Headless Neolithic Skeletons Uncovered in Slovakia

KIEL, GERMANY—Headless skeletons have been discovered in a ditch at Vráble, a Neolithic site in southwestern Slovakia occupied between 5250 and 4940 B.C., according to a Live Science report. Traces of more than 300 houses grouped into three neighborhoods have been found at Vráble. The ditch containing the skeletons, including four pairs of people and a mass burial of at least 77 individuals, surrounded one of these neighborhoods. Only one child’s skeleton in the group retained its head. Cut marks made with sharp tools found on the bones indicate that the bodies had been decapitated, but the beheading is thought to have been a postmortem ritual, and not an act of violence, said Katharina Fuchs of Kiel University. No lower jaws were recovered, suggesting that the heads had been kept intact. Neck vertebrae were found along the ditch wall, however, and may have been placed there after the heads of the dead had been removed. Because none of the heads has been found, it is not clear what sort of postmortem rituals may have been practiced, but Fuchs and her colleagues think that burying bodies in a ditch surrounding the neighborhood may have been a way to claim it for the residents and their ancestors. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. To read about burials previously found at the site, go to "Neolithic Mass Grave Mystery."

Mass grave in excavated ditch, Vráble, Slovakia

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Original author: Jessica Esther Saraceni