A heap of skulls found in the center of a prehistoric village has revealed evidence of an unusual ritual tradition associated with the dead that appears to have been practiced for centuries, a study reports.
The paper discusses an investigation into the site of Masseria Candelaro, in southeastern Italy, which was first occupied in the early 6th millennium B.C. around the beginning of the region’s Neolithic period.
“We investigated Masseria Candelaro because we are studying how prehistoric people interacted with the dead between the Neolithic to the end of the Bronze Age in Italy,” study lead author Jess Thompson, with the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, told Newsweek.
“Masseria Candelaro is an important site as it sits in a region of southeast Italy which was densely occupied from the beginning of the Neolithic. It was a large village that was occupied over at least half a millennium and toward the end of its use was mostly reserved for burial.”
Surrounding sites in the area feature an intriguing array of funerary practices between around 6000-5000 B.C., suggesting diverse rites for remembering, grieving and disposing of the dead.
“At Scaloria Cave which is quite nearby, a large number of disarticulated fragments presented very fine cut-marks caused by removing the last strips of soft tissue, and there’s also evidence of de-fleshing as well as removing bones from burials at the nearby village of Passo di Corvo,” Thompson said.
But Neolithic people at Masseria Candelaro appear to have deposited broken skull bones—crania and mandibles—from several individuals in a heap at the center of the village in an intriguing ritual tradition, according to the study.
“These individuals were mostly probable males, collected over the course of two centuries and actively used, with their deposition marking the final disposal of a ritual collection,” the authors reveal.
The cache of skulls was originally uncovered by archaeologists during excavations that occurred between the 1980s-1990s. Previous studies had estimated the age and sex of these remains, and suggested that they represented at least a dozen individuals.
The latest research, however, has increased this number to at least 15 individuals, while also revealing insights into where the people might have come from, how long it took to amass the skulls, and how they might have been retrieved and interacted with before being buried as part of this collection.
The study involved an examination of the bone fragments themselves, which revealed—among other finds—that they had likely been broken some time after death.
The team also conduced “stable isotope analysis of the bones. Isotopes are atoms of the same element that have the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons. Different plants and animals have distinct isotope signatures. By analyzing them, researchers can determine what types of food people or animals in the past consumed.
In this case, the analysis was used to assess whether the individuals represented by the skull bones originated from a coastal or a more inland area. The results indicated that the people had likely come from the local, inland area.
Finally, the researchers conducted radiocarbon dating work on some of the remains, combining this with information from the stratigraphy (the sequence of burial) and dates for other materials found in the area.
This revealed that the deposition of the skull bones took place in the mid-6th millennium B.C.—and that the remains represent people who died over period of about two centuries. This indicates that the bones were gathered over multiple generations—perhaps six to eight—before being placed in the heap at the possible rate, on average, of one cranium every decade or so.
The nature of the skull cache is “unique” in Neolithic Italy for two main reasons, according to Thompson. First, the number of individuals represented is particularly high and, second, they were placed in a re-purposed settlement space.
“The most surprising find was the long duration over which they were curated,” Thompson said. “Since most of the crania were placed simultaneously as one event, it is intriguing that radiocarbon dates from just three of the crania show they were taken from people who had died over a span of up to two centuries.
“This suggests that the crania had been kept in circulation above ground for a long time, and some may even have been taken from burials that were already ancient.
“There is no specific evidence regarding what people might have been doing with the bones that they curated but it’s possible they could have been displayed.”
A handful of villages in the surrounding areas had human bones deposited around the site. And at a couple of nearby villages, cranial fragments were buried around huts.
“All of this adds up to suggest that sometimes groups of crania could have been kept around certain areas of villages when they were in use and either put on display or hidden from view,” Thompson said. “Overall, we think that human bone had a specific kind of meaning and perhaps was understood to be a powerful material, given the regularity with which it was interacted with and also disposed of.”
“It turns up enough in settlement sites that it seems as though people would have encountered human bone quite often.”
In this region, removing crania from burials appears to have been relatively common during the Neolithic. They were presumably circulated, handled and sometimes redeposited.
“Once collected, these crania were used; their extensive breakage and wear shows that they were frequently handled, perhaps regularly passed around between group members and houses,” the authors wrote in the study.
At Candelaro, it seems that the remains of the ancestors were not carefully treated but instead were actively used with little concern for their preservation.
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Reference
Thompson, J. E., Panella, S., Soncin, S., McLaughlin, R., Muntoni, I. M., Alhaique, F., Candilio, F., Sperduti, A., Knüsel, C. J., Tafuri, M. A., & Robb, J. E. (2024). The Use-Life of Ancestors: Neolithic Cranial Retention, Caching and Disposal at Masseria Candelaro, Apulia, Italy. European Journal of Archaeology, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1017/eaa.2024.43
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