early Christian Studies 8(2):273–295. Freedberg, David 1989 The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Fregosi, Paul 1998 Jihad in the West: Muslim Conquests from the 7th to 21st Centuries. Prometheus Books, Amherst New York. Gaddis, Michael 2005 There is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire. University of California Press, Berkeley. Gerkan, Armin von, and Fritz Krischen 1928 Thermen und Palaestren (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin: Milet, Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen und Untersuchungen seit dem Jahre 1899, I.9). DeGruyter, Berlin. Gero, Stephan 1973 Byzantine Iconoclasm during the Reign of Leo III. Secrétariat du Corpus SCO, Louvain. Gero, Stephan 1978 Byzantine Iconoclasm during the Reign of Constantine V. Secrétariat du Corpus SCO, Louvain. Grabar, André 1957 L’Iconoclasme byzantin. Collège de France. Paris. Hopkins, Keith 1999 A World Full of God: The Strange Triumph of Christianity. The Free Press, New York. Johnson, Scott Fitzgerald 2006 The Life and Miracles of Thekla: A Literary Study. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Kaltsas, Nikolaos 2002 Sculpture in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Translated by D. Hardy. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Lambert, S. D. 2000 The Greek Inscriptions on Stone in the Collection of the British School at Athens. Annual of the British School at Athens 95:485–516.

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MacMullen, Ramsey 1990 Changes in the Roman Empire: Essays in the Ordinary. Princeton University Press, Princeton. Manhart, Christian 2001 The Afghan Cultural Heritage Crisis: UNESCO’s Response to the Destruction of Statues in Afghanistan. American Journal of Archaeology 105:387–388. Pappe, Ilan 2007 The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. One World Publications, Oxford. Peters, Francis Edwards 1994 Muhammad and the Origins of Islam. State University of New York Press, Albany. Pollini, John 2007 Christian Destruction and Mutilation of the Parthenon. Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung 122:207–228. Pollini, John 2008 The Imperial Cult in the East: Images of Power and the Power of Intolerance. In The Sculptural Environment of the Roman Near East: Reflections on Culture, Ideology, and Power (Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Culture and Religion), edited by E. A. Friedland, S. C. Herbert, and Y. Z. Eliav, pp. 165–196. Peeters, Leuven. ¢ Rassias, Vlassis L. 2002 ’Ez ’Edajoz Ferein .. Anichti Poli Edition, Athens. Riccardi, Lee Ann 1998 The Mutilation of the Bronze Portrait of a Severan Empress from Sparta: “Damnatio Memoriae” or Christian Iconoclasm? Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung 113:259–269. Routledge, Steven H. 2007 The Roman Destruction of Sacred Sites. Historia 56:179–195. Rumscheid, Jutta 2000 Kranz und Krone. Insignien Siegespreisen. Wasmuth, Tübingen. Sauer, Eberhard 2003 The Archaeology of Religious Hatred in the Roman and Early Medieval World. Tempus, Charleston, South Carolina. Ševcˇenko, Nancy P. 1983 The Life of Saint Nicholas in Byzantine Art. Bottega d’Erasmo, Turin. Ševcˇenko, Ihor, and Nancy P. Ševcˇenko 1984 The Life of Saint Nicholas of Sion, trans. from the Greek. Hellenic College Press, Brookline, Massachusetts. Smallwood, E. Mary 1981 The Jews under Roman Rule from Pompey to Diocletian: A Study in Political Relations. E. J. Brill, Leiden. Stannard, David E. 1992 American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World. Oxford University Press, New York. Stark, Rodney 1996 The Rise of Early Christianity. Princeton University Press, Princeton. Stein, Dietrich 1980 Der Beginn des byzantinischen Bilderstreits und seine Entwicklung bis in die 40er Jahre des 8. Jahrhunderts. Ars Una, Munich. Tomei, M. Antonietta 1997 Museo Palatino. Mondadori Electra, Milan. Trombley, Frank R. 2001 Hellenic Religion and Christianization C. 370–529, vols. I–II, 2nd ed. E. J. Brill, Leiden. Vicens, Francisco 1970 Catedral de Tarragona. Ediciones Poligrafa, Barcelona. Wilken, Robert L. 1984 The Christians as the Romans Saw Them. Yale University Press, New Haven. Zachos, Konstantinos L. 2003. The Tropaeum of the Sea-Battle of Actium at Nikopolis: Interim Report. Journal of Roman Archaeology 16:65–92. ¢ ¢ Zachos, Konstantinos L. 2007 Ta glupt a¢ tou bwmou¢ sto Mnhmeio tou Oktabianou¢ ¢ ¢ prwth ¢ ¢ Augo ustou sth Nikópolh. Mia proseggish. In Nikopoliς B’ Praktika′ tou ′ ′ ′ Deute rou ­Sumposiou gia th Nikopolh (11–15 Septembri′ ou) I–II (2002), edited by Konstantinos L. Zachos, pp.411–434. Aktio Nikopolis Foundation, Preveza. Zimmerman, Odo John 1959 Saint Gregory the Great: Dialogues (translation). Catholic University Press, Washington, D.C.

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section IV

Epilogue

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Epilogue

Keith F. Otterbein

I

have wondered why I have been asked to give some remarks. Maybe it is because I am old, maybe because I just published a book on war, titled The Anthropology of War. These remarks, and the following four paragraphs, were “Opening Remarks” for the conference. What follows these paragraphs is a partial survey of European archaeology over the past 60 years. Much thinking in European prehistory can be treated as five swinging pendulums. I doubt whether I was asked to give some remarks because I studied archaeology before any of the contributors did (I think). My first course in anthropology, Spring 1955, was Old World Archaeology. Two years later I attended archaeological field school, Summer 1957, at Point of Pines, Arizona. However, I eventually became a social and cultural anthropologist. I took up the study of warfare in 1961, and have been writing about warfare and related topics ever since. The topics include homicide, political assassination, feuding, dueling, capital punishment, human sacrifice, and genocide. However, my book How War Began (2004) deals with archaeological material from the earliest times and also focuses upon pristine or primary states. I argue for the existence of two paths to war. The first path arises out of early hunting/gathering violence, the second out of primary state formation. I was asked to provide “remarks highlighting the history of the study of violence and warfare at the University at Buffalo.” Although I have been at the University at Buffalo since 1966, I presume the request had nothing to do with the upheaval that took place here in the spring of 1970. It included tear gas and sit-ins. My remarks will focus upon the personnel of the Anthropology Department and their contributions to this subject. When I was hired in 1966, I had already published on ­Iroquois and Zulu warfare (1993:1–32) and had conducted a cross-cultural study of feuding, with my wife, Charlotte, a psychologist (1965). Raoul Naroll was soon hired and was the author of a study on deterrence in history (Naroll et al. 1974). Also hired 27 1

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was Fred ­Gearing, an expert on Cherokee warfare (e.g., Gearing 1962). And a few years after that Robert Dentan, the ethnographer of the Semai, joined the department. The Semai are famous for nonviolence, a topic that Bob has written about from 1968 to the present (e.g., 1979, 1992, 2004). Bob and I, in the last semester before we retired, taught combined senior seminars. Bob’s usual focus was on peace, mine on war. We brought our students to a large classroom. Although my students were outnumbered, they won. As you know, aggression and violence pays off. Now two new faculty members have replaced us. My replacement, Debra Reed-Danahy, focuses on refugees (e.g., Reed-Danahy and Brettell 2008) and Bob’s replacement, Vasiliki Neofotistos, focuses on the effects of war on populations and teaches a course on peace and war (e.g., Neofotistos 2004). Tina Thurston, who preceded the hiring of these women, has focused upon Early Medieval political systems in Denmark (such as 2001, 2007). Her results suggest that aggression can pay off in political autonomy. New faculty member Peter Biehl focuses on archaeological evidence for war. Since the 1960s my approach has been to examine warfare in different contexts and to attempt to explain war wherever it occurs. The frequency of wars has been of less ­concern to me. However, within both archaeology and cultural anthropology the question of f­ requency has assumed great importance. Believers in a low frequency have been ridiculed by some archaeologists for believing in the Myth of the Peaceful Savage. I have contended that these archaeologists have created another myth, The Myth of the Warlike Savage. In one case, the position is so extreme that, whether there is evidence for war or not, there have been constant battles for two million years (LeBlanc 2003). On the other hand, there is a cultural anthropologist who contends that if he cannot find evidence for war in a site report, that culture did not have war (Ferguson 2006). He does not realize that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” My belief is that “as archaeologists come to inherit the earth, I believe more evidence will be found” (Otterbein 2004:67). This volume on the subject suggests that this is happening. Recall from my remarks above that I began the study of European archaeology in 1955. However, I am not an insider, in spite of the fact that my undergraduate major education at Penn State was in archaeology and anthropology, with my advisor being Frederick Matson, a ceramic specialist. Having been involved with the field for more than 55 years, I have noticed pendulums swinging. I learned about several areas, then, a few years after, when I took another look I found thinking had changed. The pendulum(s) was in a different position. I will examine five “trends” I have observed over a half-century. I hesitate to speak of trends because I see a swinging pendulum. Thinking has not been a linear progression, but has swung from one position to another, and returned. I begin with the sapiens that lived in Europe and end with a discussion of state formation.

