Socialized violence: contextualizing violence through mortuary behaviour in Iron Age Britain

Abstract

The Iron Age of Britain was a dynamic period on the cusp of history and prehistory, c. 750 BC to AD 43 (Brown 2009: 4; Cunliffe 2004: 32; Haselgrove et al. 2001). It can be further separated into three phases: Early Iron Age, c. 750 BC to 400 BC; Middle Iron Age, c. 400 BC to 100 BC; and Late Iron Age, c. 100 BC to first century AD (Cunliffe 2004: 32; Brown 2009: 4). The study of violence during this period has had the opposite historical trajectory to most other anthropological studies of violence. Rather than a peaceful egalitarian period, it was initially described as an era of endemic violence. Violence here is defined as “the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, mal-development, or deprivation” (World Health Organization 2012). Enclosed settlements were identified as defensive structures and elaborate weapons were assumed to be tools of war. As post-processual theories developed, sites and weapons were reinterpreted as ritual symbols, effectively pacifying the Iron Age of Britain. This led to a dearth of thorough treatments of violence in the literature (for discussion of these shifts in interpretation see Armit 2007, 2011: 502; James 2007). Recently, however, there has been a growing body of literature addressing the topic of violence and warfare during the Iron Age (e.g. Aldhouse-Green 2004, 2005; Armit 2007, 2011; Craig et al. 2005; Finney 2006; Giles 2008; Redfern 2006, 2008a, 2009). Although multiple lines of evidence exist for studying violence during the Iron Age, thesettlement, architecture and artefact data are often ambiguous. The presence of swords, spears, shields, and slave chains suggest that objects of violence were produced during the Iron Age. However, whether the weapons were used in active combat or remained symbolic representations with complex connotations remains a debate. Some of the weapons found within graves and in votive deposits appear to be highly stylized and, especially with regard to the shields, not functionally sufficient for combat (Fitzpatrick 2007). Due to the often ambiguous nature of the material culture, the skeletal evidence from thisperiod may provide the best way of addressing the subject of violence. When the skeletal data are coupled with mortuary behaviour indicated by the burial context, grave goods, and taphonomic processes, the social/cultural contexts of warfare and violence can be studied. Ultimately, it is the community that decides the role of the combatant or victim and theproper way to deal with their deaths (Vencl 1984: 127). It is the surviving community that buries the dead and creates the burial record unearthed by archaeologists. It is from this perspective that this chapter approaches the topic of Iron Age violence andseeks to contextualize the skeletal evidence through mortuary ritual. By comparing evidence from two distinct regions (East Yorkshire and Hampshire), this work illustrates not only differences in these areas, but also the intriguing similarities. In particular, the analysis of two cemetery contexts (Wetwang Slack, East Yorkshire and Suddern Farm, Hampshire) provides a contrast to other types of mortuary context that appear in Hampshire and central southern Britain during this time. When all of the evidence is taken together, it suggests a connection between violence and special burial contexts.