Linda Fibiger (Edinburgh, UK) ‘ ‘Transgression': Bioarchaeological approaches to gendered violence in prehistoric Europe’.

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Dr Linda Fibiger, Senior Lecturer in Human Osteoarchaeology, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh.

Throughout human history narratives about the motivations and conditions for mass violence as a persistent feature of conflict evolve in complexity and materiality. The victims of these events, and a careful consideration of their skeletal remains, hold the key to understanding the evolution and transformative power of violent behaviour beyond simple inter- or intra-group conflict. At the same time, mass grave sites also serve important functions in the creation and direction of social memory. In European prehistory, demographically biased graves are more frequently weighted towards male casualties, presumably due to their preferential involvement in violent interactions. A recently re-analysed Early Iron Age mass grave of a genetically heterogenous group of mostly women and children, characterised by excessive lethal violence, highlights a complex shift in power and gender relations in later European prehistory – one that introduces the brutal and targeted annihilation of select sections of a population into the canon of mass violence behaviour.