Halberstadt massacre
In the Halberstadt massacre around 7000 years ago, towards the end of the epoch of linear ceramic culture , nine Neolithic men and women were killed by blunt violence. Their bodies were in a mass grave in the area of today's development area "Sunday field" in Halberstadt ( Sachsen-Anhalt ), carelessly and without grave goods stored in a pit.
Discovery of the massacre
The mass grave was discovered in 2013 during an archaeological emergency excavation by a team from the State Office for Monument Preservation and Archeology Saxony-Anhalt and the Institute for Anthropology at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz . The excavation was carried out because of the planned construction of a housing estate, as at least 38 linear ceramic graves with carefully buried people of different ages and sex as well as evidence of six linear ceramic longhouses had been discovered in the "Sunday Field" since 2000. The mass grave was around two meters in diameter. The skeletons were partly lying on their backs, partly lying on their stomach side by side and on top of one another, without the bodies having a uniform orientation - as previously found in neighboring graves - (side position with knees bent and eyes facing south or north). Grave goods and buckles for clothing were missing, only a few pottery shards were found; these were interpreted as municipal waste that accidentally got over the corpses while backfilling the pit. An age of 7080 to 6997 years ( cal BP ) was derived from several radiocarbon dates .
Investigation of the finds
The mass grave was first recovered in the block and then examined in the laboratory.
Seven of the nine skeletons were unequivocally identified as male between the ages of 25 and 40, and the other two as presumably male and female. The youngest man was 16 to 20 years old and the alleged woman was 21 to 26 years old. All nine people were therefore considered adults in their social environment at the time. The age distribution differs greatly from that in the neighboring graves, in which on average the same number of men and women as well as adults and children were buried, but - especially due to the lack of children - also from other mass graves from this era.
Severe blows to the skull were identified as the cause of death in seven of the nine dead, and in two dead the skull was no longer preserved. Almost all identifiable skull fractures were found at the back of the head, both in the area of the occiput and above and to the side of it. Two thirds of the skull injuries were on the right side. Unhealed fractures of a thighbone , two humerus bones and two ribs were also found, the fracture characteristics of which suggest that they were caused by targeted blows. According to the interpretation of the excavators, the corpses were carelessly thrown into a pit - regardless of their individual positions. For this spoke inter alia. the unnatural, angled position of the leg and arm bones that were deliberately broken into two pieces (see illustration). From the proven traces of carnivorous animals and the absence of a number of bones with a fundamentally normal arrangement of the bones, it was concluded that the corpses were deposited in the pit before they completely decomposed , but possibly not completely covered with earth immediately.
Interpretation of what happened
In contrast to the victims of the Kilianstädten massacre , the Talheim massacre and the Schletz massacre , who were killed at their place of residence, the victims of Halberstadt did not grow up where they died. This could be confirmed by a strontium isotope analysis of the tooth enamel as well as by two further isotope tests ( 13 C / 12 C and 15 N / 14 N) of bone collagens ; The strontium isotope analysis enables statements to be made about the mineralogical properties of the soil during tooth formation, the other two about the composition of the food. The lack of children and the predominance of young men were also rated in the specialist article published in 2018 as a special feature of the happenings in Halberstadt. From these facts, the excavators deduced that the dead were more likely to be the captured attackers of a failed attack than the attacked residents of the linear ceramic settlement. The dead from Halberstadt were also killed by a few, similar and targeted blows to the back of the head, which was assessed as evidence of the likelihood of having discovered the victims of a Neolithic execution .
In the report on the excavation, the events in the final phase of the linear ceramic culture 7000 years ago are classified as follows: “Climate-related declines in agricultural production, the increasing consequences of inherited claims on agricultural land and the increasing hierarchical differentiation are among the probable factors that drive the increase of social tensions and ultimately fatal conflicts between independently acting groups. "
Coordinates: 51 ° 52 ′ 35 ″ N , 11 ° 2 ′ 40 ″ E
See also
Web links
- Mass execution in the Neolithic. On: scinexx.de from June 27, 2018.
supporting documents
- ^ Christian Meyer, Corina Knipper, Nicole Nicklisch et al .: Early Neolithic executions indicated by clustered cranial trauma in the mass grave of Halberstadt. In: Nature Communications. Volume 9, Article No. 2472, 2018, doi: 10.1038 / s41467-018-04773-w .
- ↑ Barbara Fritsch, Erich Claßen, Ulrich Müller and Veit Dresely: The linear ceramic grave fields of Derenburg "Meerenstieg II" and Halberstadt "Sonntagsfeld", district of Harz. In: Annual journal for Central German Prehistory. Volume 92, 2011, pp. 25-229, full text .
- ↑ Mass grave from Halberstadt reveals a new facet of Neolithic violence ( Memento from December 4, 2019 in the Internet Archive )