First In the 1950s, Neanderthals and Homo sapiens were viewed as separate species that were capable of interbreeding. Apparently there was no evidence for this, but some of the fossil finds from the Near East where Neanderthals and Homo sapiens were in contact yielded

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finds that anatomically appeared to show features of both. I recall, while at the U ­ niversity of ­Pennsylvania in the late 1950s, that the physical anthropologist Carlton S. Coon, my instructor for the course on Africa, believed that he saw Neanderthal genes in some ­European populations. In The Origin of Races, Coon makes comparisons in the section on Neanderthals to modern Europeans (1967:519–577). Specifically, he states: There is no valid anthropological or biological reason for some of the western Neanderthals not to have been absorbed into the immigrant populations. At least in these southern regions some Neanderthal genes must have been taken into the Upper Paleolithic pool. (1967:547)

Since then I have met men, often at the gym, whom I have called Neanderthals. Nearly a decade later, Coon subscribed to the same position (1969/1971:41–42): Some of the eastern Neanderthals, particularly those living in Palestine, look much more modern than the others, and it now seems probable that modern man, as he appeared in Europe at the end of the Neanderthal regime, was descended from those very near easterners or from others like them. It also now appears that, in view of recent discoveries, the western Neanderthals did not become utterly extinct, but were absorbed by newly established populations of hunters, particularly in Spain and Italy. Although the Neanderthal mystery has not been completely solved, it is on the way to solution.

As the 1960s moved into the 1970s, I began to see books on fossil man that described Homo sapiens neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens sapiens as being similar. The two groups were treated as subspecies. Presumably, the belief continued that these two populations could interbreed and produce viable offspring, hence they were subspecies. The trend continued through the 1980s. A highly illustrated book intended for readers of all ages describes these early humans as subspecies. “Neanderthals were very similar to people today, and if they were dressed in modern clothes, they would not attract any attention” (Merriman 1989:18). What kept them separate apparently was the glaciation of Europe. The Neanderthals were in the shrinking glacier regions and Homo sapiens in the ever-expanding moderate climate (Finlayson 2004, 2009). When I took another look in the late 1990s, they were separate species that did not interbreed (Otterbein 2004:57–58). However, by the time I completed my book on the origins of war, evidence was appearing that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens might not be separate species. Physical anthropologist Alan Mann has examined the dentition of the two populations and noticed striking similarities in the patterns of tooth enamel (2000). Archaeologist G. A. Clark saw continuity in changes in tool technology over a long period of time within the Mousterian (Clark 2002; Otterbein 2004:221). On May 7, 2010, it was reported in Science that Svantae Pa˘a˘bo of the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, with DNA analysis had discovered that there was a flow of genes from Neanderthals to modern humans, perhaps 1 to 4 percent, and the interbreeding took place in the Middle East. This finding came from examination of the DNA of three modern people (one French, one Han Chinese, and one Polynesian). “They also compared the Neanderthal sequence to two African individuals (one Yoruba and one San) and found no indication they had inherited genes from Neanderthals” (Zorich 2011:28). I wonder if Neanderthal females were raped or seized as mates. I have started to look at myself in the mirror again. Thus, the pendulum swung from separate species that might have been able to interbreed, to separate subspecies, to separate species that did not interbreed, to separate species that interbred on occasion.

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This same infatuation with the interbreeding of different species is reflected in novels. When the pendulum started to move, a novel appeared that had a Homo sapiens mating with a chimpanzee (The Murder of the Missing Link, by Vercors 1955) and today a Homo sapiens mating with a bonobo (Lucy, by Gonzales 2010). Popular literature seems to ride on the same pendulum. Finally, mention should be made of the Earth’s Children series, by Jean M. Auel, novels that consider interbreeding between species possible.

Second I recall that in third grade, mid-1940s, I read small books on European cavemen and lake dwellers that were available to those of us who had finished our math assignment early. Vividly pictured cavemen—I do not know if they were supposed to be Neanderthals—were carrying heavy thrusting and throwing spears. The hunters were very close to the Wooly Mammoths and had scored several hits. This was a classic scene of Man the Hunter “bringing home the bacon” to his mate and children. The next drawing was likely to be a homey campfire scene. Wounded hunters and burials were not depicted. (In a third grade play I was a Plains Indian chief. See my account, 2004:xi, 227, and photograph of me with my favorite weapon, the bow and arrow, xii.) This view of early man persisted until I went to college. In popular books published by Time (magazine) it continued. Big-game hunters fought mammoths in hand-to-hand combat. The cavemen, referred to as Neanderthals, had thrusting spears, not throwing spears or atlatls, and the mammoths had long tusks (Canby 1961:24–25). The hunters look like trolls. The Homo sapiens (Cro-Magnon), on the other hand, look Nordic with long yellow hair. They are depicted driving wild horses off a cliff (Canby 1961:26–27). The hunters carry, but do not use, lightweight throwing spears. In the 1960s and 1970s Man the Hunter went into eclipse, to be replaced by Man the Scavenger. The mammoths died of old age or became crippled by fighting with each other. The brave cavemen cut up the cadavers and carried the large cuts of meat home. We will never know if they bragged about their hunting skills or told their mates the truth. Large piles of bones have been found that have been used as evidence for this interpretation. Another conjecture is that the mammoth bones were found meatless and brought home to be used as building material. Hunters and gatherers in the last 40 years have also come to be seen as gatherers and scavengers who relied little upon hunting. The females of the groups also came to be seen as contributing more food or calories than the males. In the 1990s when Neanderthals and Homo sapiens were viewed as separate species, ­different hunting practices were ascribed to them. The Neanderthals were considered clumsy brutes who hunted small game, such as rabbits, with clubs (Finlayson 2009:150–151). In their rugged terrain they often fell and injured themselves. However, hundreds of ­thousands years earlier the Neanderthals’ ancestors carried thrusting spears. The spears became weight forward javelins that could be thrown with lethal force. Evidence of such javelins is known from Germany and dates to c. 400,000 years ago (Otterbein 2004:53–54; Thieme 1999). These javelins were used to kill wild horses. Their designers were perhaps archaic Homo ­sapiens. (Peter Biehl informs me that replicas of these javelins have been made and, where

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used, demonstrated great lethality.) Man the Hunter had returned. About 350,000 years later the Cro-Magnons, who were anatomically modern Homo sapiens, were equipped with spear throwers or atlatls, probably developed in north Africa. They had much greater ­throwing distance than the previous throwing spears (Otterbein 2004:56–57, 63–68). As the climate became warmer and the glaciers retreated, the Neanderthals lost their habitat and became extinct (or were they assimilated by Homo sapiens groups?). Large animals such as the Wooly Mammoth declined in number while the pursuing Homo sapiens and their spear throwers hastened their extinction. This also appears to have happened in North America. Hunters, who had crossed the Bering Straits, developed Clovis spear point technology perhaps on the southern plains. Large game animals rapidly went extinct. Thus, the pendulum swung from big-game hunters who killed Wooly Mammoths at close range, to hunters who were largely scavengers who searched for dead and dying animals, to hunters with sophisticated weapons who hunted to extinction many large mammals. (Nineteenthcentury whaling of sperm and right whales followed the same pattern, first off the western coast of Europe, then the east coast of North America, and finally the Pacific Ocean. Even the largest mammals that ever lived fell to their spears or harpoons.)

Third From the 1940s through to the 1960s, aggression became a major social and psychological concept. In a classic formulation by psychologist John Dollard, aggression was seen as the result of frustration (Dollard et al. 1939). By the 1960s aggression was viewed as having a biological basis, usually linked to territoriality. Seemingly, most species from fish (sticklebacks, notably, who attempted to attack red fire trucks passing their tanks) to Homo sapiens were viewed as innately aggressive. An intruder into the animal’s territory triggered an attack (Tinbergen 1969). Primates and hominids defended their territories. In a series of popular books Robert Ardrey laid out the argument. One of his books was titled The Territorial Imperative (1966). However, the most serious presentation of this perspective came from a famous ethologist, Konrad Lorenz, in his On Aggression (1966). The penultimate chapter of his book jumps from rats to humans (1966:236–274). It leaves the reader wondering, if not convinced, if there is a genetic basis for human violence and warfare. The response by anthropologists was quick and almost violent. Articles appeared that argued warfare is not in our genes. Ashley Montagu edited a book, Man and Aggression (1968), that included papers denying a genetic basis for war; it included, for example, Gorer’s paper “Man Has No ‘Killer’ Instinct.” Warfare and other forms of violence, such as dueling and feuding, were seen as the result of culture. The practices were culturally learned, passed on by socialization from one generation to the next. If causality was sought it was usually seen in child-rearing practices, which might range from swaddling to dunking infants in cold stream waters, to various forms of deprivation. These practices were linked to the frustration-aggression hypothesis of Dollard and his associates. During this period I strongly sided with the anthropologists and provided a critique of innate aggression theory, as well as a critique of the frustration-aggression hypothesis (Otterbein 1973:927–930).

