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MIRANDA GREEN

HUMANS AS RITUAL VICTIMS IN THE LATER PREHISTORYOF WESTERN EUROPE

Summary. The paper presented here addresses the issue of how far currentevidence permits the admittance of ritual murder or human sacrifice in theEuropean Iron Age. It argues from two basic premises: firstly that the notionof human sacrifice is the more acceptable within the context of strictlyhierarchical, slave-owning societies for whom human life was not, of itself,sacrosanct; secondly that, since there is a solid body of both literary andarchaeological evidence for human sacrifice in antiquity, there is no intrinsicreason to deny its presence in later European prehistory. However, scrutiny ofthe data reveals that, if human sacrifice did take place in Iron Age Europe, itappears to have been both rare and special. More importantly, virtually allthe evidence has a measure of ambiguity and is capable of alternativeinterpretation.

INTRODUCTION: SOME GENERALOBSERVATIONS CONCERNING FLESH

OFFERINGS

‘When in English we speak of theinstitution of sacrifice, we commonly referto the system of worship which has itsmost characteristic and effective action inthe slaughter of a victim. Sacrifice is pre-eminently bloody sacrifice’

(Jones 1991, 9)

This paper seeks to re-evaluate some of the‘evidence’ for the ritual slaughter of humansin temperate Europe during the last fewcenturies BC. In a religious context, the term‘sacrifice’ has a quite specific meaning,namely the destruction of something or itsremoval from the earthly world, in order to

bring about benefits for the sacrificers. Suchbenefits may involve gaining or aversion: asacrifice might be carried out in order toachieve a positive outcome or avert anegative one. There is, however, somecontroversy as to the proper parameters ofthe term: for Richard Bradley (1990, 37),there is a clear distinction between human oranimal sacrifice, on the one hand, and theoffering of inanimate objects, on the other,but for others, such as Randsborg (1995, 74–89), the deliberate deposition of a woodenboat full of weapons in a Danish peat-bog isas much a sacrifice as a slaughtered ox orsheep. What separates sacrifice from anyother kind of ritual killing or destruction isthe need, in the case of sacrifice, for asupernatural recipient (Hughes 1991, 3).

In most, if not all, religious systems — past

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and present — the element of sacrifice playsa central role: humans sacrifice themselves— symbolically rather than through physicaldestruction — by, for example, theirabnegation of the world in becoming monksor nuns; in some systems (as in the ancientAnatolian cult of Atys, the Egyptian Osirisand, of course, Christianity) divine beingsthemselves become sacrificial victims, inorder either to grant salvation, to deliverfrom sin or to generate fertility/prosperity fortheir devotees. In such circumstances,sacrifice is intimately bound up with theparadox of polarity: the association betweendeath and regeneration/resurrection (Bradley1995, 49–51).

Giving and Separation

Crucial to the determination of sacrificeare the notions of giving, on the one hand,and separation, on the other. Giving has anumber of functions: it may involve a requestto the spirits for something to happen or notto happen (gaining or aversion); it may be aresponse to a crisis; it may take the form ofpropitiation or appeasement for somethingperceived as potentially offensive to thesupernatural forces; or it may be a thank-offering for a successful battle, a goodharvest, the birth of a healthy child, recoveryfrom illness, or a satisfactory businesstransaction. Separation is equally importantfor the efficacy of a sacrificial offering:holiness itself implies separation from theworld of humans and the distance betweenthe sacred and the profane can be bridgedonly through sacrificial offerings. For a giftto the spirit-world to be successfullytransferred thereto, it is necessary for it tobe physically or metaphorically removedfrom the ‘real’ world. This may be achievedby burial in the ground, an action whichrenders the offering invisible and

inaccessible; the same is true of itsimmersion in water or marshy ground; itmay be enclosed within sanctified space, theenclosure thereby acting as a sacred barrierprotecting what is, in effect, an earthlymanifestation of the supernatural world(rather as a foreign embassy buildingsymbolically belongs to its homeland ratherthan its host country). For living sacrificialvictims, the most prominent element ofseparation is the act of killing, which iscomparable to the ritual destruction of aninanimate votive offering, such as a sword,torc or pot. For an animate offering to be atrue sacrifice, the act of slaughter and theritual that accompanies it is the crucialenabler, the factor that makes the victimacceptable to the recipient, and the violenceinvolved (see below) may play an essentialrole in the potency of the sacrificial gift.Natural death, with subsequent ritualtreatment of the body, does not qualify forsacrificial status.

Sacrifice and Value

An important consideration of sacrifice isthe notion of value. Our late-twentieth-century western viewpoint wouldunquestionably grade animate and inanimatevalue according to strict anthropocentricrules, in which a human being is consideredof greater importance than an animal orinanimate object. Even within our own value-system, there is equivocation concerning theperceived relative value placed upon ananimal and an expensive object, like a caror painting: the presence of breath (anima) isnot itself the deciding factor. In antiquity, thekilling of a living being, whether human oranimal, was not inevitably regarded as moreefficacious (in relation to value) than theconsignment of a gold necklet or decoratedshield-cover to the spirit-world. An animal’s

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sacrificial ‘currency’ may depend upon itseconomic status or, alternatively, upon itssymbolism within a societal structure, asymbolism that may or may not be linkedwith the creature’s practical value.

In considering human sacrifice, and thevalue placed upon human life, it is all themore important not to impose our value-systems on the past. In most present-daysocieties, human beings have a value overand above everything else, and it is thisperception that makes the idea of humansacrifice particularly unacceptable. It is,however, necessary to question the naturalassumption that the same priorities pertainedin antiquity: in the Roman world, the malehead of the family (the paterfamilias)technically had powers of life and death overhis wife and children; slavery was endemic toRoman society and human life was by nomeans automatically accorded primacyrelative to beasts and inanimate goods. InGaul and Britain where, according to suchGreek and Roman chroniclers as Strabo (forexampleGeographyIV, 4, 5) and Caesar (deBello Gallico VI, 16), human sacrifice wasstill practised during the first century BC, thevalue of a human sacrificial victim probablypartly depended on the status of the victim:criminals may have been perceived as of lessvalue than prisoners of war, particularly if thelatter were of noble rank.

Humans and Animals

‘It is better to show human sacrifice in therealm of the imaginary, just as thecannibalism so close to it is best imaginedin the far away reaches of myth or in thetales of another people’

(Durand 1989, 91)

A challengeable assumption is the argumentthat animals were inevitably perceived as

sacrificial substitutes for humans (as, forexample, argued by A.R.W. Green 1975, afterSmith 1927). Evidence suggests that for somereligious systems of antiquity this was indeedthe case. In the Old Testament episode ofGod’s request for Isaac as a sacrifice (Genesis22, vv 2–13), when Abraham passes the test ofhis commitment and prepares to slaughter hisson, he is allowed instead to sacrifice a ram,conveniently caught in some foliage nearby.But an attitude relevant to ancient Judaism, inwhich humans were fashioned in the image ofGod and which, in any case, may be the resultof manipulation in reporting (Bradley 1995,88–9), must not necessarily be taken as anormative attitude in antiquity and, indeed,there is firm evidence for human sacrifice inthe ancient Near East in, for instance,Mesopotamia (A.R.W. Green 1975), Palestine(Day 1989) and Nubia (O’Connor 1993).

