this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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Archaeology

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Archaeology or archeology[a] is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes.

Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time.

The discipline involves surveying, excavation, and eventually analysis of data collected, to learn more about the past. In broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Read more...

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Headless skeletons in China represent the largest known headhunting massacre from Neolithic Asia (www.livescience.com)
submitted 2 years ago by GreyShuck@feddit.uk to c/archaeology@mander.xyz
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Ancient headless skeletons recovered from mass graves in China are the remains of victims who were massacred around 4,100 years ago in headhunting events, including the largest on record from Neolithic Asia, a new study finds.

Headhunting is a practice of taking the heads of enemies as trophies. Surprisingly, all of the 41 headless skeletons analyzed by the researchers belonged to women and juveniles, according to anatomical analyses. It's possible that when rivals attacked the settlement, they targeted women and children, resulting in an "interpersonal conflict with a high level of cruelty," the researchers wrote in the study. It's also possible that interlopers used a "ritual of selective decapitation" when choosing their victims, the team wrote.

"Headless females and children, with evidence for cut marks on their neck vertebrae, are testament to the brutality exerted on these people," Charlotte Roberts, a professor emeritus of archaeology at Durham University in the U.K. who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email.

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[โ€“] No_Eponym@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 years ago

"Interpersonal conflict with a high level of cruelty."

"Brutality exerted on ...people."

Humans haven't changed much in 4000 years, huh?