An Early Bronze Age Massacre at Shamanka II, Lake Baikal, Southern Siberia скачать в хорошем качестве

An Early Bronze Age Massacre at Shamanka II, Lake Baikal, Southern Siberia

Prof. Rick Schulting (University of Oxford), Lethal violence among Late Holocene huntergatherers: an Early Bronze Age massacre at Shamanka II, Lake Baikal, southern Siberia Abstract: The importance of interpersonal violence among hunter-gatherers is much-debated. While there is no question that lethal violence does occur, its frequency and context are much less clear. Homicides are well documented among some foragers but there is little sense of organised, inter-group conflict. Conversely, large-scale, inter-group conflicts are well attested among other groups. The charge that this evidence is biased by the often-volatile situations created by European contact and colonial expansion, while perhaps valid in some contexts, can be easily refuted in many others by recourse to the archaeological record. As a contribution to this debate, I present a case study from Lake Baikal, southern Siberia. The majority of the 13 individuals found in 11 Early Bronze Age graves at the cemetery of Shamanka II, dating to 3880­­–3720 cal BP, show extensive evidence for perimortem trauma, including projectile injuries and both sharp- and blunt-force cranial trauma. This concentration of evidence for extreme violence is unique in the Baikal region, and is extremely rare for prehistoric hunter-gatherers worldwide. Radiocarbon dating in conjunction with Bayesian modelling is used to assess the likelihood that a single event is represented, and its implications are considered. Speaker Bio: Rick Schulting is Professor of Scientific and Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Oxford. His research interests include the transition to farming in western Europe, and evidence for social differentiation among hunter-gatherers and early farmers. He makes extensive use of stable isotopes to reconstruct diets and radiocarbon dating to provide robust chronological frameworks, with applications in Europe, Chile, The Bahamas and southern Siberia. Another research thread involves skeletal evidence for violence in small-scale societies in prehistory. Seminar Series & Date: Garrod Research Seminar, 10th November 2022