In the religion of Classical Greece,although animal sacrifice — as elsewhere inthe ancient world — was endemic (Burkert1983, 9), human sacrifice belonged firmly tomyth: it is represented in drama, of whichEuripides’ tragedyIphigeneia in Aulis, (c.406 BC) is a prime example (van Straten1995, 34). Human sacrifice is also portrayedin the iconography of painted vases: thesacrifice of Iphigeneia is occasionallydepicted in Greek vase-painting, as is theepisode in theIliad in which Polyxena issacrificed at Achilles’ tomb by Neoptolemos(Durand 1989, 87–118, fig. 7; van Straten1995, 113–14); an Attic Black Figureamphora depicts Polyxena held face-downover an altar by hoplites while Neoptolemosplunges his sword into her throat, releasing astream of blood which pours down onto thealtar. For the Classical Greeks, then, humansacrifice was acceptable only in terms of amythical past. In Republican Rome, humansacrifice was not unknown, though it wasonly carried out in exceptional circum-

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stances. Tatian (Oratio ad Graecos29, 1)mentions human sacrifice in connection withtwo Latin cults, those of Jupiter Latiaris andDiana Nemorensis; the Christian writerMinucius Felix (Octavius30) comments thatin his own day (late second–early thirdcentury AD) the Romans sacrificed men toLatiaris. It is recorded (for example byPlutarchMoralia: Quaestiones Romanae83and Pliny the ElderNatural HistoryXXVIII,3, 12) that in 228 BC, following a series ofdisasters, a pair of Greeks and one of Gauls(a male and female in each case) were buriedalive in the Forum Boarium at Rome, inaccordance with instructions from theSibylline Books; after the catastrophicRoman defeat at the Battle of Cannae in216 BC, the rite was repeated (Liebeschu¨tz1979, 449–450). But, in reporting thispractice, Livy (History of Rome from itsFoundation XXII, 57, 6) speaks of it as avery un-Roman rite. Human sacrifice wasofficially outlawed in Rome by a senatorialdecree in 97 BC.

It is quite possible that in Gaul and Britainprior to the Roman period the conceptualframework diverged from that of the Classicalworld. None of the Graeco-Romancommentators on their ‘barbarian’ neighboursto the north in Gaul and Britain speak ofsubstitution of animal for human sacrifice.Although many of these observers of Gaulishand British customs were undoubtedly guiltyof barbaric stereotyping, exaggeration of‘uncivilized’ practices and other foreign bias,there is no justification for mistrusting all oftheir allusions to human sacrifice. Althoughthere is a small amount of evidence that hintsat possible human sacrifice in Roman Britain(Isserlin 1997, 91–100), it appears likely thatthe imposition of Roman rule put an end — atleast officially — to ritual murder in theseregions and so it seems probable that,thereafter, animal sacrifice was the only source

of flesh for sacrificial offerings. But in the pre-Roman Iron Age, whilst human sacrifice wasperhaps never a normative rite (this issuggested by the paucity of unequivocalarchaeological evidence), there is no inherentreason why it should not have occurred incases of specific religious need.

Slaughter as a ritual act

‘Sacrificial killing is the basic experienceof the ‘‘sacred’’: homo religiosusacts andattains self-awareness ashomo necans’(Burkert 1983, 3). A final general issueconcerns the principles underlying sacrificialkilling and the offering of flesh to the gods. Itis worth posing the question as to whetherslaughter per se is significant. Killinginvolves violence, and a sudden transitionof the victim’s status from living to dead. Mycontention is that violence may have been animportant factor in the sacrificial process. Inancient Greek ritual, violence was — to anextent — considered as a negative force andso to be minimized inasmuch as the animalshould be seen symbolically to consent to itsdeath (Detienne 1989, 9). This was achievedby inducing the animal to lower its head insubmission (by offering it food or drink) orby sprinkling water over it, thus causing it toshake its head. There is some evidence thatthe perception of symbolic consent alsoexisted in Iron Age Gaul: examination ofthe skulls of sacrificial cattle at the shrine ofGournay-sur-Aronde (Oise) indicates thatthey were ritually killed by blows to thenape of the neck, which can only have beeninflicted on beasts with their heads lowered(Meniel 1987, 101–43; 1989, 87–97;Brunaux 1988, 123). But there is also asuggestion — arising from somearchaeological evidence — that for certainGaulish and British communities thereexisted a perception that particular energy




or force was generated by actual or symbolicviolence: the ritual destruction of weaponsprior to their deposition, for instance atGournay (Lejars 1994, 219, 232–3; Rapin1988, 47–54), can sometimes bedemonstrated to have been conducted withunnecessary savagery, as if the force requiredto snap an iron sword was transmitted to thegift and its recipient. Scrutiny of the evidencefor human and animal sacrifice in Iron AgeEurope reveals a similar ‘overkill’ factor: theskinned, eviscerated dog buried with itsowner at the Tartigny (Oise) cemetery(Meniel, 1987, 25–31) and the ‘triple killing’of Lindow Man in Cheshire (Steadet al.1986) both bear witness to such deliberateexcess in the dispatch of sacrificial victims. Ithas been noted that many north Europeanbog-bodies show evidence of rough handlingbefore their deaths (Glob 1969, 93; Finlayetal. 1997, 7). Ritual aggression was thusarguably an important element in thesymbolism of sacrifice because of the energyassociated with violence (Girard 1977); theact of violence towards human, animal orinanimate sacrifice may itself be associatedwith its efficacy in stimulating regeneration,prosperity or other desired outcome. Indiscussing ancient Greek sacrificial ritual,Burkert (1983, 41, 47) argues that the closeassociation between war, hunting andsacrifice was due, in part, to the commonfactor of aggression.

The specific requirement of flesh-offeringsdemands consideration: animal sacrifice isendemic to many past and present religioussystems but the mindsets behind suchactivity are by no means necessarily sharedby all. The shedding of blood, whether thatof humans or beasts, is a significant elementin the ritual process. Cutting the throat of asacrificial pig, sheep or ox was symbolicallyimportant in both the Classical world and inIron Age temperate Europe. In the Greek

world, the sphageion(the blood-container)was central to ritual animal-slaughter and thewarm flowing blood represented the catharsisof sacrifice and the liminality between lifeand death, pure and impure inasmuch asspilling blood at the same time drains life butalso nourishes the ground on which it falls(Durand 1989, 119–28; Burkert 1983, 59). Iargue elsewhere (Green 1998, in press) thatthe Greeksphageionperhaps had its northEuropean counterpart in some of the greatsheet-bronze cauldrons found in Iron Ageritual deposits in a huge area from Ireland toBohemia. Strabo (VII, 2, 3) specificallymentions that Cimbrian sacrificial victimshad their throats cut over sacred cauldrons:the blood collected was presumablysprinkled over altars and poured onto theearth to the accompaniment of prayers andinvocations.

