Headhunting

One recurrent theme linking many of the practices discussed so far is a concern with the removal, curation and display of the human head. Severed heads and detached crania are a frequent find on hill forts, where they were sometimes apparently displayed above gateways, and their occurrence as fleshed deposits in peat bogs has already been mentioned.

Perhaps the most striking evidence for headhunting in Iron Age Europe occurs in southern France, where a remarkable constellation of evidence comprises human remains, iconographic representations and classical literary sources. This was the area where Poseidonius describes seeing human heads displayed on the entrances to Gaulish houses in the early first century ce, and where we find a remarkable group of stone monuments, borrowing Greek

Ritual Violence and Headhunting in Iron Age Europe sculptural techniques, that focus almost obsessively on the practice of headhunting.

Early stone monuments dating to the mid first millennium bce represent groups of severed heads in a stylised and anonymised form.^[915] There is no indication of the identities of specific individuals or their ethnic affiliation. Neither is there any representation of the victorious headhunter. Instead these appear to be monuments to communal success.

Osteoarchaeological evidence for headhunting in various forms extends far beyond southern France. Indeed, skull remains are found in settlements all across Iron Age Europe. As well as the hill forts, settlements, peat bogs and rivers described earlier in this chapter, they are also found at a range of other natural places. At the Trou de Han cave system, in Belgium, for example, among other finds of human crania and fine bronze metalwork, a group of seven mandibles with cut marks characteristic of decapitation were found in a deliberate deposit below a hearth.^[916] Radiocarbon dates ranging from around 200 bce to 100 ce show that these bones had been curated for some time before their final deposition. A few centuries later at least six people were

Figure 21.i Reconstruction of one of the third-century bce warrior statues from Entremont, Provence.

decapitated within the Sculptor's Cave, in north-eastern Scotland, a site which had been used as a place for excarnation of the dead during the Late Bronze Age.^[917]

Conclusion

Archaeological evidence suggests that ritualised violence was core to Iron Age cosmologies. Violence against individuals was instrumental in securing benefits for the group, whether that be through the taking and curating of heads from enemy communities, or the scapegoating of marginal individuals who might be killed and staked down in peat bogs, buried under hill fort ramparts or in house foundations. Violence involving larger corporate groups was also endemic and had direct social, economic and political impacts for Iron Age societies across the Continent.

The celebration and commemoration of violence is a major feature of Iron Age archaeology, whether it be in the elaboration beyond functional neces­sity of hill fort defences, or the transformation of sword scabbards and shields into entrancing artworks. As in many non-state societies, the capacity to defend one's community, and potentially to attack others, was highly valued and became a core component of individual and group identities. In the absence of overarching authorities, competition over land and resources would have led inevitably to inter-communal conflict and cycles of tit-for- tat violence. In such societies it becomes important to engage in displays of strength, both to deter potential enemies and to cement intra-group feelings of security and autonomy. The embellishment of personal weaponry in particular hints at what can be called ‘cultures of honour', ‘where the ability to deal out violence in response to perceived slights, or in defence of one's economic interests, was essential to success in societies lacking any wider institutions capable of regulating conflict'.^[918]

A further persistent and pervasive theme in the archaeology of Iron Age violence is the desire to prevent certain individuals from undergoing norma­tive funerary rites, whether by removing their heads from their bodies, or by placing their bodies in the suspended animation of the peat bog.

Strategies of dehumanisation and objectification of the victim appear also frequently to have been employed to make the process of killing more palatable. This is most obvious with bog bodies, where victims could be stripped naked, have their heads shaved and be subjected to protracted torture before their eventual killing, often by multiple individuals. Through such violent performances groups could achieve catharsis, reassert their moral rectitude within their own cosmological understanding of the world and reinforce group solidarity through common action against marginal individuals.