Violence in prehistory took many forms and was perpetrated in a wide range of social contexts from the small-scale domestic sphere to all-out warfare involving thousands of participants.1
The societies of the European Iron Age varied widely in their scale and complexity across both time and space. In many regions, communities had relatively flat social hierarchies and limited specialisation of individuals.
This was most probably the case, for example, across much of Britain and Ireland during the Early and Middle Iron Age.[876] [877] Elsewhere, however, we see signs of considerable social complexity and the presence of large political centres: recent work at the Early Iron Age centre of the Heuneburg in southern Germany has generated population estimates of around 5,000 for the sixth century bce,[878] while Late Iron Age oppida in central and western Europe may have housed up to around 10,000 in the first century bce. To find linking themes across the period is thus challenging, yet there are sufficient similarities, for example in language, art styles, material objects and forms of votive deposition, to suggest certain underlying commonalities in cosmology and religious belief.Traditionally, these cultural commonalities were encompassed within the concept of a pan-European Celtic culture. While this ethnically tinged concept has been comprehensively deconstructed in recent years,[879] there remains general agreement that ‘barbarian' societies across much of central, western and northern Europe shared a cultural background that can be meaningfully distinguished from their contemporaries around the Mediterranean. This chapter focuses on the ritualisation of violence among these societies, including those particularly interesting examples located at the interface between the ‘civilised' Mediterranean and the barbarian world of the north and west.
Although the ritualisation of violence in Iron Age Europe has long been recognised, the archaeological evidence has often been considered through the distorting lens of classical literary sources.
The first century ce poet Lucan, for example, describes a hidden forest glade near Massalia in southern France, where gory human remains were offered up before rough carved images of fearsome Celtic gods.[880] Such passages, usually taken out of context, have been used to interpret archaeological remains from widely disparate times and places across Iron Age Europe. In fact, Lucan's work is peppered with episodes of extreme violence, whether describing Romans, Celts or anyone else, and this particular passage has little claim to reliability. Nonetheless, signs of violent, perimortem trauma and the complex processing of human remains have typically been seen as evidence for Druidic sacrifice or the ‘Celtic cult of the head'.[881] What has been lacking has been a more anthropological perspective on ritual violence, drawing analogies with societies documented through the ethnographic literature rather than relying on the biased and fragmentary accounts of the classical authors.This chapter follows Richard Bradley in suggesting that ritualisation exists where ‘certain parts of life are selected and provided with an added emphasis'.[882] This ‘added emphasis' can be seen as an element of formalisation accompanying the performance of certain actions. Ritualised activity might comprise small, private acts intended to elaborate on routine activities, or else it might be larger-scale group performances. Archaeologically, ritualised performances can be recognised in a number of ways, from the frequent occurrence of structured deposits (in which consciously selected objects have been deposited in particular ways) in houses, enclosures, hill forts and the wider landscape, to the construction of formal sanctuaries or temples. As we shall see, they can also be recognised through the specific nature of violent injuries inflicted on individuals, particularly those found preserved as ‘bog bodies'. In small-scale societies, lacking institutionalised hierarchies, we would characteristically expect a good deal of creative innovation in such practices, perhaps influenced by the personalities of charismatic individuals such as shamans, while more complex societies might be expected to build up bodies of formal religious knowledge that generate more standardised ritual performances and the emergence of organised priesthoods.
Although archaeologists have long tended to distinguish between ritual and functional actions, this is a false dichotomy. Ritualised acts were far from being empty gestures dictated by tradition: through their intercession with the supernatural world, for example, through the appeasement or engagement of spirits, gods or ancestors, they were intended to have direct practical outcomes. These outcomes might include the good health of the individual or his/her family, success in war, personal wealth, or the fertility of crops and animals. What appears from the outside as irrational, for example, headhunting or the deposition of human bodies in peat bogs, may thus be profoundly practical in its intentions.
An erroneous distinction has also frequently been drawn between violence and ritual, with evidence for symbolism in weaponry and fortifications (notably Iron Age hill forts) being taken to suggest that they were not intended for actual use.[883] As is clear from the ethnographic record, however, ritual acts can often be very bloody, and warfare is never free of a symbolic dimension. The following review thus takes the position that ritualised acts were instrumental in their intent, and that symbolism and violence were as intimately intertwined in past societies as they are today.