The significance of flesh and blood insacrificial contexts is perhaps multi-faceted:an animal victim may be butchered andpartially consumed in an act of ritualfeasting, wherein the gods are invited to joinin the conviviality of a shared meal; it isgenerally assumed that human victims werenot so treated, but it is wise to re-examine theevidence before dismissing it out of hand.Additionally, both human and animal fleshmay have been important if the supernaturalpowers were perceived to be like humans (oranimals), albeit dwelling in a parallel world,and were thus recipients of gifts which couldbe appreciated either as food or because theyconsisted of matter similar to that from whichthe gods themselves were constructed.

HUMAN SACRIFICE IN GAUL AND BRITAIN

The source material

Both the literary testimony of Classicalobservers and the archaeological record

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provide evidence that is, at the same time,ambiguous and potentially significant. Theancient literature is sufficiently well-knownto render unnecessary any detailed analysishere of its value and its problems. Thewritings of Greek and Roman commentatorswere indubitably coloured by literaryconvention, by influences from their owncultural context and by specific, sometimespersonal, agenda, such as the desire to projecta sensational or stereotypic image ofbarbarism (Champion 1985, 9–24).Nonetheless (Brunaux 1988, 127), a varietyof ancient authors mention human sacrificialritual in Gaul, of whom at least some may beconsidered relatively trustworthy, despitetheir inevitable bias as foreign observers.Diodorus Siculus, for instance, stresses (V,31, 3) that human sacrifice was exceptionalbut he is extremely precise about the mannerof the victim’s death: ‘when enquiring intomatters of great import they devote to death ahuman being and stab him in the regionabove the diaphragm’.

A major difficulty in using the commentsof writers from the Mediterranean worldabout Gaul is that of chronology: the greatmajority of the texts date to the first centuriesBC and AD, a period in which Iron Agesociety was undergoing significant changes,partly as a result of indigenous politico-societal development and partly because ofever-increasing influences from the Romanworld. It is necessary both to acknowledgethe inevitably diachronic nature of ritualpractice and to avoid falling into the trap ofretrospective inference: what may havepertained in Caesar’s Gaul must not beassumed to be relevant in earlier periods. Inthe same way, it is essential to recognize thata practice observed to take place in oneregion of non-Mediterranean Gaul may nothave been generally applicable over largeareas of temperate Europe.

The four principal ancient authors whorecorded human sacrifice among the Gaulsare Diodorus Siculus, Strabo and Caesar (allof whom wrote in the first century BC) andLucan, a first century AD poet. All are quitespecific in their descriptions: the earlier threemay have derived their material from the losttexts of the Greek Stoic philosopherPoseidonios (135–50 BC), who travelled inGaul. Moreover Caesar campaigned in Gaulfor nearly ten years, and could well haveobserved human sacrificial practice forhimself. Lucan (who lived a very short life)never visited Gaul, and it is generallyaccepted (see, for example, Getty 1940, xxix;Pichon 1912) that he used the lost books ofLivy’s Roman Historyas his main source.

Archaeologists are, quite properly,extremely wary of interpreting human deathsas the result of sacrifice. It is seldom that theevidence is other than ambiguous and it isimportant, on the one hand, to make adistinction between human bodies whichmay have been subjected to ritual treatmentafter death and victims of sacrifice and, onthe other, to recognize that the apparentevidence for ceremonial murder maysometimes instead reflect the execution of amalefactor. The situation is furthercomplicated by the possible presence ofreligious overtones even in suspectedpunitive killings: there is a fine line betweenthe sacrifice of an individual, who isspecifically dispatched in an act of divineappeasement or thanksgiving, and theexecution of a transgressor whose deathwas carried out as part of a religiousceremony. However, in view of theundoubted practice of human sacrifice inantiquity, it is perhaps unwise forarchaeologists to close their minds utterlyto the possible presence of such ritualbehaviour; the evidence needs to be judgedon its own merits (particularly in a context




where human life was not necessarilyimbued with great value) rather than overlainby quite natural, but inappropriate, feelingsof repugnance for admittance of suchpractice.

Careful scrutiny of the possible evidencefor human sacrifice in Iron Age westernEurope reveals a wide variety of types andcircumstances; despite the equivocal natureof the material, it is a valid exercise toattempt an identification of possible instancesof human sacrifice on a scale of probability,ranging from the doubtful but possible to thehighly likely. Between the sixth century BCand the Roman period, candidates forconsideration as human sacrificial victimsshow specificity in neither age nor gender.Sometimes there is clear evidence for thecause of death but, in other instances, certainfeatures of the treatment of the body aresuggestive of ritual murder. In mostexamples, the precise reason for sacrifice, ifsuch it be, is not apparent but occasionally —as in the case of ‘retainer-sacrifice’ — it ispossible to infer something of thecircumstances which led to the killing.

It is not my intention to present a survey ofall possible evidence for Iron Age humansacrifice but, rather, to attempt anidentification of elements in the materialculture of death in the European Iron Agewhich appear to share common features withother cultures of antiquity, where the realityof human sacrifice has long been establishedand accepted. It is acknowledged, however,that whilst archaeological evidence canpresent clues as to the manner and contextof unnatural and untimely death, it canprovide little information about the ritualperceptions behind the ‘sacrifice’. Classicaland other ancient writers (for example thoseresponsible for the books of the OldTestament) speak of scapegoats anddivination, appeasement and atonement,

reparation and regeneration but — in themajority of instances — archaeologicalevidence cannot distinguish such categories.

Rites of Fire

‘The Gauls believe the power of theimmortal gods can be appeased only ifone human life is exchanged for another,and they have sacrifices of this kindregularly established by the community.Some of them have enormous imagesmade of wickerwork the limbs of whichthey fill with living men; these are set onfire and the men perish, enveloped in theflames.

(Caesarde Bello GallicoVI, 16)

In this brief comment, Caesar raises someimportant and complex issues: he implies thatritual murder was a recurrent practice(‘regularly established’); he speaks of theexchange of human lives, which could beinterpreted as meaning that — in order toprotect warriors from death in battle or thesick — death had to be projected ontoanother individual, rather in the manner ofa pharmakos or scapegoat (see below).Strabo (GeographyIV, 4, 5) refers to thesame custom, a holocaust in which peoplewere consumed in a great pyre of wickerfashioned in the image of a gigantic humanbeing; Strabo adds that animals as well ashumans were immolated in this way. Sinceboth writers probably trawled a commonPoseidonian text (Tierney 1959–60, 189–275), the mention of the wicker man in bothsources is not significant in itself, except forthe minor differences between the twodescriptions.

