Pit of Amputated Arms in France from 6,000 years ago Suggest War and Trophy-Taking

About 6,000 years ago in France some hostiles in an apparent act of warfare and trophy-taking killed a group of adults and children, amputated their arms and buried the limbs in a circular pit underneath some other bodies. It was a common practice to bury people in circular pits at the time in a large area of Europe, but this gruesome case stands out from the rest as the only one with violence done to those buried.

French researchers from various institutions wrote the article “A farewell to arms: a deposit of human limbs and bodies at Bergheim, France, c. 4000 BC” in the journal Antiquity (abstract). The researchers are Fanny Chenal, Bertrand Perrin, Hélène Barrand-Emam and Bruno Boulestin.

The people who attacked the victims fractured their arms and chopped them off, then apparently buried those limbs in a layer in the pit underneath some other skeletons, all of which had their arms except one. The upper layer also contained a fragment of an infant’s cranium.