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By the late 1970s, genetic explanations of aggression and warfare were back, perhaps because of the influence of sociobiology (Wilson 1975, 1978). E. O. Wilson’s massive work by that title put scientists back on the road to a genetic explanation for war. ­Wilson’s popular book On Human Nature even uses my high frequencies of warfare, as found in cross-­cultural surveys, to support his position. Wilson’s critics had stated that small-scale nonliterate societies did not have war. More recently, evolutionary psychology has taken over from sociobiology (ca.1985). A classic work in this field by Martin Daly and Margo Wilson is titled Homicide (1988). My book review provides a comprehensive, but not harshly critical, summary (Otterbein 1988). Given the high frequency of aggression, violence, killing, feuding, and warfare throughout human history (see next pendulum swing, number four), it is not surprising that genetic theories of warfare have taken hold of the public imagination. I believe that any time I have given a lecture on warfare, even at a church, someone has argued with me that I am wrong and that there is a genetic basis for war. This goes back to 1964, the first semester I taught. An undergraduate biology student told the department chairman that I was incompetent because I taught that human territoriality and its defense was cultural. I offer this example because it shows how ingrained this belief was in biology even in 1964. That war is culturally learned is still my position. I finally enunciated it in my textbook on the anthropology of war (2009:62–64). Only a few small-scale societies have a concept of territoriality and know where their boundaries lie. Adult males will fight, however, to defend their lives and the lives of their mates and children. If a culture does not have the concept of what its territory is, they have no notion of a piece of land that they need to defend. Thus, the pendulum swung from the view that aggression—and hence warfare— had a genetic basis, to the view that aggression and warfare were cultural constructions, to the belief that homicidal aggression is rooted in our biology.

Fourth When I grew up in the 1940s and 1950s I “knew” that Europeans had always fought. There was World War II. The Ancient Greeks had defeated the Persians and the Romans had ­conquered most of the known world. I read Caesar’s Gallic Wars in second-year Latin and also books about Alexander the Great and Hannibal. I drew the battlefield plans of those famous generals. However, I particularly liked the battles of Frederick the Great. I still have the battle plans I drew. The German regiments were green (my favorite color) and the enemy red. In college I learned there was the Beaker culture that migrated w ­ estward across Europe with battle-axes and beakers full of beer. This is an interpretation now q­ uestioned (Guilaine and Zammit 2005:176–180; Thorpe 2006:150–153). I believe that the first scientific paper that I read in Old World Archaeology was by Robert Braidwood, titled something like “Did Man Live by Bread Alone,” on the first evidence for beer brewing (Braidwood 1953). I was surprised to read in Lawrence Keeley’s (1996) War Before Civilization, when it was first published, that he had been unable to get grant money to study fortifications because he said the walls surrounding settlements were for defense. He believed the lack of support was because prehistoric Europe had come to be seen as peaceful by archaeologists in

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the 1980s. Apparently, everything discovered was treated as being a ritual location or object, even weapons. I was surprised to read this because my interests were in North America. I had attended archaeological field school in the Southwest (1957), where warfare had been considered common, and I had written ethnohistory pieces on Iroquois and Huron warfare in the 1960s and 1970s. Keeley says he rewrote his grant proposals without mentioning war and received grant money (1996:vii–x). Other archaeologists seem to have followed Keeley’s lead. Keeley’s book covers some of the major European evidence for warfare as well as much of the ethnographic data on warfare of nonliterate peoples. Hence, he drew upon my quantitative studies of warfare as well as those of others. Recently, we have been treated to a highly detailed book, based primarily on early European warfare, by two Frenchmen (Guillaine and Zammit, 2001, English translation in 2005 by Melanie Hersey). An eight-page appendix provides evidence of arrow-inflicted injuries from the Neolithic Age in France (pp. 241–249). In 2006, a massive edited book appeared, with 34 articles and more than 500 pages devoted to Warfare and Society (Otto et al. 2006). Many of the articles are devoted to early European warfare, including warriors and weapons. This conference volume also manifests the new interest in ancient European warfare. The study of early European warfare is back. Thus, the pendulum swung from the view that prehistoric Europe was characterized by warfare, to the view that there was scant warfare in early times, to the recognition that warfare permeated all aspects of European society. A recent report in Current Anthropology argues that early humans in Spain about 800,000 years ago were cannibals who attacked and killed neighbors (Carbonelli et al. 2010). Using their findings, I argue in the same journal that this is raiding and warfare (Otterbein 2011). This is probably the earliest evidence for warfare in Europe.

Fifth The role of conquest by one polity of another polity in state formation, called the Conquest Theory of the State, had its roots in Ancient Greece and the Medieval Arab world (Ibn Kaldun 1950). Its modern versions arose in the late nineteenth century. In England, one of the great sociologists, Herbert Spencer, in his The Principles of Sociology, volume 2 (1896), described how villages conquered each other, forming two-tier hierarchical polities. When one of these polities conquered another two-tier polity, a three-tier polity was formed. Many archaeologists consider a three-tier polity a state and the two-tier polity a chiefdom. Ludwig Gumplowicz (1899) and Franz Oppenheimer (1914) also addressed state formation, but their theories dealt more with the formation of casts and classes. The Conquest Theory of the State fell out of favor as the twentieth century advanced; what can be referred to as “rival theories” emerged. One approach saw states arising out of confederacies. Fred Gearing’s study of the eighteenth-century Cherokee led him to create what he called the “Mesopotamian Career to Statehood” (1962). Another approach examined internal conflict and the coercive measures that political leaders employed to obtain power. A proponent of this position was Morton Fried (1967). A third approach focused upon the consensus that arose as followers chose leaders who could protect them

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from internal and external threats. Elman Service’s work exemplified this approach (1975). I have stated that these theories “appear to me to fall into one of four categories. A four-cell typology can be constructed from two dimensions: Conflict vs. Cooperation, and Internal (within a polity) vs. External (between polities)” (Otterbein 2004:99).

Theories of How States Arose

Internal External

Conflict

Internal Conflict

Conquest

Cooperation Consensual Confederation

By the 1960s, the Conquest Theory of the State had largely been replaced by other theories. However, by the 1970s, the Conquest Theory had returned. The work that most seems to have resurrected the theory was Robert Carneiro’s “A Theory of the Origin of the State” in Science in 1970 (pp. 733–738). Here, he introduces his circumscription theory (a few of my students have misspelled the word on tests). Two reasons that may account for the classic status of the article are the preeminent position Science plays in the world of science and the catchiness of the word circumscription. The theory is now Conventional ­Wisdom. Nearly every textbook in anthropology or archaeology covers the theory. Yet there are many critics. Henri Claessen, an expert on the early state, provides a critique of Carneiro’s theory in a careful analysis that also contains many cases that refute the theory (Claessen 2006). From my own fieldwork, the warring Higi, two-tier chiefdoms I studied in Northeast ­Nigeria, did not have the ability to conquer each other (1968). Although conquest theories of the state continue to dominate, I see so much research that is unsupportive that I believe the pendulum may have started to swing back. Thus, the pendulum swung from the conquest theory of state formation to three other distinct theories—confederation, internal conflict, and consensual—in the 1960s, then back to the conquest theory. The pendulum appears to have stopped its direction, and may soon swing back. My brief review of the five “trends” is finished. I am sure a diligent scholar could do a long article on each, or even a monograph. I have tried to show a field of research that is in dynamic flux. I do, however, believe that I should offer my opinions as to where the pendulums might stop. A few readers may wonder what are my positions. Remember, I am not a full-fledged archaeologist, nor am I an insider when it comes to European prehistory. I will conclude with a brief statement of where I stand on each trend. First, Neanderthals and Homo sapiens were separate species or subspecies that on occasion interbred. A small amount of Neanderthal DNA became part of the DNA of modern Homo sapiens. The latest DNA sequencing seems convincing. Second, the idea that climatic change—the earth became warmer—and Homo sapiens with the atlatl drove to extinction large game animals such as Wooly Mammoths seems well established. I have accepted the idea in my recent writings. One source that has convinced me is the research of archaeologist George Frison. His book Survival by Hunting (2004),