The burning of victims has two effectswhich separate the practice from any otherkind of sacrifice: it consumes the offeringcompletely, leaving little trace, thus

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effectively removing it from the earthlyworld; and the flames, smoke and ashes riseto the sky. It could be argued, therefore, thatsuch a gift was designed specifically fordivinities whose domain was in the upper air.Neither Caesar nor Strabo link this sacrificialpractice with particular cults, but a ninth-century glossator on Lucan’sPharsaliaassociates fire-sacrifice with the thunder-god Taranis (who is described in Lucan’soriginal text), with the consumption of hishuman victims by fire (Zwicker 1934, 50).Taranis is attested epigraphically in RomanGaul and Britain (Green 1982, 37–44), and afire-offering would have been appropriate fora god of thunder and lightning. Whether ornot the ‘wicker man’ element in thesacrificial ritual described by Caesar andStrabo is authentic reporting, fire-sacrificeinvolving human victims is by no meansunknown in the ancient world, for example inMesopotamia (A.R.W. Green 1975, 127) andin Old Testament Judaism (Day 1989, 82–5),where fire-sacrifice was associated withatonement, purification and as arepresentation of theophany, the visiblemanifestation of God. Neither Caesar norStrabo make it clear as to why fire wasselected, but Caesar does refer toappeasement. It is likely that the Gaulishpriests involved in human sacrifice chose firefor a particular symbolic purpose, perhapsconnected with expiation, purification or asan appropriate medium for the divinerecipients of holocaust. It may even be thatboth the spectacle and the protracted agonyof death by fire were considered assignificant contributors to the efficacy ofthe offering.

Rites of Blood

The Classical texts are unequivocal in theirpresentation of blood-sacrifice as being the

favoured means of effecting ritual murder.Diodorus (V, 32, 6) alludes to the impaling ofsacrificial victims, and he also (V, 31, 3)mentions stabbing in the back; Strabolikewise refers to stabbing and impalementof victims in sacred places; additionally, hespeaks of shooting victims with arrows (IV,4, 5), a method of particular note since thereis little evidence for archery as a normalmethod of killing in the Gaulish Iron Age.Stabbing, shooting and impaling are all‘penetrative’ deaths which involve spillingblood, and this may — as in the case ofGreek animal sacrifice — (Durand 1989, 90)have been central to the symbolismassociated with certain ceremonies. WhenStrabo elsewhere (VII, 2, 3) discusses ritesfollowed by the Germanic Cimbri, hedescribes how holy women cut the throatsof sacrificial victims and collected theirblood in great cauldrons. Another bloody,and very specific, sacrificial custom observedby Strabo concerns the Maenad-like tearingto pieces of one of their number by an all-female group of cult-officials who lived asecluded life on a sacred island off the mouthof the Loire (IV, 4, 6). The passage isespecially interesting both because theceremony is associated with an annual riteinvolving the re-roofing of a temple andbecause the sacrifice consists of a cult-official, perhaps a particularly efficaciousgift. Both Tacitus (Annals XIV, 30) andLucan (Pharsalia III, 372–417) refer to the‘drenching’ or ‘sprinkling’ of altars withhuman sacrificial blood in sacred groves.

Several Graeco-Roman writers allude tohuman blood-sacrifice in the context ofdivinatory ritual: Strabo (IV, 4, 5), Diodorus(V, 31, 3) and Tacitus (AnnalsXIV, 30) allspeak of consultation of the gods and offoretelling the future by studying death-convulsions or examining innards. In theseinstances, therefore, the sacrifice has a dual




purpose: it is both a gift to the divine powersand a means of communicating with them. Inaddition, it is likely that the blood itself hadparticular symbolic properties: for theGreeks, warm, flowing blood representedthe paradox of unity and polarity betweenlife and death (Durand 1989, 87–118) and theessence of liminality between the two statesof being.

For bodies which survive in thearchaeological record only as skeletons,identification as blood-sacrifice will seldombe possible: on rare occasions, there may becircumstantial evidence, such as thepresence, in or near the body, of penetrativeweapons like daggers or arrows. However,some of the well-preserved Iron Age bog-bodies from northern Europe do exhibitevidence of what may be interpreted asblood-sacrifice: the Grauballe man, who diedin the Roman Iron Age (Glob 1969, 37–62),had suffered a wound to his throat that had allbut severed his gullet; that he died terrified,rather than consenting, is indicated by thelook of pain and fear on his face (Glob 1969,39; Finlayet al. 1997, 6). Lindow II (Steadetal. 1986) had had his throat cut as well asbeing garotted.

Drowning, strangulation & burial alive

A passage in Book I of Lucan’s epic CivilWar poem refers to three Gaulish gods byname:

‘. . . and those who propitiate with horridvictims ruthless Teutates and Esus whosesavage shrine makes men shudder, andTaranis, whose altar is no more benignthan that of Scythian Diana’

(Pharsalia I, 444–446)

The ninth-century Bernese scholiast onLucan’s text (Zwicker 1934, 50) assignsdifferent methods of sacrificial killing to

these three deities: the burnt offeringsdeemed acceptable to Taranis werementioned earlier; Esus’ victims were hangedfrom trees; Teutates was appeased bydrowned human sacrifices. There is asuspiciously neat association of thesemethods with the elements of air, fire andwater, and so it is necessary to exercisecaution in reading too much into this lategloss on Lucan’s text. However, in thetreatise known as theGermania (XL),Tacitus also refers to drowning as part ofthe ritual associated with the Germanic earth-goddess Nerthus: the slaves who performedthe task of washing the holy cloth, whichapparently symbolized the divine presence,in a sacred lake were afterwards rituallydrowned in the water, because intimacy withthe goddess could be permitted only to thoseabout to die. Whether or not such killingconstitutes human sacrificesensu strictoisunclear, but Tacitus is certainly recounting avariety of ritual murder.

Death by suffocation, arguably within asacral context, can sometimes be inferredfrom archaeological evidence. The ritualimmersion of human bodies, whether in dryor wet locations, can be conceived as liminalplacement with the grave, pit or marshrepresenting the interstices between earthlylife and the Otherworld. The interment of asacrificial offering underground orunderwater involves both giving andseparation which, as indicated earlier, areessential factors in the definition of asacrificial act.

Some, although by no means all, thehuman pit-burials at Danebury (andelsewhere) may be considered as possiblecandidates for interpretation as humansacrifice. Such an explanation seemsparticularly likely in respect of the completeskeletons found alone, or in groups of two orthree, at the base of ‘disused’ grain silos.

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Cunliffe (1993a, 9–13) has estimated that onesuch burial took place on an average of aboutonce every six years during the period of the‘pit-tradition’ (eighth/seventh to first centuryBC). The ritual activity focused on corn-storage pits was complex, involving asequence of repeated, curated depositions ofhumans, parts of humans, whole orincomplete animals and inanimate objects,probably including organic material that hasnot survived (Cunliffe 1992, 69–83; 1993a,19). It is important to realise that theapparently secular business of storing seed-corn over the winter was probably an integralpart of a dynamic sequence of ritual actionand only one element in a multi-phasenetwork of cult-behaviour, reflecting acomplicated set of beliefs. In the presentcontext, the main interest lies in thedeposition in the pits of complete humanbodies. Apart from their presence, sometimesas multiple disposals, other features of theirinterment are suggestive of ceremonialpractice: the arms of some were placedtightly together, as if once bound; and somebodies were smashed and/or weighted downby large blocks of flint or chalk (Cunliffe1993a, 12–13). Neither element pointsunequivocally to sacrificial murder, but themode of deposition and the weighing downof bodies are identical to the treatmentaccorded some of the animal pit-burials andcould well reflect similar sacrificial practice.The smashing of the bodies could relate tosymbolic violence (see above), or even ritualcannibalism — perhaps — to insult or honourthe dead (Lewis 1996, 88–104). The paucityof erosion-deposits beneath most ‘special’human burials indicates that the bodies wereplaced in the pits only a short time after theirclearance.

