US EditionStudy Reveals 2,800-Year-Old Massacre of Women and Children at Serbian Mass Grave
Researchers found 77 victims mostly women and children with violent injuries, indicating a deliberate massacre linked to sociopolitical conflicts over land and power, study says.
- On February 23, researchers reported that a ninth-century B.C. burial pit at Gomolava in what is now Serbia contained 77 individuals dated to roughly 2,800 years ago, with remains curated at the Museum of Vojvodina, Novi Sad and analyzed in Nature Human Behaviour.
- Researchers link the killings to clashes between mobile pastoralists from the Eurasian steppe and the semi-sedentary farming community associated with Gomolava over land use between 8,000 and 9,000 years ago.
- Forensic tests show skeletal analysis and trauma findings reveal unhealed close-contact head injuries, defensive wounds and projectile trauma, while DNA and tooth enamel protein analysis and isotope ratios establish sex, ancestry and childhood origins.
- The burial included personal possessions, bronze jewellery, ceramic drinking vessels, and butchered calf grave offerings, while genetic and isotopic findings showing lack of close kinship suggest a community-wide monument; researchers propose the funeral rites differed from the killers to assert dominance.
- Led by Edinburgh and partners, the study overturns pandemic explanations and reveals unprecedented targeted killings of women and children in early Iron Age Europe.
26 Articles
26 Articles
Iron Age massacre targeted women and children, new research reveals
New research has revealed that women and children were deliberately targeted in one of the largest prehistoric mass killings discovered in Europe. Archaeological investigations at the Gomolava burial sites in northern Serbia uncovered a grave containing the remains of more than 77 individuals, most of them women and children.
Ancient mass graves indicates targetted violence towards women and children
A newly published study reports one of Europe’s largest known single-event prehistoric mass graves and concludes the victims were not killed indiscriminately. Instead, researchers argue the ninth-century BC burial at Gomolava in northern Serbia points to selective, lethal violence that disproportionately targeted women and children during a period of political and social upheaval in the Carpathian Basin. The researchers examined the bodies of 77…
The Independent
The Independent (US)Bid to solve prehistoric mystery of mass grave filled with 77 human bodies and a cow
How archaeologists are seeking answers to a tragic 3,000 year old enigma
Experts claim that so far no such event had been documented in the Iron Age and that, far from being the result of a conventional conflict, it was raised as a tool for 'disarticulating communities'
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