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and his earlier book Prehistoric Hunters of the High Planes (1978), have convinced me that Upper Paleolithic hunters obtained their subsistence largely by hunting through the use of sophisticated weapons and hunting techniques (Otterbein 2009:70-71). Third, I believe that warfare is not in our genes, but that Homo sapiens have many ­features based on anatomic and neuropsychological traits that facilitate warfare. “The anatomical traits include: binocular vision; the ability to walk and run; and the ability to use shock and projectile weapons. The neuropsychological traits include: the amygdala, the primitive part of the brain that triggers a fight or fear response; an impulse to respond aggressively to challenges; gratification in anticipation of taking revenge; and gratification in killing group members who are cheaters” (Otterbein 2009:52). My approach to the study of war is to delineate the military organization of a polity, ascertain the goal(s) of going to war, and to describe the warriors/soldiers and their weapons and the tactics used (­Otterbein 1970). The above traits, as well as social characteristics that facilitate war, permit the development of the defining features of military organizations and the wars in which they engage (Otterbein 2009:52–64). Recent critiques of sociobiology/evolutionary psychology indicate that those fields may be in decline (Begley 2009). Science writer Sharon Begley believes that Behavioral Ecology is winning. War is not universal. Some peoples never had military organizations and war, while some peoples go for many years without engaging in war. A military organization may or may not be present in these polities. Fourth, the presence of early, prehistoric warfare in Europe now seems so well established that I do not believe that the pendulum could ever swing back to a belief that warfare did not occur and that the military-appearing objects were for ceremonies only. Yet I realize that ceremonial “weapons” are made. Among my numerous collections are several ceremonial brass swords that have very short crude iron blades that I do not believe would even stab anyone. They were made by Fali blacksmiths for the surrounding people, such as the Higi, in Northeast Nigeria (Neher and Neher 2011). Fifth, the Conquest Theory of the State seems to continue to reign. I continue to disagree with it. My own approach to state formation separates primary or pristine states from secondary states. My in-depth review of the four primary states that formed in ­Mesopotamia, North China, Mesoamerica, and Highland Peru indicate that warfare was absent until threetier polities formed. An internal conflict theory explains the rise of such polities. Warfare between three-tier polities is likely to occur. If warfare prevails in a region of hunting/­gathering bands and villages, the state will not arise. Warfare prevents primary state formation. It also prevents the domestication of plants. My research has demonstrated to my satisfaction that agriculture and primary states arose only where warfare was absent (Otterbein 2004, 2011). Secondary states, on the other hand, may arise for various reasons, including warfare.

Acknowledgments I thank Ted Steegmann for many discussions and for suggesting pertinent sources. I thank my wife, Charlotte Swanson Otterbein, for many discussions over the years and for her editing.

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References Ardrey, Robert 1966 The Territorial Imperative. Dell, New York. Begley, Sharon, with Jeneen Interlande 2009 Why Do We Rape, Kill, and Sleep Around? Newsweek June 29, 2009, pp. 52–62. Braidwood, Robert. J. 1953 Symposium: Did Man Once Live by Bread Alone. American ­Anthropologist 55(4):515–526. Canby, Courtandt (editor), and the Editors of Life 1961 The Epic of Man. Time Incorporated, New York. Carbonelli, Eudald, Isabel Cáceres, Marina Lozano, Palmira Saladié, Jordi Rosell, Carlos Lorenzo, Josep Vallverdu˚, Rosa Huguet, Antoni Canals, and José Maria Bermu˚dez de Castro 2010 ­Cultural Cannibalism as a Paleoeconomic System in the European Lower Pleistocene: The Case of Level TD6 of Gran Dolina (Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos, Spain). Current Anthropology 51:539–549. Carneiro, Robert 1970 A Theory of the Origin of the State. Science 169(3947):733–738. Claessen, Henri 2006 War and State Formation: What is the Connection? In Warfare and Society: ­Archaeological and Social Anthropological Perspectives, edited by Ton Otto, Henrik Thrane, and Helle ­Vandkilde, pp. 217–226. Aarhus University Press, Aarhus. Clark, G. A. 2002 Neanderthal Archaeology—Implications for Our Origins. American ­Anthropologist 104:50–67. Coon, Carleton S. 1962/1967 The Origin of Races. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. Coon, Carleton S. 1969/1971 The Story of Man. 3rd ed. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. Daly, Martin, and Margo Wilson 1988 Homicide. Aldine de Gruyter, Hawthorne, New York. Dentan, Robert K. 1979 The Semai: A Nonviolent People of Malaya. Holt, Rinehart and ­Winston, New York. Dentan, Robert K. 1992 The Rise and Maintenance and Destruction of Peaceable Polity. In A ­ ggression and Peacefulness in Human and Other Primates, edited by James Silverberg and J. Patrick Gray, pp. 214–270. Oxford University Press, New York. Dentan, Robert K. 2004 Cautious, Alert, Polite and Elusive: The Semai of Central Peninsular ­Malaysia. In ­Keeping the Peace: Conflict Resolution and Peaceful Societies around the World, edited by Graham Kemp and Douglas Fry, pp. 167–184. Routledge, New York & London. Dollard, John, and others 1939 Frustration and Aggression. Yale University Press, New Haven. Ferguson, R. Brian 2006 Archaeology, Cultural Anthropology and the Origins and Intensifications of War. In The Archaeology of Warfare: Prehistories of Raiding and Conquest, edited by Elizabeth N. Arkush and Mark W. Allen, pp. 469–523. University of Florida Press, Gainesville. Finlayson, Clive 2004 Neanderthals and Modern Humans: An Ecological and Evolutionary Perspective. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Finlayson, Clive 2009 The Humans Who Went Extinct: Why Neanderthals Died Out and We Survived. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Fried, Morton H. 1967 The Evolution of Political Society: An Essay in Political Anthropology. Random House, New York. Frison, George C. 1978 Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains. Academic Press, New York.

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Frison, George C. 2004 Survival by Hunting: Prehistoric Human Predators and Animal Prey. ­University of ­California Press, Berkeley. Gearing, Fred 1962 Priests and Warriors: Social Structures for Cherokee Politics in the 18th Century. Memoir 93, American Anthropological Association. American Anthropologist [new series] 64(5) Part 2. Gonzales, Laurence 2010. Lucy. Knopf, New York. Gorer, Geoffrey 1968 Man Has No “Killer” Instinct. In Man and Aggression, edited by M. F. Ashley Montagu, pp. 27–36. Oxford University Press, New York. Guilaine, Jean, and Jean Zammit 2001 The Origins of War: Violence in Prehistory. Translated by ­Melanie Hersey. Blackwell, Oxford. Gumplowicz, Ludwig 1899 The Outlines of Sociology. American Academy of Political and Social ­Science, Philadelphia. Ibn Khaldun 1950 An Arab Philosophy of History: Selections from the Prolegomena of Ibn Khaldun of Tunis (1332–1406). Translated and arranged by Charles Issawi. John Murray, London. Keeley, Lawrence H. 1996 War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. Oxford ­University Press, New York. LeBlanc, Steven A. 2003 Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage. St. Martin’s, New York. Lorenz, Konrad 1966 On Aggression. Harcourt, Brace, and World, New York. Mann, Alan 2000 The Humanity of Neanderthal. Listening for the Bones to Speak: Interview with Alan Mann. Penn: Arts and Sciences, Spring:4–5, 10. Merriman, Nick 1989 Early Humans. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. Montagu, M. F. Ashley (editor) 1968. Man and Aggression. Oxford University Press, New York. Naroll, Raoul, Vern L. Bullough, and Frada Naroll (editors) 1974 Military Deterrence in History: A Pilot Cross-Historical Survey. State University of New York Press, Albany. Neher, Gerald, and Lois Neher 2011 Life among the Chibuk of Nigeria. Mennonite Press, Newton, Kansas. Neofotistos, Vasiliki 2004 Beyond Stereotypes: Violence and the Porousness of Ethnic Boundaries in the Republic of Macedonia. History and Anthropology 15(1):47–67. Oppenheimer, Franz 1914 [1908] The State: Its History and Development Viewed Sociologically. Bobbs-Merrill, ­Indianapolis. Otterbein, Keith F. 1968 Higi Armed Combat. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 24:195–213. Otterbein, Keith F. 1970 The Evolution of War: A Cross Cultural Study. Human Relations Area Files Press, New Haven. Otterbein, Keith F. 1973 The Anthropology of War. In Handbook of Social and Cultural ­Anthropology, edited by John J. Honigmann, pp. 923–958. Rand McNally, New York. Otterbein, Keith F. 1988 Review: Homicide by Martin Daly and Margo Wilson. American ­Anthropologist 90:995–996. Otterbein, Keith F. 1993 Feuding and Warfare: Selected Works of Keith F. Otterbein. Gordon and Breach, Langhorne, Pennsylvania. Otterbein, Keith F. 2004 How War Began. Texas A & M University Press, College Station.