If the human (and animal etc) pit-depositsdo reflect ritual — and perhaps sometimes —sacrificial activity, then the questions arise as

to criteria affecting victim-selection and themanner of sacrifice enacted. The associationbetween seed-corn and special burial arguesfor a link with fertility and crop-protection.The most likely purpose for sacrificialpractice in such a context is propitiation orappeasement of the supernatural powers inwhose keeping the corn was placed, in the‘threshold’ space between earth andunderworld, at what has been suggested asa liminal time, between harvest andgermination (Cunliffe 1993a, 21). Thesymbolic ‘death’ of the buried corn, followedby its ‘resurrection’ in the spring perhapswarranted particular ritual activity which wasdesigned both to ensure the continuance ofthe germination-process and as a means ofacknowledging the divine forces behindseasonal regeneration (Bloch & Parry 1982,1–44). The relationship between the victimsand the community can only be a subject ofspeculation; their rarity argues for some kindof specialness, perhaps reflective of a societalmarginality: selection could be on thegrounds of behaviour, lot, appearance,voluntary submission or some other featurewhich set them apart from their peers.

Certain other Iron Age dry burials fromBritain are suggestive of ritual practice,which may have involved sacrifice. Anembanked enclosure at the Curragh, Co.Kildare contained the skeleton of a woman,whose ‘strained and awkward position andunnaturally raised skull’ imply her burialalive (Raftery 1981, 173–204; 1994, 199).There is evidence for a ritual or punitivekilling, involving burial alive, at GartonSlack near Driffield in Yorkshire, where thebodies of a young man and woman werefound buried together, a wooden stakepinning their arms together into the ground;between the woman’s pelvis was a foetus,expelled from her womb just before her death(Brewster 1976, 115). Burial alive is itself




not necessarily indicative of human sacrifice,but may sometimes have been punitive: inRome, the punishment for Vestal Virginswho broke their vows of chastity was burialalive; the occurrence of this practice isrecorded as late as AD 90, in the reign ofDomitian, by the Younger Pliny (LettersIV,XI, 6–11; Adkins & Adkins 1996, 237–8).However, the live burial of Greeks and Gaulsby the Romans in the Forum Boarium atRome in the third century BC (see above)was undoubtedly a sacrificial act.

Pinning or weighting down human victimsof violent death, which has been observed,for example, at Danebury and Garton Slack,occurred also in the disposal of bodies inwatery contexts. The body of a young manwas found at Gallagh in Co. Galway in 1821.According to records made at the time ofdiscovery, he had long black hair and abeard, and wore a tight-fitting deerskingarment; at each side of the body was apointed stake, as if to act as a restraint, and aband of hazel wands at his throat may havebeen an actual (or symbolic) garotte. Recentanalysis suggests that the body belonged tothe later first millennium BC (Raftery 1994,187–88, pl. 77). Human bodies of Iron Agedate found in aquatic contexts at La Te`ne andat Cornaux in Switzerland were apparentlyweighted down with large timbers (Dunning1991, 366–368; Bradley 1990, 164), as werethe bodies of a fifty-year-old womandrowned on the site of a spring in the JutheFen bog in Denmark and of an adolescentgirl, immersed in a marsh at Windeby inSchleswig-Holstein, together with severalother Iron Age bog-bodies (Glob 1969, 70–100, 114). One of the stakes pinning the JutheFen woman down in the marsh-bed had beendriven through her knee-joint, the swelling ofwhich indicates that the victim was still alivewhen the injury was sustained. Tacitus(Germania XII) specifically mentions

pinning victims of punitive execution downin bogs using hurdles, but he does not suggestthat this action was anything to do withsacrificial ritual. Stephen Briggs (1995, 168–82) suggests that such hurdles could havesometimes been present with bog-bodiesbecause they had been used in rescue-attempts rather than deliberate killing, butthe large stone placed on top of the Windebygirl shows that this was not always the case;and if the idea of the stake was to aid theJuthe Fen woman out of the bog, then theattempt went sadly awry.

Several bodies from watery or marshygraves exhibit signs of garotting: the La Te`nebody had a rope around the neck, as did thosefrom Tollund and Borre Fen in Denmark(Glob 1969, 18–36, 90) and one of the twofrom Lindow Moss in Cheshire (Lindow II,dating to the first century AD: Steadet al.1986; Turner 1995, 10–18). The Gallaghbog-victim had a collar of woven hazel-withies; and the Windeby girl was naked butfor an ox-hide collar, which could have beena symbolic garotte but she, like the olderwoman from Juthe Fen, was probablydrowned. Some bodies (like the one fromGrauballe: Glob 1969, 48) show evidence ofthroat-cutting; Lindow II had had his throatcut in addition to the blows sustained to hisskull and his strangulation, though it wasprobably the latter which killed him; LindowIII (of second-century AD date) had beendecapitated, his head found some way fromhis body (Turner 1995, 34–5); it is not clearwhether he was beheaded or met his death bydrowning prior to decapitation.

None of the methods of killing illustratedby these bog-bodies in themselves constitutesufficient evidence to claim sacrificialactivity, but the ‘overkill’ factor present inthe treatment of some victims and the specialmeals ingested by Lindow II and III and byTollund Man (Holden 1995, 76–82; Turner

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1996, 34) are highly suggestive of anelaborate ritual sequence of events. Thequantity of crushed hazelnuts found in thegut of Lindow III may reflect a particularsymbolism associated with hazel(incidentally, he may have been selected asa ‘special’ victim on account of his vestigialsecond thumb); the Irish bog-body wore ahazel collar; a male victim from Windebyhad a hazel-withy around his neck (Glob1969, 166), and another Danish victim, froma bog at Undelev, was deposited with threehazel rods (Glob 1969, 68). It may or may notbe significant that a recently-discovered leaddefixio from Brandon in Suffolk (dated to thefourth century AD) refers to punishment —for the theft of an iron pan — in the form ofsacrifice (whether physical or symbolic) toNeptune, a Roman water-god, ‘with hazel’(Hassall & Tomlin 1994, 293–95). Suchrepeated association between hazel, waterand the arguably ritual disposal of bodies inthe Iron Age and Roman periods may becoincidental or be due to seasonal factors,such as availability of material, but it should,perhaps, not be forgotten that hazel, inassociation with water, possessed aprominent symbolic role in early Irish paganmyth (O’Faolain 1954; Green 1997, 109).

