How do you solve a Stone Age murder mystery? First, identify the weapon.
Archaeologists in the United Kingdom are turning to forensic methods to understand violence in the Neolithic period.
In experiments described in the journal Antiquity yesterday (Dec. 7), researchers used a replica of a 5,500-year-old wooden club to see what kind of damage they could inflict on a model of a human head. They found that such clubs were indeed lethal weapons.
Archaeologists have found ample evidence of violence in Western and Central Europe during the Neolithic period, through burials of people who had skull fractures—some healed, some were fatal —from an intentional blow to the head. But it was often unclear where these injuries came from.
“No one was trying to identify why there was blunt-force trauma in the period,” said study leader Meaghan Dyer, a doctoral student at the University of Edinburgh. Read more.
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