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282 Epilogue Otterbein, Keith F. 2009 The Anthropology of War. Waveland Press, Long Grove, Illinois. Otterbein, Keith F. 2010. Early Warfare in the Near East. Neo-Lithics 1/10 (Special Topic on ­Conflict and Warfare in the Near Eastern Neolithic):56–58. Otterbein, Keith F. 2011 Warfare and its Relationship to the Origins of Agriculture. Current ­Anthropology 52(2):267–268. Otterbein, Keith F. 2011 The Earliest Evidence for Warfare?: A Comment on Carbonell et al. ­Current ­Anthropology 52(3):439. Otterbein, Keith F., and Charlotte Swanson Otterbein 1965 An Eye For An Eye, A Tooth For A Tooth: A Cross Cultural Study of Feuding. American Anthropologist 67:1470–1482. Otto, Ton, Henrik Thrane, and Helle Vandkilde (editors) 2006 Warfare and Society: Archaeological and Social Anthropological Perspectives. Aarhus University Press, Aarhus. Reed-Danahay, Deborah, and Caroline B. Brettell (editors) 2008 Citizenship, Political Engagement, and Belonging: Immigrants in Europe and the United States. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick and London. Service, Elman R. 1975. Origins of the State and Civilization. Norton, New York. Spencer, Herbert 1896 Principles of Sociology. Vol. 2. Appleton, New York. Thieme, Harmut 1999. Lower Paleolithic Hunting Spears from Germany. Nature 385(6619): 807–810. Thorpe, Nick 2006 Fighting and Feuding in Neolithic and Bronze Age Britain and Ireland. In Warfare and Society: Archaeological and Social Anthropological Perspectives, edited by Ton Otto, Henrik Thrane, and Helle Vandkilde, pp. 141–166. Aarhus University Press, Aarhus. Thurston, Tina L. 2001 Landscapes of power, landscapes of conflict: state formation in the South ­Scandinavian Iron Age. Springer Scientific, New York. Thurston, Tina L. 2007 Rituals of Rebellion: Cultural Narratives and Metadiscourse of Violent Conflict in Iron Age and Medieval Denmark. Journal of Conflict Archaeology 3(1):269–295. Tinbergen, Niko 1969 The Study of Instinct. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Vercors. 1955 The Murder of the Missing Link. Pocket Books, New York. Wilson, Edward O. 1975 Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Wilson, Edward O. 1978 On Human Nature. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Zorich, Zach 2011 Decoding the Neanderthal Genome. Archaeology 64(1):28 (January/February).

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Contributors

Bradley A. Ault, Department of Classics, University at Buffalo The State University of New York, Buffalo, NY 14261, USA Peter F. Biehl, Department of Anthropology, University at Buffalo The State University of New York, Buffalo, NY 14261, USA John Carman, Bloody Meadows Project, Institute of Archaeology & Antiquity, University of ­Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK Michael J. Carter, Department of Classics, Brock University, St Catharines, ON L2S 3A1, Canada Michael L. Galaty, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Millsaps College, Jackson, MS 39210, USA Simon T. James, School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK Eamonn P. Kelly, National Museum of Ireland, Antiquities Department, Dublin 2, Ireland Sarunas Milisauskas, Department of Anthropology, University at Buffalo The State University of New York, Buffalo, NY 14261, USA Keith F. Otterbein, Department of Anthropology, University at Buffalo The State University of New York, Buffalo, NY 14261, USA John Pollini, Department of Art History, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA Anne M. Porter, School of Religion, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA Sarah Ralph, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA

283

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284 Contributors Rebecca C. Redfern, Centre for Human Bioarchaeology, Museum of London, London EC2Y 5HN, UK Rick J Schulting, School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 2PG, UK Helle Vandkilde, Department of Anthropology, Archaeology and Linguistics, Section for Prehistoric Archaeology, Aarhus University, Højbjerg 8270, Denmark Eric R. Varner, Departments of Art History and Classics, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA Mary Voigt, Anthropology Department, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA 23187, USA

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Index

aggression 52, 68-71, 105, 107, 109, 272, 275, 276; cultural: 275; gender: 68-71; innate: 68, 275, 276, 279; political: 108, 272 Alington Avenue, England (site) 78 Altentreptow-Tollensetal, Germany (site) 47, 50, 54 ambush 24, 25 Anatolia 203-205, 220, 222, 223, 226, 227; Celtic 6, 9, 203, 204, 219, 220, 222 see also Galatian; Roman: 208, 217 archer 23, 48 army 172, 173, 175; Iron Age 72; Roman 17, 73, 85, 99, 100, 110, 133, 136, 208, 226 arrowhead 21-23, 26, 43, 44, 48, 49, 53, 76, 274, 277; bone 17; flint 28, 47, 53; stone 17, 29 Arslantepe, Turkey (site) 182, 188, 193, 197, 199 Ascott-under-Wychwood, England (site) 23 Asenkofen, Germany (site) 45 Asparn-Schletz, Austria (site) 22 attack 5, 17, 20, 21, 27, 29, 53, 85, 109, 111, 152, 154, 183, 264, 275, 277; anthropomorphic 121; classical antiquity

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246, 248, 252; coin 124; gravestone 256; inscription 129; portrait 6, 122, 124, 126, 255, 259; religious imagery 242, 244, 259; statue 122, 124, 256 axe 38, 43, 44, 48, 122, 236, 242; battle-axe 26, 31, 43, 48, 276; pick-axe 194, 242; stone 26 battle 23-25, 28, 29, 48, 63, 84, 85, 106, 109, 150, 173, 175, 212, 220, 272, 276; ritual 25 battlefield 17, 41, 47, 54, 84, 170-172, 276; archaeology 119, 170; burial 109; Oudenaarde (site) 172, 173, 175-177; Roman 106, 110, 111 Beaker (culture) 26, 27, 45, 276; burial 26; skeleton 23 Blucˇina, Czech Republic (site) 50, 53 bog: body 8, 9, 225, 232, 233, 237, 238, 239 see also Clonycavan, Ireland and Oldcroghan, Ireland; Iron Age 8, 9, 225, 232-237; object in 238; weapon 232 boundary 100, 102, 236, 237; ethnolinguistic 147; ideological 176; national 169; neighborhood 151; property 148, 149;

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286 Index religion 147; state 16; stone marker 151; territorial 9, 176, 232, 276; tribal 237, 238 bow, prehistory 22-24, 27, 43, 48, 274 Bronze Age 4, 17, 29, 37, 40, 43-45, 47, 49, 52-54; burial 44-46, 53; cemetery 46, 49; Early 27, 29, 31, 42, 48-51, 53, 55; conflict 4, 27, 38, 39; Europe 4, 17, 27, 31, 38, 39, 43, 44, 53; fortified site 17, 28. 37, 43, 49-51, 53; grave 45, 53; hillfort 50; human remains 27; Iberia 28; iconographic images 37, 43, 51, 52, 54; identity 4, 43; Late 27, 28, 42, 44, 48, 49, 51, 53-55, 239; Mesopotamia 182; Middle 27, 28, 48-51, 53, 54; Nordic 38; rock art 51, 52; Scandinavia 37-39, 44, 50-52; settlement 43, 50, 52, 53; skeletal remains 53; skeletal trauma 37, 39, 43, 47, 49, 52, 53; society 17, 39, 52, 54; sword 17, 27, 29, 43, 44, 46, 48, 49, 52, 53; violence 27, 28, 31, 47, 52-54; votive deposits 37, 42, 43, 45-47, 50; warfare 16, 17, 19, 27, 28, 31, 32, 37, 38, 41-49, 51-55; warrior 4, 44-47, 52, 54; weapon 4, 17, 19, 20, 27-29, 31, 37, 39, 43-50, 52, 53 Bruszcaewo, Poland (site) 50 Bullenheimer Berg, Germany (site) 50 burial 183, 274; Albania 149, 150; battlefield 109; Beaker 26; Bronze Age 44-46, 53; communal 26; Corded Ware 26, 29; denial of 8, 130; gender 26, 63, 66, 67, 94, 199; Gordion 209, 218, 219; Iron Age 18, 66, 67, 72, 83-85, 223; mass 53, 72; Mesopotamia 186, 187, 190, 192-199; Neolithic 26; object 46; Phrygian 205; Roman 17, 73, 109, 110, 130, 219; sword 46; warrior 45, 46, 48; weapon 17, 18, 37, 43, 45-49, 52 Caligula 121, 124, 130, 131 cannibalism 224, 277; Celtic 224; North America 72; prehistoric 221; visual 6, 118, 121, 130, 131, 133, 136 Carn Brea, England (site) 17, 21

