Prof Christopher Ramsey

Abstract:

Narratives about the motivations and conditions for mass violence as a persistent feature of conflict throughout human history have evolved in complexity and materiality. Victims of these events are key for understanding the evolution and transformative power of violent behaviour as it developed from simple inter-group conflict to more strategic mass violence. Here we present the results of a bioarchaeological study of 77 and biomolecular analysis of 25 individuals from a 9th century BCE mass grave from Gomolava in the Carpathian Basin, Southeast Europe. The site is located at the interface of complex socio-spatial relations, divergent cultural traditions and values, and competing ideologies of landscape use. Here we show that excessive lethal violence enacted mostly on women and children suggests a selective demographic bias. The people buried together shared few, even distant, genetic relationships, and so their killing presents striking evidence for an episode of cross-regional conflict and an underlying aggressive shift in power, violence and gender relations in the region. Gomolava provides evidence for the deliberate annihilation of select sections of a regional population as a motivation for mass violence behaviour in later prehistoric Europe. It also shines new light on the socioeconomic agency and importance of women and young individuals in later European prehistory.

Abstract:

The Feeding Anglo-Saxon England (FeedSax) project applied scientific methods to bioarchaeological remains, in order to shed new light on medieval English agriculture. The methodology included an extensive radiocarbon dating programme which, besides helping to date developments in farming at selected case study sites, proved informative in its own right. This paper discusses the key implications of this programme’s results, with regard to the general problems of dating medieval settlement phases. First, it has allowed us to devise a new ‘universal’ chronological schema which aligns conventional phases with the precision currently attainable from calibrated radiocarbon dates. Second, it has revealed frequent discrepancies between the radiocarbon dates of organic remains and their original phasing — usually based upon associated ceramics — often resulting in chronological refinements or revisions, and sometimes revealing hitherto unrecognised periods of activity. In particular, the results highlight that ceramic-based phasing often underestimates the age of organic remains.