A curious feature of the body from LaTene is the apparent defleshing of the skull,which bore a number of knife-marks. Thesame treatment appears to have been metedout to the head of a teenage boy, of Romandate, from a pit associated with a ritualenclosure at Folly Lane, St Albans. In thesecond century AD, a small ‘Romano-Celtic’temple was built inside a ritual enclosure —which had been constructed in the mid firstcentury around a mortuary chamber andcremation-pit (Niblett 1992, 917–929;Haselgrove & Millett 1997, 283) — and aseries of pits was dug outside it: in the baseof one pit, probably synchronous with the

shrine, was the skull of a youth of about 15–18 years old. At least one of several injuriesto the head was sustained to living bone, butmore bizarre are the 90 cut-marks to the skullmade by a fine-bladed knife, which againseems to indicate defleshing (Mays & Steele1996, 155–61). The damage to the base of theskull is commensurate with its display on apole, and the absence of weathering issuggestive of such display having been ofshort duration or of having taken placeindoors, perhaps within the temple-building,before it was placed within the pit as a finalact of ritual. The blow to the head of a livingperson, followed by seemingly ritualtreatment, may involve human sacrifice,although the killing could be the result ofpunitive execution, followed by a ‘magical’ritual designed to neutralize harmful forces.The defleshing of the skull is interesting,although inconclusive to the sacrificialhypothesis: stripping the flesh from bonesmay occur for a variety of ritual purposes,most common of which is preparation forburial and (as in the case of excarnation: Carr& Knusel 1997, 167–73) to facilitate entryinto the spirit-world; such activity hasrecently been argued, for instance, as anexplanation for the defleshing of children’sbones found in the destruction-layers of abuilding at Knossos c. 1450 BC (Hughes1991, 18–24, 195). Defleshing is definitelynot, as is sometimes claimed, evidence forritual (or any other form of) cannibalism. It isinteresting, in the context of defleshing andsacrifice, that one of the female Danish bog-victims from Borre Fen (Glob 1969, 93) hadbeen scalped.

The special treatment accorded the skullsat La Tene and St Albans adds to a largevolume of evidence for the symbolicimportance attached to the human head inIron Age Europe, which is so well-documented to be almost commonplace.




Most frequently cited are the skulls placed inniches in southern Gaulish sanctuaries, suchas Roquepertuse and Entremont in the LowerRhone Valley, the carvings of severed headsfound here and elsewhere (Lambrechts 1954;Benoit 1969; Ross 1974, 94–171; Collis1984, 110–111) and the references to ritualhead-hunting made by some Classicalcommentators on late Iron Age Gaul (forexample Livy X, 26; Diodorus V, 29, 4;Strabo IV, 4, 5). If the Folly Lane skull isconnected with the temple nearby, then theassociation has a close parallel with the twoskulls set into thecella wall of a shrine atCosgrove in Northamptonshire (Quinnell1991, 4–66). Skulls also formed an importantcategory of human deposition in theDanebury pits (Cunliffe 1993b, 106–8).

Criminals and Prisoners-of-War

‘They [the Gauls] believe that the godsprefer it if the people executed have beencaught in the act of theft or armed robberyor some other crime, but when the supplyof such victims runs out, they even go tothe extent of sacrificing innocent men’

(Caesarde Bello GallicoVI, 16)

On the face of it, this is a curious statement:Caesar remarks that criminals were deemedthe most acceptable sacrificial victims to thegods, and that blameless men were second-best, subject to ritual killing only in the eventof a shortfall in the supply of malefactors: forsome reason, then, a guilty sacrifice wasconsidered especially efficacious. Diodorusmakes a similar reference to the choice ofcriminals:

‘And in pursuance of their savage waysthey manifest an outlandish impiety alsowith respect to their sacrifices; for theircriminals they keep prisoner for five years

and then impale them in honour of thegods’

(V, 32, 6)

A cynic might suspect an expediency-factorin operation: a human sacrifice of criminalsmight possess a double advantage in, at thesame time, ridding the community of itsundesirable elements and providingexpendable sacrificial victims to appeasethe gods. It is difficult, at first consideration,to apply the equation of human sacrifice withhigh value in such circumstances. However,thieves and murderers may have beenperceived as possessing special symbolism,either because they were individuals whowere marginalized within society or becausethey were thought to be inhabited bymaleficent spirits: thus the sacrifice of suchindividuals may have been seen as providinga potent (albeit negative) force of energy,channelled towards the gods of thecommunity. There is evidence for thesacrifice of lowly persons in other ancientsocieties: at Kerma in ancient Nubia (c. 1600BC), for example, the human sacrificesaccompanying royal burials have beeninterpreted as being of low status becauseof the paucity and poverty of their grave-goods (O’Connor 1993, 54–5), although thismay only reflect their rankrelativeto royalty.

As well as criminals, several Classicalwriters mention prisoners-of-war as favouredcandidates for human sacrifice: the passagein Strabo (VII, 2, 3) which refers to thecollection of sacrificial blood in cauldrons,identifies the victims as being war-captivesand describes how the entrails were studiedin a divinatory ritual designed to foretellvictory in battle for the sacrificers. Tacitus(AnnalsXIV, 30) refers to British prisonersin relation to human sacrifice on Anglesey inthe first century AD, Like malefactors, thestatus of war-captives as aliens and as

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enemies of the community might have beenrelevant to their fate. The sacrificers wereperhaps treating such victims like scapegoatsor pharmakoi (see below), cleansing theirterritory by means of the ritual murder ofthese outcasts.

An added complexity of literary testimonyfor Gaulish practice relates to the reference,in Diodorus’ statement (V, 32, 6), to the fiveyear period of captivity preceding thedispatch of sacrificial prisoners. There maybe a confusion here between sacrifice andpunitive execution, for it is documented thatthe great Arvernian ruler and freedom-fighterVercingetorix was captured by Caesar afterthe siege of Alesia in 52 BC and imprisonedin Rome for five years before being executedaccording to Roman law (King 1990, 52).Was Diodorus, perhaps, embroidering aGaulish religious practice with Romancustom, or was there a particular ritual reasonfor keeping prisoners over a certain periodbefore killing them? Two issues arise fromDiodorus’ statement: one is that it isimportant not to confuse the ceremonysometimes accompanying the death ofprestigious war-prisoners with humansacrifice; the second is Diodorus’ referral toa long time-gap between capture and killing,which seems reminiscent of the practice ofsetting male cattle aside for as long as adecade, after their use as traction-animals, forritual slaughter at the Iron Age sanctuary ofGournay (Brunaux 1988, 122). Thesignificance of symbolic time, in the contextof funerary ritual, is the subject of a recentpaper by John Pierce (1997, 174–180).

