Quantifying Violence: Assessing the Prevalence of Trauma

The last decade or so has seen a shift from case-based to regional studies that apply a large-scale, population-based approach to the question of prevalence of violent interaction.

Neolithic chronology varies regionally, such that the data on healed and unhealed cranial trauma summarised in Table 3.1 range from the mid sixth millennium bce in Germany to the early second millennium bce in Scandinavia. This does not include projectile injuries, which will always be under-represented in skeletal remains, with many striking soft tissue only and so leaving no detectable traces on bone.^[154] Thus, for example, while only one cranium from the Late Neolithic site of San Juan ante Portam Latinam (SJAPL) is reported as exhibiting an unhealed fracture, another six individuals have embedded arrowheads with no evidence of healing, while many others have broken arrowheads in close association with the skeleton, many of which were likely also implicated in the cause of death.^[155] Injuries to the head

Map 3.1 Map showing locations of Neolithic human remains bearing injuries consistent with violence, and of settlements and enclosures with signs of being attacked and mass burials consistent with massacres.

may also have a significant impact on the individual without necessarily resulting in fractures. Thus, estimates of the prevalence of violence-related trauma in skeletal remains should be considered as very conservative.

With the exceptions of Portugal and northern Spain, there is remarkable consistency in the prevalence of lethal cranial trauma, ranging between around 3-5 per cent of the population. Including the above-mentioned unhealed projec­tile trauma at SJAPL would place it in the same category. What would these

Table 3.1 Skeletal trauma dating from the European Neolithic

MARTIN J. SMITH, RICKJ. SCHULTING, LINDA FIBIGBR

Table 3.1 (cont.)

numbers have meant for people at the time? Considering that we are dealing with small-scale societies with settlements consisting of extended family groups or clans, the death of just three individuals in a community of a hundred would be the proportional equivalent of 3,000 deaths in a city of 100,000. This provides a context for sites like Talheim (38 individuals), Asparn-Schletz (67+ individuals) and Kilianstädten (26 individuals) (see Chapter 14 in this volume), which take on the character of genocide, potentially involving the elimination of entire com­munities or substantial portions thereof. Such events would have had long-lasting repercussions, and in the absence of a strong central political authority, the responsibility for what would be perceived as ‘justice’ falls into the hands of the surviving kin and allies of those killed.^[156] While retaliation may be delayed, to

forego it altogether would be a dangerous sign of weakness. The wider eco­nomic, social and political circumstances are crucial factors in whether, when and how the memories of past injuries and insults are brought into play.^[157]