Exclusive: Slaughtered bodies stripped of their flesh – a gruesome glimpse of Iron-Age massacre at UK’s largest hill fort
Best not to fall out with anyone in this part of Somerset. It sounds like they come from nasty stock as this story of their ancestors tells us:
Excavations in Somerset have revealed a gruesome glimpse of Iron-Age Britain. Archaeologists have discovered evidence of a massacre involving hundreds, if not thousands of people, with some of the slaughtered bodies being stripped of their flesh or chopped up.
Human remains unearthed from an ancient site near Yeovil have cut marks, often in multiple rows, and occurring at the ends of important joints. “It is as if they were trying to separate pieces of the body”, according to Dr Marcus Brittain, the Cambridge archaeologist and head of a major excavation of Britain’s largest Iron-Age hill fort, Ham Hill.
Defleshing signs have been found on other Iron-Age human remains, but the scale of the evidence at this site is particularly dramatic, he said.
Ham Hill is so vast – the size of 123 football pitches surrounded by Iron-Age ramparts – that only a small part has so far been excavated. It is clear from the remains discovered that there are “hundreds, if not thousands of bodies” buried in the site, Dr Brittain told The Independent. “It’s unusual to find this number of bodies on any site, let alone from the Iron Age.”