Index.indd 286

Cassius Dio 111, 123, 129-131 Cat’s Water, England (site) 23 Celtic 223, 234, 239; Anatolia 9, 203, 204, 219, 220, 222 see also Galation; art 99; cannibalism 224; classical description of 220, 221, 228; cultural group 85; Europe 84, 203-205, 219, 222, 224, 226; human remains 204, 224; identity 219, 227; literature 84; warfare 220, 223, 226; warrior 84, 220, 223, 226; weapon 99 cemetery: Bronze Age 46, 49; epipalaeolithic 20 see also Jebel Sahaba, Sudan; gladiator 110 see also Ephesus, Turkey; Iron Age 73, 76, 78, 228; Roman 110 Chalcolithic 22, 26, 28, 29 chief 44, 48, 49, 143, 147, 149, 150, 152, 190, 220, 274 chiefdom 24, 39, 277, 278 Claessen, Henri 278 Clausewitz, Carl von 41 Clonycavan, Ireland (site) 182, 233-237, 239, 240 see also bog, body conflict 6, 16, 22, 24, 25, 30, 32, 43, 71, 84, 99, 118, 144, 151, 169, 170, 173, 174, 176, 177, 277-279; archaeology 7, 118, 119, 169-172, 174-177; band 20, 24; Bronze Age 4, 27, 38, 39; definition of 20; evidence of 20; historic 171, 176; identity 175-177; imagery 27; intergroup 17, 19, 20, 22, 25, 27, 30; Iron Age 63, 64, 73, 78, 83-86, 225; landscape 172, 173; Mesolithic 17, 22; modern 5, 16-18, 102, 103, 170, 171; Neolithic 16, 17, 19-22; prehistoric 170; Roman 108, 109; small-scale society 19, 24; state 172; tribal 20, 24, 73, 84, 85 cooperation 278 conquest 8, 145, 264, 277-279; Gordion 226; preconquest 67, 84; Ottoman 151; Roman 4, 18, 63, 64, 67, 85, 86, 106, 109, 111, 154, 155 Copper Age 44; weapon: 44 Corded Ware (culture) 26, 38, 45, 46; burial 26, 29

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Crickley Hill, England (site) 17, 21 cultural performance 119, 161-164, 166; Greek 6, 158, 164, 166; Roman 6, 106, 158, 161, 162, 164, 166; ritual 161 dagger 29, 43, 48; copper 26; flint 26 Danebury, England (site) 222, 224, 225 Dani, New Guinea (tribe) 23 Darion, Belgium (site) 21 destruction 246, 249, 264; Christian 9, 126, 130, 183, 241, 242, 245, 264 see also iconoclasm; human body representation 183, 184; image 9, 241-246, 251, 255, 260, 264; monument 247-249, 265; portrait 123, 126, 128; religious 122, 124, 242-245, 248, 249, 251; settlement 225; statue 122 Diodorus Siculus 220 Domitian 121, 122, 130, 133, 136 Dorchester-on-Thames, England (site) 27 Dura-Europas, Syria (site) 110; see also warfare, gas Durotriges (tribe) 16, 18, 63, 64, 66, 72, 73, 76, 80, 83, 85, 86 Durrington Walls, England (site) 23 empire 6, 17, 84, 99, 101, 108, 169; Austrian 173; Christian 251, 260; fall of 16; Ottoman 144, 152; Parthian 105, 108; Roman 4, 6, 17, 84, 99, 105, 107, 122, 130, 160, 161, 164, 166, 169, 174, 241, 242, 244, 259, 260, 264; Sasanian 105, 108, 109 entertainment 161, 162; Greek 158; Roman 161 Ephesus, Turkey (site) 110, 123; see also cemetery, gladiator Epipalaeolithic, cemetery 20; see also Jebel Sahaba, Sudan European Studies of Terrain of Conflict (ESTOC) 7, 169, 176, 177 Eulau, Germany (site) 6, 29 Fårdrup, Denmark (site) 47 fear 17, 102-104, 109, 111, 112, 223, 254, 279

Index.indd 287

Index 287 Feizor Nick Cave, England (site) 23 feud 20, 22, 31, 52, 143, 147, 149, 150-152, 271, 275, 276; blood 149; intergroup 25; intertribal 6, 147, 150; intratribal 6 fortification 32, 111; Bronze Age 17, 28, 37, 43, 49-51, 53; church 174; city 205; house 148, 150 see also kulla; Iron Age 99, 144, 153; Neolithic 19, 276; Ottoman 144; Roman 85; town 208, 209 frontier 99, 109; zone 144, 147, 151, 153, 154 Galatian 9, 203-205, 207, 208, 219, 220, 222, 223, 225-228; see also Anatolia, Celtic Gemeinlebarn F, Austria (site) 45 gender 64, 66, 175, 196; aggression 68-71; behavior 68; burial 26, 63, 66, 67, 194, 199; grave 26, 66, 223; identity 26, 40, 42, 100; Iron Age 4, 63, 66, 67, 84-86, 223; material culture 42; role 63, 66, 67, 69, 70; Roman 67; violence 4, 16, 18, 63, 67-72, 83, 84, 86, 100; warfare 17, 27, 41, 84, 85; warrior 4, 17, 19, 26, 27, 31, 40, 42, 45, 46, 84, 85, 222, 223; weapon  45 genocide 5, 40, 41, 107, 243, 271; see also warfare, ethnic Geta 123, 124, 129 gladiator 17, 99, 106, 158, 160-166; cemetery 110; see also Ephesus, Turkey grave 44, 193, 194; Bronze Age 45, 53; gender 26, 66, 223; goods 26, 66, 187, 190, 193, 194, 196; Hellenistic 215, 219, 225; Iron Age 66, 223; Linearbandkeramik 5, 17, 22, 26; mass 5, 17, 22, 29, 52, 53, 110; Neolithic 29; Roman 228, 255; stone 255; sword 46; war 29, 110; warrior 20, 26, 31; weapon 45, 46; Greece 182, 277; ancient religion 249; literature 164, 166, 221 Greek 6, 16, 105; ancient 105, 106, 118, 160, 161, 164-166, 276; Christians 246-249; city 105, 158, 160, 164, 169, 174; cultural performance 6, 158, 164, 166; culture 204, 205, 219, 227, 249; East 118, 160,

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288 Index 164, 166; entertainment 158; gods 106, 249; Hellenistic 105, 106; mythology 242; spectacle 158-161; state 174; world 6, 158, 161 Grunas, Albania (site) 144, 153, 154 Gussage All Saints, England (site) 76, 78 Hagenau, France (site) 45 Hambledon Hill, England (site) 17, 21 Hellenistic 203, 204, 209, 217, 219, 225; Early 204, 215, 227; grave 215, 219, 225; human remains 9, 202, 208, 210-213, 217, 219, 222-225, 227, 228; kingdom 105, 106, 108; Later 203-205, 207- 210, 215, 217, 219, 222, 224, 226-228; religion 249 Herxheim, Germany (site) 182, 183 hillfort: Bronze Age 50; Iron Age 63, 64, 66, 67, 72, 73, 76, 78, 83-86, 99 Hobbes, Thomas 1, 37, 41, 54; Leviathan 40, 41, 54 homicide 20, 52, 271, 276 Houbirg, Germany (site) 50 Hradisko, Czech Republic (site) 85 human body 182, 183; violation of 121, 122, 124 human effigy 130 human remains 232; Bronze Age 27; Celtic 204, 224; head 5, 210, 212, 222, 224, 228; Hellenistic 4, 202, 208, 210-213, 217, 219, 222-225, 227, 228; Iron Age 4, 66, 73-86; Mesolithic 5, 20, 22; Neolithic 5, 6, 19, 23, 26; Roman 85 human skeleton 19, 53, 83, 100 iconoclasm, Christian: 241, 245 see also destruction, Christian; Muslim: 242, 264 identity 18, 30, 46, 84, 162, 187; Bronze Age 4, 43; Celtic 219, 227; conflict 175-177; creation of 169, 176; cultural 107, 162, 164; epipgraphic 126; European 119, 169; family 162; gender 26, 40, 42, 100; group 18, 29, 102, 112, 162; hybrid 131,

Index.indd 288

138; imperial 130, 131, 133, 136, 139; individual 68, 121, 122; national 107; religious 102, 107; Roman 121, 126, 128-131, 133, 164; social 19, 42, 46, 196; violence 3-5, 19, 30, 68, 100, 107, 121, 122, 126; warrior 4, 17, 20, 25, 42-46 ideology 5, 44, 50, 51, 162, 199, 206, 238, 243; boundary 176; religious 158, 160, 161, 165; warrior 19, 25 Illyrians 154 image: cult 124, 130, 244, 251, 260; decapitation of 121, 128, 130; desecration of 9, 124, 241, 264; destruction of 9, 241-246, 251, 255, 260, 264; disfigurement 126, 127, 131; emperor 124, 125, 127, 129, 130, 133, 139; hybrid 131; imperial 121, 139, 259; mutilation 121, 124, 128, 130, 139, 183; reconfigured 6, 130, 131, 133, 136; sacred 241-245, 249, 251, 254, 259, 264; violation 139, 241; violence toward 6, 9, 118, 121, 122, 124, 126, 129, 130, 139 Iron Age: Albania 118, 144, 153, 154; army 72; bog body 8, 9, 225, 232-237; Britain 66, 83, 98, 109; burial 18, 66, 72, 83-85, 223; cemetery 73, 76, 78, 228; conflict 63, 64, 73, 78, 83-86, 225; Dorset 4, 18, 63, 64, 66, 67, 72, 78, 83-85; Early 64; Europe 67, 99, 174, 203, 210, 219, 221-225; fortified site 99, 144, 153; gender 4, 63, 66, 67, 84-86, 223; grave 66, 223; hillfort 63, 64, 66, 67, 72, 73, 76, 78, 83-86, 99; human remains 4, 66, 73-86; Irish 233; landscape 144; Late 63, 64, 66, 67, 72, 73, 76, 83, 84, 86; Middle 63, 66, 72; object 232, 233, 237; ritual 72, 232; oppidum 203, 204; sword 67, 85, 99; violence 4, 9, 18, 64, 72, 73, 83-86, 98, 153; warfare 72, 73, 83-86, 99; warrior 4, 72, 84, 85; weapon 18, 63, 66, 72, 74, 76, 80-85, 236 Jebel Sahaba, Sudan (site): 20; see also Epipalaeolithic cemetery