As far as the archaeological record isconcerned, whilst it may be evident — fromassociated material — that there is aconnection between the ritual treatment ofhuman bodies and warfare, it is oversteppingthe bounds of acceptable speculation tointerpret such human remains as the result

of sacrifice of prisoners-of-war. The eightyhuman bones at Gournay, which wereassociated with 3000 animal bones and morethan 2000 deliberately-broken weapons,show evidence of postmortemdismemberment and defleshing, which isbetter interpreted as part of funerary ritual;the same is true of the ‘ossuaries’ madepredominantly of human long-bones,representing 200 adults at Ribemont (Meniel1987, 101–43). The ‘sacrifice’ of weapons atboth Iron Age sanctuaries is highlyreminiscent of the ritual deposit of armscontained within the great wooden war-canoefrom Hjortspring (Randsborg 1995, 20–37),the weapon-deposits from watery sites likeLa Tene, the assemblage of weapons andchariot-fittings from Tiefenau, in theoppidum of Engehalbinsel near Berne(Muller 1991, 526–7), the ritually brokenweapons from Hayling Island (Downey, King& Soffe 1980, 289–304) and the spears frompre-Roman Uley (Woodward 1992, 66–7;Woodward & Leach 1993, 131–35). Sucharms-deposition also brings to mind Caesar’sdescription of Gaulish offerings to a war-godof battle-plunder (VI, 17). It may besignificant that, although Caesar doeselsewhere describe human sacrifice in Gaul(VI, 16), he does not mention it in connectionwith the sacral offerings of war-booty.

The references in the Classical texts — tothe sacrifice of malefactors and otherprisoners — could be relevant inconsideration of the selection of persons tobe accorded ‘special’ burial rites at placeslike Danebury. If it is correct to interpretthese bodies as belonging to people in someway marginalized within society, then it maymake sense to suggest that they wereindividuals who had in some waytransgressed against the rules of theirparticular community. They may not havebeen guilty of what — in western society —




is perceived as criminal behaviour; sacrilegeor another form of ‘taboo’-breaking couldwell be sufficient to condemn them.

The Scapegoat

The use of a scapegoat (Greekpharmakos)or ‘emissary victim’ as a purificatory device,which involved the ritual expulsion of achosen victim, was common to several citiesin ancient Greece, including Athens andsome Ionian towns, where such rituals werecarried out within the context of spring-ceremonies to avert disease. The victim wasdecorated, paraded and then cursed anddriven out, bearing the evils of thecommunity away with him. In mostinstances, there is no record of the actualdeath of thepharmakos(Hughes 1991, 139–65). This is strongly reminiscent of the Judaicscapegoat described in the Old Testament(Leviticus 16, vv 21–22), where the victimwas an actual goat, symbolically laden withsin and cast out into the wilderness.However, in two very similar accounts of ascapegoat ritual taking place in southernGaul, at Massilia, the victim is reported tohave been sacrificed. One episode,documented by Servius, is preserved in afragment of Petronius (Servius on VirgilAeneid III, 57; Petronius Fragment I; trans.Heseltine 1969, 386–87). According to thistext, whenever an epidemic broke out, a poorcitizen offered himself as apharmakostosave his fellow townsfolk. For a whole year,the self-selected victim was pampered withgood food provided by the Massilians; thenhe was crowned with leaves and clad in asacred robe before being led through the city,heaped with imprecations so that all the evilssuffered by the community were loaded ontohim. Finally, the victim was cast into the sea,thereby purifying the town. The secondaccount, which must relate to the same event,

is recorded in the commentary on Statius’Thebais(X, 793) by a glossator of 5th or 6thcentury AD date, known under the name ofLactantius Placidus (Hughes 1991, 139–65).In this second account, thepharmakoswasstoned to death outside the walls (Brunaux1988, 131–32). It may be that what we havehere is a deliberate distortion of a well-known ritual theme to suit a ‘barbarian’society: whilst the normative scapegoat ritein Greece did not involve actual killing, theperceived ‘otherness’ of Gaul may haveprompted the construction of a gloss ofsavagery on the part of the commentator.The custom of pampering ritual victims may,in part at least, be compensatory behaviour,but probably of greater importance was theperceived need symbolically to raise thestatus of the victim in order to enhance hissacrificial value.

Retainer sacrifice andsuttee

‘Although Gaul is not a rich country,funerals there are splendid and costly.Everything the dead man is thought tohave been fond of is put on the pyre,including even animals. Not long agoslaves and dependants known to havebeen their masters’ favourites were burnedwith them at the end of the funeral’

(Caesar VI, 19)

The practice of sacrificing individuals at thetime of a high-ranking person’s death is well-documented in the ritual culture of manycommunities in antiquity, for example withinthe Late Bronze Age to Middle Iron Age ofancient Mesopotamia (A.W.R. Green 1975,46, 79) and in the royal burials at Kerma inancient Nubia, in the northern Sudan duringthe second and first millennia BC (Connah1987, 37–8, fig. 3.3; O’Connor 1993, 54–5,fig. 4.2; Shinnie 1967, 150).

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Very occasionally, it is possible torecognize what it may be valid to interpret,at least tentatively, as retainer-sacrifice, oreven suttee in Iron Age Europe. DennisHughes argues (1991, 18–24) that claims forthe presence ofsutteein antiquity can only beconsidered if certain strict criteria are met:these include the need to sex and age theburials, the ability to establish simultaneity,evidence of violent death for the lesserburial(s) and the ability to establish ahierarchy of funerary provision. In myopinion, such criteria should not (and indeedcannot always) be too rigidly applied. ButHughes also issues a valid warning againstjumping to conclusions based purely onmultiple and coeval burials, arguing thatsuch material may relate to ‘grief-suicide’rather thansutteeor retainer-sacrifice. Someof the great ‘royal’ tumuli of the Hallstatt Dperiod have been found to contain principaland centrally-situated graves accompanied bylesser burials, usually identified as those ofattendants. An apparent example of suchpractice is the grave-mound at Hohmichele,in the vicinity of the Heuneberg strongholdnear Hundersingen, on the Upper Danube.When it was discovered, the large mainchamber had been robbed, but its sizesuggests that it was designed for two bodies;elsewhere in the mound were a number ofsecondary burials. More significantly, asecond large chamber was found to containthe remains of a man and woman, lying nextto each other on animal-pelts: on the basis ofthe grave-goods, these two were of equalrank, (Frey 1991, 75–92). The Hohmicheletomb-complex is of considerable interest forseveral reasons: both the original, robbedchamber and the intact second major gravewere each for double burials, which itselfbegs questions as to the coincidence ofdouble deaths or the possible presence of aform of suttee(whether male or female); the

likely relationship between the occupants ofboth chambers (whether or not they aresynchronous) is significant in its implicationeither for successive ‘dynastic’ burial or forthe retainer-sacrifice of high-rankingindividuals. Finally, the undoubted presenceof ‘low-status’ graves within the mound mayalso itself be evidence for a Kerma-likesacrifice of attendants.

In the Moselle region of Belgic Gaul, atHoppstadten-Weiersbach near Trier, there isevidence suggesting that an entire family wasinterred together in the late La Te`ne period(Wightman 1970, 242). This could reflect theeradication of a complete family-unit as theresult — perhaps — of an epidemic, but itcould also represent the practice, recorded byCaesar, of the killing of ‘favourites’alongside the deceased head of the familywhich, so he comments, only becameobsolete a short time before his arrival inGaul in 58 BC.

