<< Text Pages >> Herxheim Stone Age settlement - Ancient Village or Settlement in Germany in Rhineland-Palatinate

Submitted by Andy B on Saturday, 02 May 2009  Page Views: 9139

Multi-periodSite Name: Herxheim Stone Age settlement
Country: Germany
NOTE: This site is 5.36 km away from the location you searched for.
Land: Rhineland-Palatinate Type: Ancient Village or Settlement
Nearest Town: Speyer  Nearest Village: Herxheim
Latitude: 49.140858N  Longitude: 8.215463E
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
 1 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
 no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
 no data Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
 2

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Ancient Settlement in Rhineland-Palatinate. Germany's stone age cannibalism. The German city of Speyer, in Rheinland-Palatinate, well known for its ­Romanesque cathedral, also boasts some much more macabre relics. A collection of skulls, shin bones and vertebrae might not seem unusual in an archaeology museum, but these particular remains are special. They all show signs of having been cut, scraped or broken, indicating that their owners were cannibalised.

"Look at these grooves, running from the base of the nose to the back of the neck, or here on the temples," says Andrea Zeeb-Lanz, the regional head of archaeology, holding up a skull. "The grooves show, beyond all possible doubt, that the flesh was torn off." It takes good eyesight to catch the fine parallel incisions made by the cutting edge of the flint stone. She then shows me a piece of thigh-bone the end of which has been crushed. Judging by the state of the bone tissue, it was smashed shortly after the victim was killed.

All these human remains were found at the stone-age site at Herxheim, near Speyer. About 7,000 years ago farmers, who grew wheat and barley, raised pigs, sheep and cattle, settled here, building a village of four to 12 houses, the post holes of which have survived. At the time the first farmer-stockherders were moving into Europe, supplanting their hunter-gatherer predecessors. The Herxheim settlers came from the north (between 5,400 and 4,950BC) and belonged to the Linear Pottery culture.

Two lines of ditches were dug around the settlement. They can't have been defensive because they weren't continuous. Nor were they intended for use as an ossuary, as the Linear Pottery people generally buried or burned their dead. However, during a rescue dig just before the area was developed as an industrial estate, in some of the ditches archaeologists uncovered tens of thousands of ­human bones.

During the first series of excavations, at the end of the 1990s, the numerous injuries visible on the skeletons were taken as evidence that the victims had been massacred. But in 2008 Bruno Boulestin, an anthropologist at Bordeaux University, examined the fragments recovered from one of the trenches, pointing out that nearly 2,000 samples belonged to fewer than 10 individuals.

"It is impossible to establish direct proof of cannibalism. But here we have systematic, repetitive gestures, which suggest that the bodies were eaten," says Boulestin. The marks of breaking, cutting, scraping and crushing indicate that the bodies were dismembered, the tendons and ligaments severed, the flesh torn off, the bones smashed. The vertebra were cut up to remove the ribs, just as butchers do today with loin chops. The tops of skulls were opened to extract the brains. Another telling clue is that there are proportionately fewer bones containing marrow, particularly vertebrae and short bones, suggesting they were set aside.

A quick investigation of the bones in neighbouring ditches showed that they had suffered the same fate. Extrapolating to the whole site, only half of which was excavated, about 1,000 people must have been butchered. There is no other example in prehistory of a mass grave of this size. "We are dealing with an exceptional event," says Zeeb-Lanz. Other cases of neolithic cannibalism have certainly been identified, in particular in France, at the caves at Fontbrégoua and Adaouste, near the south coast, or at Les Perrats, further west, but never on this scale.

What can this bloodbath mean? The potsherds found among the human remains suggest it must have occurred over a period of no longer than 50 years. There is nothing to imply the victims were killed for food. Only under extreme conditions would 100 or so farmers have been able to overcome about 10 times their number. The archaeologists have therefore concluded that this was some form of ritual killing. In some cases the tops of skulls were arranged to form a nest, scattered with pottery fragments, broken adzes, jewellery made of shells, the paws and jawbones of dogs.

There are two main types of ritual cannibalism, as the historian Jean Guilaine and palaeopathologist Jean Zammit explain in The Origins of War: Violence in Prehistory. Exocannibalism targets people outside the community: by eating a conquered enemy the aim was not so much to feed on their body as to make them disappear for ever, appropriating their strength, energy and valour.

Endocannibalism, within a community, was a token of affection, the recognition of a bond that needed to be maintained. The scientists have also excluded this possibility, given the small size of the village. But wartime exocannibalism also seems unlikely, as it would have involved raids on remote communities to bring back hordes of prisoners and their pottery.

The team that discovered the site have come up with another hypothesis. Members of the Linear Pottery culture deliberately gathered here, with their prisoners and pottery, to take part in sacrificial cere­monies.