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Kalefeld, Germany (site) 110 Kalkriese, Germany (site) 17, 110 Keeley, Lawrence 1, 41, 98, 99, 104, 276, 277 Kelly, Raymond 19, 29; see also social substitution Kimmeridge, England (site) 78 kingship 8, 9, 232, 237-239 kinship 8, 9, 24, 45, 149, 195, 196, 198, 225 kispu 195, 198 kulla 148, 149; see also fortification, house Kville, Sweden (site) 52 landscape 3, 50, 64, 73, 119, 144, 205; conflict 172, 173; creation of 172; defended 152; effect of violence on 4, 143, 147; European 118; Iron Age 144; Roman 131; Shala 147; tribal 6, 7, 143 Les Dogues, Spain (site) 23 Little Bighorn, USA (site) 170 Linearbandkeramik (culture) 17, 21, 26, 182; enclosure 22; grave 5, 17, 22, 26 Livy 108, 203, 204, 208, 219 Longchamps, Belgium (site) 21 Lorenz, Konrad 275 macehead 43; antler 26; stone 26 Maiden Castle, England (site) 18, 67, 72, 76, 78, 80, 83-86; see also hillfort, Iron Age Marx, Karl 40 martyr 107, 158-161, 164-166, 259 martyrdom 6, 118, 158-161, 165, 166 Mesolithic: conflict 17, 22; Europe 5, 17, 22; human remains 5, 20, 22; rock art 22; site 22; violence 5, 20; warfare 17; warrior 17, 25; weapon 17 military 42, 50, 55, 69, 99, 102-104, 165, 166, 173-176, 203, 205, 279; history 171, 176; Roman 99, 105, 106, 108-110, 122, 136 Monkodonja, Croatia (site) 50 nationalism:119, 169, 171, 177 Neanderthal 272-275, 278 Neckarsulm, Germany (site) 46, 50

Index.indd 289

Index 289 Neolithic 25, 26, 29; architecture 19, 20; British 23; burial 26; conflict 16, 17, 19-22; Early 5, 21, 23, 26; enclosure 17, 20-22, 25; Europe 4, 5, 19, 20, 24, 25; figurine 183, 184; Final 43-45, 54; fortification 19, 276; France 27, 277; grave 29; human remains 5, 6, 19, 23, 26; iconographic depictions 19, 20, 22; Iberia 27; Late 6, 19, 20, 22, 23, 26, 29; Middle 26; rock art 22; settlement 21, 22, 43; skeletal trauma 4, 5, 17, 19, 20, 22, 26, 27, 30, 53; violence 4, 19, 22, 27; warfare 16, 17, 20, 22, 24, 26, 46, 47, 54; warrior 17, 20, 25; weapon 4, 17, 19, 20, 23, 25, 26, 32, 46, 47, 53 Nero 121, 122, 128-131, 133 Nitra, Slovenia (culture) 31 Non-violent: 4; interactions 54, 101; society 272 Ofnet, Germany (site) 5 Oldcroghan, Ireland (site) 182, 234-240; see also bog body Oleye, Belgium (site) 21 Olszanica, Poland (site) 17 Otomani, Romania (site) 50 Ottomans 144, 149-151; conquest 151; Empire 144, 152; fortification 144 Over-Vindinge, Denmark (site) 53 pacifist 16, 39, 40 Parthian Empire 105, 108 peace 1, 40, 47, 50, 51, 55, 70, 101, 104, 151, 169, 174, 241, 272; pax deorum 259; pax Romana 17, 99, 106, 107, 109, 174; society 17, 37-40, 42, 50, 54, 276 Penywyrlod, Wales (site) 23 Phrygian 204, 205, 225, 244; burial 205; Early 225; Late 225; Middle 206, 209, 225 Plutarch 85, 122, 223 Poulnabrone, Ireland (site) 23 Poundbury Camp, England (site) 78 projectile 17, 20-23, 26, 27, 29, 53, 63, 66, 72, 74-76, 80-85, 279

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290 Index raid 6, 24-26, 29, 42, 52, 53, 73, 84, 106, 143, 147, 150-152, 205, 225, 226, 237, 277; tribal 147 religion 46, 48, 51, 52, 54, 150, 165, 172, 211, 218, 220, 223, 242-244, 249, 251, 259, 260; boundary 147; definition of 188; destruction 122, 124, 242, 243, 245, 248-251; Hellenistic 249; identity 102, 107; ideology 158, 160, 161, 165; violence 7-9, 130, 182, 241, 242, 249, 251, 259 rebellion 39, 259; Boudiccan 84, 111 revenge 19, 24, 25, 29-31, 223, 279 revolt 122; Jewish 106, 111; slave 17 ritual 3, 7, 8, 42, 43, 46, 47, 50-52, 171, 176, 183, 184, 186, 187, 195-199, 204, 211, 213, 217, 238, 240, 244, 277; battle 25; cultural performance 161; deposit 45, 46, 186, 187, 208, 222, 224, 232; dispute 22; funerary 3, 8, 44, 52, 54, 185, 194, 198; Iron Age 72, 232; killing 9, 53, 101, 182, 184, 187, 188, 221, 225, 232, 233; mortuary 185, 186, 192, 193, 195; performance of 192, 196, 197; Roman 130; violence 7-9, 53, 72, 182, 184, 203, 211, 212, 220, 223; warfare 38, 39, 42, 52, 171, 175; weapon 44 Roaix, France (site) 29 Roman 4, 66, 67, 73, 105, 118, 130, 159, 259, 276; Anatolia 208, 217; army 17, 73, 85, 99, 100, 110, 133, 136, 208, 226; battlefield 106, 110, 111; burial 17, 73, 109, 110, 130, 219; cemetery 110; Christianization 241, 242, 259, 260; conflict 108, 109; conquest 4, 18, 63, 64, 67, 85, 86, 106, 109, 111, 154, 155; cultural performance 6, 106, 158, 161, 162, 164, 166; Empire 4, 6, 17, 84, 99, 105, 107, 122, 130, 160, 161, 164, 166, 169, 174, 241, 242, 244, 259, 260, 264; entertainment 161; fortification 85; gender 67; grave 228, 255; human remains 85; identity 121, 164; landscape

Index.indd 290

131; literature 84, 85, 126, 163, 221; military 99, 105, 106, 108-110, 122, 136; pax Romana 17, 99, 106, 107, 109, 174; ritual 130; spectacle 6, 107, 118, 130, 158, 160-162, 164-166; sword 99, 106-109, 122; violence 4, 6, 17, 98, 104-111, 124, 129, 130, 139, 164; warfare 106-109, 111, 174; weapon 17, 85, 106, 108, 109; world 98-100, 104, 105, 108-110 Romanization 6, 161, 166 Rousseau, Jean Jacques 1, 40; see also savage, noble sacrifice 6-9, 133, 159, 182, 183, 185-188, 190, 193, 194, 197, 198, 220, 221; animal 187, 188, 195-197; archaeological recognition of 186, 187; human 9, 72, 182, 183, 188, 193-196, 208, 220, 221, 223, 226, 228, 233, 239, 240, 271 Sãlacea, Romania (site) 50 San Juan Ante Portam Latinam, Spain (site) 29 Sasanian Empire 105, 108, 109 savage 39, 40, 220, 272; noble 1, 40; see also Rousseau, Jean Jacques Shala (tribe) 6, 118, 143-145, 147-151; landscape 147 Shala Valley Project (SVP) 143, 144, 147, 152, 156 Single Grave (culture) 38 skeletal: evidence 6, 17-19, 22, 26, 27, 63, 71, 109, 189; remains 3, 9, 19, 27, 190, 222, 226; trauma 4, 5, 17, 20, 22, 27-29, 31, 37, 39, 43, 47, 52, 53, 63, 71, 74-76, 78, 84, 100 skeleton 22, 23, 29, 32, 53, 64, 71, 73, 75, 80, 81, 84, 190, 193, 210, 212, 215, 232 slingstone 76 Smyrna, Greece (site) 6, 123, 158-160, 165 soldier 45, 98, 100, 102, 111, 124, 130, 171, 173, 175, 279 sovereignty 8, 9, 232, 237; death 238, 239 spear 27, 29, 44, 48, 76, 106, 274, 275; head 43, 44, 49, 53