A curious funerary practice noted in IronAge Ireland (Raftery 1994, 199) may be theresult of some kind of retainer-sacrifice: thebodies of children, aged between five andnine years, quite frequently accompany thoseof adults; the majority of the children buriedin the cemetery at Carrowjames, Co. Mayowere associated with the bodies of fully-grown individuals. One possible explanationfor this pattern of interment is the humansacrifice of juvenile ‘retainers’, either ashelpmeets in the afterlife or in theexpectation that the family would continueto exist together across the liminal zone ofdeath. Recent excavations at Folly Lane, StAlbans (Niblett 1992, 917–929) haverevealed the presence of a complex funeraryritual associated with the lying-in-state andcremation of a high-ranking Catuvellaunian,who died in about AD 55. The grave was inthe centre of a ritual enclosure and, in theditch near the entrance, three inhumations




were laid, without grave-goods, on theunsilted ditch-floor. Definitive publicationof the site is still awaited, but it is perhapspermissible to suggest that the bodies in theditch — if contemporary with the centralcremation — might be present as the result ofretainer-sacrifice.

Children: sacrificing the future

The final category of sacrificial victim tobe considered here is children. The practiceof sacrificing infants and juveniles in honourof the gods arguably represents an act of‘ultimate concern’, for it involvesrelinquishing part of the future generation.The expectation has to be, therefore, that forsuch a practice to occur, exceptionalcircumstances must pertain associated,perhaps, with the aversion of impendingcatastrophe (epidemic, famine, annihilationby an enemy) or the perceived need toappease a powerful and capricioussupernatural power. In attempting to identifychild-sacrifice in the archaeological record, itis necessary to be careful not to confuse ritualkilling with either natural death orinfanticide. Neo-natal and stillborn mortalitymust have been not uncommon in Iron AgeEurope, as elsewhere in the ancient world.Simon Mays (1993, 883–8) has made aconvincing case for the practice ofinfanticide, as represented by infant-remainson some late Romano-British sites using, asan indicator, the presence of multiple peri-natal deaths.

There is a small amount of evidence inBritish Iron Age contexts for the disposal ofinfant-remains whose circumstances point tosomething other than natural death andnormal burial. The body of a child was foundjust outside the door of a circular ‘shrine’ atMaiden Castle, Dorset; this building wasreconstructed in the Roman period alongside

a rectangular ‘Romano-Celtic’ temple(Cunliffe 1991, 512). The apparently sacredcontext may indicate a ritual killing, althoughthe child may, of course, have been thevictim of natural death whose body was, forsome reason, placed in a consecrated spot. Asecond infant found in association with a lateIron Age or early Roman building at MaidenCastle (Sharples 1991, 101) is more likely tohave died naturally: in this instance, there isnothing to point specifically to sacrificialaction. But the interment of a legless child’sbody, wrapped in a cloth and deposited in apit at the Wandlebury (Cambridgeshire)hillfort, seems to reflect some kind of ritualpractice, if not human sacrifice (Cunliffe1991, 505; Hartley 1957, 1–28).

The interment of children in temple-contexts was a recurrent, though nevercommon, practice in Roman Britain: thebodies of infants come from postholesapparently forming a line of freestandingtimber uprights belonging to Roman levels atthe Springhead (Kent) temple-precinct; someof the postholes also contained ox- and horse-skulls, reinforcing a ritual interpretation forthe deposits (Isserlin 1997, 91–100). Fourother infant-burials, one decapitated (Penn1960, 121–2) were discovered beneath thestructure of Shrine IV at Springhead,suggesting their function as foundation-sacrifices. Eleanor Scott (1991, 116–117)has drawn attention to the presence of infant-burials in association with late Romano-British rural buildings, such as Barton courtFarm, Oxon and the Star villa, at Shipham inSomerset, particularly those identified ascorn-drying installations, which wereprobably concerned with malting: fourchildren were interred beside the walls ofan aisled building, which may have beenused for such a purpose, at Winterton,Lincolnshire. Scott’s thesis is that suchburials were placed as foundation-offerings

MIRANDA GREEN



in these structures as part of what she terms a‘revitalizing’ fertility ritual. Even here it isimpossible to point, with any certainty, tochild-sacrifice, although it is perhaps morelikely than dependence upon fortuitousnatural peri-natal deaths. Foundation-sacrifices were important because of theirassociation with the symbolism of enduranceand longevity (Burkert 1983, 39). It wasperhaps for this reason that a human bodywas placed in a trench associated with theconstruction of a Roman bridge at Aldwinclein Northamptonshire (Jackson & Ambrose1976, 46–7). It would be unwise to leap to theconclusion that the Aldwincle body belongedto a sacrificial victim; it may equally havebeen that of someone who died in an accidentwhile the foundations for the bridge werebeing laid and whose remains were interredon the site to avert ill-luck from the structure.As noted earlier in this paper, child-sacrificemay also have been present in Iron AgeIreland, for example at Carrowjames, wherechild-burials recurrently accompanied thoseof adults (Raftery 1994, 199).

The early Christian author Minucius Felix,writing in the late 2nd–early 3rd century AD,alludes to human sacrifice among certainpeoples (including the Gauls), and specifically(Octavius30, 1) to the North African ritual ofchild-sacrifice to Saturn (in fact a localdivinity conflated with the old Italianagriculture god). Although Felix was aChristian, who probably projected his distastefor pagan practices in a somewhat polemicaland exaggerated manner, there does appear tobe a body of evidence for Punic child-sacrificeamong the Carthaginians (Brown 1991).Cicero (De Re Publica3, 13–15), reproducingarguments of an earlier Greek, Carneades, alsospeaks of human sacrifice among Gaulish andPunic communities (Rives 1995, 65–85).

CONCLUSION

This paper has attempted to re-evaluatesome of the possible evidence for ritualmurder in later prehistoric Europe and, in sodoing, has sought to consider this evidence ina wider context of ritual activity in otherancient societies. The material culturedemonstrates the essentially equivocal natureof the remains of humans for whom thequestion of the mode of their ritual dispatcharises: it is quite impossible to point, withany degree of certainty, to the presence ofhuman sacrifice. We need, too, to be cautiousin the way we interpret the documentarymaterial, since Classical writers may wellhave embroidered their observations in orderto emphasize the ‘otherness’ of the aliencommunities on whom they commented.However, it must also be recognized thatour reluctance to admit the presence ofhuman sacrifice among Iron Age Europeanpeoples should be tempered by anacknowledgement that, in hierarchical andslave-owning societies where human life wasnot inevitably considered inviolate, thepractice of human sacrifice is not necessarilyout of the question. Finally, study of theritual systems followed by other societies ofantiquity demonstrates that human sacrificesometimes took place for a variety of reasonswhich may have been just as relevant toEuropean Iron Age communities.

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Professor Richard Bradley andDr Stephen Aldhouse-Green for reading andcommenting on a draft of this paper.

University of Wales College, Newport




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humans as ritual victims in the later ...arheo.ffzg.unizg.hr/ska/tekstovi/ritual_victims.pdfhumans...

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