LBK Burials and Examples of Early Neolithic Massacres and Mass Killings

The LBK was one of the major cultural phenomena of Neolithic Europe and is dated to c. 5500-4900 bce.^[589] It ultimately stretched almost from the Black Sea to the French Atlantic coast and was mostly the result of a large-scale immigration of farmers descended from Near Eastern populations.^[590] These people first brought the settled farming lifestyle to central Europe and thereby drastically changed the overall landscape.

The entirety of the currently known LBK burial sites shows that individual burial as inhumation or cremation in dedicated cemeteries or within settlements was commonly practised.^[591] Without going into too much detail, it can be stated that most recognisable graves of the LBK are characterised by evident care for the individual deceased and that bodies have been arranged and oriented according to regionally differing patterns. Overall, the typical LBK inhumation can be described as a left-crouched body oriented roughly east-west and accompanied by grave goods more often than not. Nevertheless, a large variety existed in the funerary rites of the LBK, and it can be safely assumed that a large part of it is actually invisible to archaeology because of limited preservation. This leaves much room for speculation about how representative the known graves actually are; a sizeable propor­tion of the overall LBK populace may not have been buried in a way still detectable by archaeology today. Nevertheless, numerous studies have already examined the available burials of the LBK from various viewpoints, and especially the sites showing evidence of mass violence in human skeletal remains, which are the focus here, and those showing various types of non­standard deposition of human bodies and body parts have seen considerable attention.

Because of this rich and readily available literature already in existence, I will only outline the most important characteristics of each of the mass violence sites listed below. More in-depth information and discussion on each site can be found in the respective original publications, which are referenced below.

Talheim: The Archetypal Massacre Mass Grave?

The first LBK mass grave was discovered in 1983 at Talheim in Baden- Württemberg, Germany, and has since been aptly described as a ‘pivotal find'.^[592] The detailed analysis of the human skeletal remains revealed at least thirty-four mostly articulated individuals, sixteen of which were biological sub-adults (47 per cent). Of the eighteen adults (53 per cent), nine were determined as male and seven as female, while two could not be reliably sexed. The bodies were deposited simultaneously in the mass grave pit in a disorganised way, which indicates a more or less simultaneous death for all the individuals. This is corroborated by numerous perimortem injuries, most of which consist of blunt force cranial trauma that was predominantly received from behind. Roughly 56 per cent of the skeletons display such perimortem injuries. Even if not all individuals show unequivocal signs of lethal violence, it is highly likely that those without any visible lesions are violence victims as well. Grave goods were not recovered and it appears that the mass grave was located near an LBK settlement and was not part of a cemetery. It is generally assumed that most, if not all, of the members of this community were killed during the massacre, as the demographic profile of the sample is compatible with that of a living population. Additionally, there is evidence that at least some of the individuals found in the mass grave were probably biologically related, which is further support for the view that a settled LBK community was likely completely destroyed at Talheim.^[593] Since its original publication in 1987, the Talheim mass grave has become the most often cited and widely known Neolithic massacre site from central Europe.

Asparn-Schletz: The Scattered Remains of the Massacred?

Since 1983 the skeletal remains of several dozen partly disarticulated indivi­duals have been discovered within the outer trenches of an enclosed LBK settlement at Asparn-Schletz, in Lower Austria. Several publications have so far provided data on sixty-seven individuals,^[594] but these represent only a part of the human remains from this site. The analyses revealed twenty-six (38 per cent) sub-adults and forty-one (62 per cent) adults, twenty-six of the latter were determined as male, thirteen as female and one could not be reliably sexed. Noteworthy is the obvious under-representation of younger women so far, as only five adult female individuals below age 40 were found in the sample as opposed to seventeen men of the same age range. This discrepancy is usually interpreted as an indicator for a targeted capture of women of reproductive age. In stark contrast to the closely packed mass grave at Talheim, the skeletal remains at Asparn were found scattered over a large area in the trench and showed clear signs of carnivore gnawing, which indicates a longer interval of exposure after death. All of the thirty-three recovered skulls show evidence of perimortem violence, which again is dominated by lethal blunt force injuries. These are distributed all over the skulls. Like at Talheim, the victims were found in a settlement context but were not collectively deposited into a single mass grave at Asparn. The wide scattering of skeletal elements with carnivore gnawing marks rather indicates that no immediate attempt at ‘burial' was made after the massacre event, and that the local community was therefore likely destroyed by violent killing, selective capturing and scattering of possible survivors.

Schoneck-Kilianstädten: The Mutilated Village Population?

In 2006 another LBK mass grave was discovered and excavated near Schoneck-Kilianstädten in Hessen, Germany.^[595] Like at Talheim, the dead were deposited into a likely pre-existing feature within a settlement area without any noticeable care for the arrangement of the bodies.

The one feature that sets this sample clearly apart from the previously described ones is the high number of perimortem fractures encountered in the limb bones of the skeletons. About half of all tibia and fibula fragments show clear evidence of perimortem breakage, which indicates a targeted destruction of the lower leg bones, either just before or just after death occurred. In any case, the mutilation of the victims' bodies seems to have been a part of the massacre event itself, which was followed by the disorga­nised deposition of the bodies in the mass grave.

Halberstadt: The Executed Captives?

Another LBK mass grave was discovered in 2013 at Halberstadt in Sachsen­Anhalt, Germany, not far from a known and likely contemporaneous settle­ment that also contained numerous burials.^[597] The mass grave contained the irregularly deposited remains of nine individuals, seven of them determined as male, one as likely male, one as likely female.^[598] All were between 16 and 40 years of age at death.