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spectacle 162; Greek 158-161; Roman 6, 107, 118, 130, 158, 160-162, 164-166; violence 6, 164, 166 Spissky Sprtok, Slovakia (site) 50 state 4, 5, 16, 17, 24, 49, 53, 105, 106, 108, 145, 195, 197, 249, 277; Albanian 144; boundary 16; Communist 145; conflict 172; European 169, 172; formation of 173, 174, 271, 272, 277-279; Israel 243; Montenegrin 151; nation 41, 44, 145, 169, 174; Roman 259, 260; society 2, 38, 42; Venetian 151; violence 4, 5, 104, 107 Stone Age 39 substitution 121, 196, 222, 223, 239; social substitution 19, 29-31; see also Kelly, Raymond Suetonius 17, 111 Sund, Norway (site) 29, 53 sword 16, 43, 45, 76, 106, 111, 163, 220, 279; Bronze Age 17, 27, 29, 43, 44, 46, 48, 49, 52, 53; burial 46; grave 46; Iron Age 67, 85, 99; Roman 99, 106-109, 122 Tacitus 17, 44, 84, 85, 111, 233 Talheim, Germany (site) 5, 6, 17, 22, 26, 29 Tarrant Hinton, England (site) 78 tell: fortified 50 Tell Brak, Syria (site) 196 tomb 44, 45, 133, 189, 190, 192-194, 198, 199; chambered 23, 188; royal 194 Tormarton, England (site) 27 Towton, England (site) 110 tribal 64, 86; boundary 237, 238; conflict 20, 24, 73, 84, 85; ethnographic example 20, 23, 24; feud 6, 147, 150; group 24; landscape 6, 7, 143; raid 147; society 39, 118, 143; sociopolitical system 6, 118, 143, 144, 148, 149, 151, 152, 154; violence 6-9, 143, 154; warfare 6, 83, 86, 147, 226; warrior 152; zone 41, 154, 174 Tulloch of Assery B, Scotland (site) 23 Tumulus Culture 48, 49, 54

Index.indd 291

Index 291 Ur, Iraq (site) 182, 193-195, 197-199 Urnfield (culture) 47-50, 54, 55; cemetery: 46 Valsømagle, Denmark (site) 47 Velim, Czech Republic (site) 53 violation 241, 249; human body 121, 122, 124; image 139, 241; portrait 122 violence 2, 3, 5-7, 17, 26, 32, 42, 63, 68, 71, 80, 98, 99, 101, 102, 104-107, 110-112, 119, 177, 182, 183, 194, 195, 197, 213, 226, 241, 243, 259, 260, 272, 275, 276; absence of 39, 99; Albania 6, 7, 147, 149, 151; archaeological evidence of 1-4, 9, 16-19, 22, 26, 27, 41, 53, 54, 63, 99, 100, 105, 109-111, 139, 153, 174, 190, 195, 217; biological motivation 54; Bronze Age 4, 27, 28, 31, 47, 52-54; collective 6, 18, 41, 68, 84, 86; definition of 2, 3, 7, 68, 98, 100, 103, 104; domestic 18, 22, 68, 69, 71, 101; effects of 1, 3, 4, 6, 143, 147; endemic 67, 101, 143; gender 4, 16, 18, 63, 67-72, 83, 84, 86, 100; identification of 3, 4, 70, 72, 82, 170; identity 3-5, 19, 30, 68, 100, 107, 121, 122, 126; toward image 9, 118, 121, 122, 124, 126, 129, 130, 139; impulsive 102; instrumental 102-104, 109; intergroup 152; interpersonal 4, 18-20, 22, 27, 52, 68, 70, 71, 75, 76, 81, 83, 84, 203, 204, 208, 217; intertribal 143, 147; intragroup 153; Iron Age 4, 9, 18, 64, 72, 73, 83-86, 98, 153; martial 16, 98, 100, 105-109, 111, 112; Mesolithic 5, 20; Neolithic 4, 19, 22, 27; performance of 6, 105, 118, 124, 190; political 3-6, 38, 121, 139; prehistoric 1, 17, 19, 20, 38, 39, 41, 271; regulated 149, 152; religious 7-9, 130, 182, 241, 242, 249, 251, 259; ritual 7-9, 53, 72, 182, 184, 203, 211, 212, 220, 223; Roman 4, 6, 17, 98, 104-111, 124, 129, 130, 139, 164; sanctified 3, 7, 8, 182, 184; sanctioned 4, 5; spectacle 6, 164, 166; state 4, 5, 104,

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292 Index 107; threatened 1, 103; tribal 6-9, 143, 154; unsanctioned 105 violent imagining 24 Volders, Austria (site) 49 warfare 1-3, 16-18, 37-43, 45, 49, 54, 84, 98, 100, 110, 111, 119, 143, 147, 151, 170, 172, 174, 176, 177, 246, 277, 279; archaeological evidence of 2, 16, 17, 22, 50, 53, 54, 72, 109, 170, 272, 277; biological motivation 54, 275, 276; Bronze Age 4, 16, 17, 19, 27, 28, 31, 32, 37, 38, 41-49, 51-55; denial of 16, 17, 37, 54; categorization of 42; causes of 16, 17, 29, 39, 43, 46, 54, 172; Celtic 220, 223, 226; Cherokee 272; Civil 106, 172; culturally acquired 276, 279; definition of 2, 20, 21, 47, 99, 100, 102; endemic 108; ethnic 5, 41 see also genocide; ethnographic accounts of 20, 24, 39, 41, 49, 70, 271, 272, 276-278; European 169, 170, 175, 277; expansionist 106; gas 110 see also Dura-Europas, Syria; gender 17, 27, 41, 84, 85; grave 29, 110; historic 171; Huron 277; iconographic depictions of 25, 51, 52; imperialism 17; intertribal 83, 86, 143, 226; intratribal 143; Iron Age 72, 73, 83-86, 99; Iroquois 271, 277; memorial 106; Mesolithic 17; modern 37, 40, 41, 102, 107, 170; Neolithic 16, 17, 20, 22, 24, 26, 46, 47, 54; origins of 20, 30, 170, 271, 273; prehistoric 17, 20, 37, 38, 40, 41, 43, 44, 54, 104, 170, 277, 279; pre-state society 16, 17, 37, 42, 52; prisoners of 164, 220, 223, 225; ritual 38, 39, 42, 52, 171, 175; Roman 106-109, 111, 174; small-scale society 24, 25, 31; state formation 16, 173, 174, 279; state society 42; tribal 6, 83, 86, 147, 226; tribal zone 41; trophy 223; Zulu 271

Index.indd 292

warrior 19, 20, 26, 29, 37-40, 42-49, 52-55, 98, 100, 150, 152, 153, 222, 223, 277, 279; Bronze Age 4, 44-47, 52, 54; burial 17, 37, 43, 45-49, 52; Celtic 84, 220, 223, 226; elite 4, 19, 40, 44, 48; gender 4, 17, 19, 26, 27, 31, 40, 42, 45, 46, 84, 85, 222, 223; grave 20, 26, 31; iconographic depictions of 51, 52; identity 5, 17, 20, 25, 42-46; ideology 19, 25; Iron Age 4, 72, 84, 85; Mesolithic 17, 25; Neolithic 17, 20, 25; prehistoric 105; society 40, 118, 148, 153, 154; tribal 152; warriorhood 38, 42, 44-46, 49, 51, 54, 55 warship 106 Wassenaar, The Netherlands (site) 29, 53 Wayland’s Smithy, England (site) 23 weapon 2, 17, 23, 25, 27, 29, 31, 39, 43-45, 53, 70, 71, 74-76, 100, 103, 111, 171, 274, 275, 277, 279; bog 232; Bronze Age 4, 17, 19, 20, 27-29, 31, 37, 39, 43-50, 52, 53; burial 17, 18, 37, 43, 45-47, 49, 52, 66; Celtic 99; ceremonial 279; Copper Age 44; formal 20, 26, 27; gender 45; grave 45, 46; iconographic depictions of 20, 26, 52; Iron Age 18, 63, 66, 72, 74, 76, 80-85, 236; Mesolithic 17; Neolithic 4, 17, 19, 20, 23, 25, 26, 32, 46, 47, 53; ritual 44; Roman 17, 85, 106, 108, 109; specialized 4, 19, 20, 26; symbolic 26, 39; technology 17, 26, 37, 43, 49; votive deposits of 17, 37, 42, 43, 46, 47, 50, 52, 54 Weber, Max 4, 40 Weltzin, Germany (site): 28 Whitcombe Farm, England (site) 67, 76, 78 Wilson, Edward O. 276 Wisby, England (site) 110 World War I 16, 170, 172 World War II 16, 38-40, 170, 244, 276

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