American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)—Neolithic people from two sites in northeastern France practiced overkill and mutilation of foreign invaders, new research suggests. The work, which provides some of the earliest evidence for grisly war-related victory celebrations, involved the analysis of brutalized skeletal remains and severed limbs found in prehistoric pits dating back to between 4300 and 4150 BCE. The presence of these burial pits at the Achenheim and Bergheim sites implies that these Neolithic communities were at war. Other archaeological evidence across the Upper Rhine Valley shows that military invasions caused rapid cultural upheaval at this time. Yet, whether the people buried here were prisoners of war – and whether they were locals or foreigners – remained unknown until now. To answer this, Teresa Fernández-Crespo and colleagues analyzed 82 human skeletal remains from the Achenheim and Bergheim sites. Some of these remains bore violent injuries, including unhealed skull fractures and severed upper limbs, indicating these people were victims of war violence. Other remains had no signs of unhealed trauma or dismemberment, suggesting these people were given a normal burial. Fernández-Crespo et al. also performed isotopic analyses on the remains, and discovered significant differences in the isotopic fingerprints of victims versus non-victims. Doing so enabled the researchers to deduce that the victims came from elsewhere, while non-victims lived locally. This suggests that the victims belonged to invading groups and were killed by locals defending their territory, the authors say. “It is probable that the identities of these victims can be attributed to socially remote, nonlocal enemies that became trophies or captives during battles or raids and that may have been considered by their captors as not properly ‘human’ and hence warranting such treatment,” Fernández-Crespo et al. write.
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Overhead views of late Middle Neolithic violence-related
human mass deposits of the Alsace region, France, analyzed in this study. (A) Pit 157 from
Bergheim Saulager (Photo credit: Fanny Chenal, INRAP).
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Overhead views of late Middle Neolithic violence-related human mass deposits of the Alsace region, France, analyzed in this study. (B) pit 124 from Achenheim Strasse 2, RD 45 (Photo credit: Philippe Lefranc, INRAP).
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Article Source: AAAS news release
*Multi-isotope biographies and identities of victims of martial victory celebrations in Neolithic Europe, Science Advances, 20-Aug-2025. 10.1126/sciadv.adv3162