"At this time, the Linear Pottery culture was undergoing a crisis, which led to its disappearance," says Zeeb-Lanz. "Perhaps they hoped to prevent the end of their world through some ceremony, of which cannibalism was just a part."

Source: Guardian Weekly

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"Herxheim Stone Age settlement" | Login/Create an Account | 2 News and Comments
  
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Ancient site reveals signs of mass cannibalism by Andy B on Wednesday, 23 December 2009
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Ancient site reveals signs of mass cannibalism

Archaeologists have found evidence of mass cannibalism at a 7,000-year-old human burial site in south-west Germany, the journal Antiquity reports.

The authors say their findings provide rare evidence of cannibalism in Europe's early Neolithic period.

Up to 500 human remains unearthed near the village of Herxheim may have been cannibalised.

The "intentionally mutilated" remains included children and even unborn babies, the researchers say.

The German site was first excavated in 1996 and then explored again between 2005 and 2008.

Team leader Bruno Boulestin, from the University of Bordeaux in France, told BBC News that he and his colleagues had found evidence the human bones were deliberately cut and broken - an indication of cannibalism.

"We see patterns on the bones of animals indicating that they have been spit-roasted," he said. "We have seen some of these same patterns on the human bones [at this site]."

But Dr Boulestin stressed it was difficult to prove that these bones had been deliberately cooked.

Some scientists have rejected the cannibalism theory, suggesting that the removal of flesh could have been part of a burial ritual.

But Dr Boulestin said the human remains had been "intentionally mutilated" and that there was evidence many of them had been chewed.

The early Neolithic was the period when farming first spread in central Europe and the team believes that cannibalism in Europe was likely to have been exceptional - possibly carried out during periods of famine.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8394802.stm
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Re: Herxheim Stone Age settlement by Andy B on Sunday, 06 December 2009
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Evidence of mass cannibalism in which even children and unborn babies were on the menu has been uncovered in Germany by archaeologists.

Analysis of 7,000-year-old bones dug up at Herxheim in south-west Germany suggest the region was a centre for cannibalism at a time when the first European farming society may have been collapsing.

Marks on bones show that bodies were skinned and had their flesh removed using techniques almost identical to those for butchering animals and one researcher suggested that some of the victims could have been spit-roasted.

Many of the bones appear to have been deliberately smashed to allow the living to suck out the marrow of the dead. Others bear the “chew marks” of teeth and while they are too indistinct to be certain scavenging animals were not to blame, the “distinctive distribution speaks strongly in favour” of having been made by hungry humans.

Cut marks on the bones are often so clear that archaeologists have been able to distinguish between which cuts were intended to skin and scalp the bodies and which were made to get at the meat.

Archaeologists concluded cannibalism was taking place after carrying out a detailed study of bones identified as coming from six adults, at least one of them a man, two children aged about 6 and 15, and two unborn babies.

But with almost 500 other bodies already dug up at Herxheim and at least as many again still to be recovered the final number of people eaten by cannibals could be much higher.

Researchers suspect the remains belong either to people eaten in victory celebrations after being killed in wars, or to those slaughtered and consumed as part of ritual sacrifices. They said the sheer number of victims made it unlikely that cannibalism was a last resort during famines.

The 10 people whose remains were analysed for the study are all thought to have died at the same time and the researchers said: “The human bones show abundant and unequivocal evidence of human-indeced modifications. Modifications induced by the cutting up of corpses are cut marks and scrape marks.”

Once the ribs had been cut away from the spine the heads were broken open - “perhaps to extract the brain” - and the tongue cut out before the fleshy parts of the limbs were removed. Bones could then be removed and smashed open for the marrow.

“All these observations allow us to conclude that the individuals were cannibalised,” the archaelogical team concluded in their report published in the journal Antiquity. “It is highly probable that a great number of the thousand or so individuals probably deposited in Herxheim were subjected to cannibalism.”

Dr Bruno Boulestin, of Bordeaux University, accepted it was impossible to be certain if the flesh was eaten raw or was cooked but added: "We see patterns on the bones of animals indicating that they have been spit-roasted. We have seen some of these same patterns on the human bones.”

Herxheim’s remains date from a period when Europe is thought to have been plunged into upheaval, violence and decline following 500 years in which Neolithic farmers first settled the region.

Professor Chris Scarre, a neolithic expert at the University of Durham, said after learning of the study that the Herxheim site could represent useful evidence of a society in turmoil but cautioned that cannibalism can be hard to prove because other factors, such as funerary rites, can leave similar marks on bones.

Source:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/evidence-of-mass-cannibalism-uncovered-in-germany-1835341.html
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