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Comment by canjobear | Hacker News Reader

There is so much ambiguity in archeological finds. I buy the evidence here that these bodies were disposed of disrespectfully and publicly. But how do we know it was religious sacrifice? Maybe these were criminals and this was a standard punishment.

This was millenia ago in a culture that didn't write anything down. Who knows what anything was like then? To fill in the gaps we end up using our own modern biases and narratives. We like to think we're better and more rational than people in the past, so we attribute these mutilated bodies to a motive that we've moved on from (ritual sacrifice), rather than a motive we still have (judicial execution). To be fair, ritual sacrifice did happen in some cultures and was well documented, but who knows what was going on in this case?

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Interesting read, but I too would love to know more about how archeological conclusions are drawn.

For example I may be too picky but I'm always suspicious when I see percentages used for analyzing a sample of 25 individuals. In my opinion

  36% local
  32% southern Norway or Sweden
  20% western Mediterranean
  12% indeterminate

would be better stated as:

  9 local
  8 southern Norway or Sweden
  5 western Mediterranean
  3 indeterminate

Any judicial execution of a six year old would be nearly indistinguishable from ritualistic killing, IMO. The reasoning that, "they were outsiders, so they were killed" (whatever the guise of the killing) seems to match humans today pretty well, too (unfortunately).

It is pretty ambiguous. But I think the reason to believe in religious sacrifice is because there are also animals and other valuables there. The arrangement of the bones should tell you whether an animal has been killed and buried whole, vs. eaten. If you're burying sheep without eating them, religion seems more likely.

USA had documented lynchings six decades ago and those would be considered "sacrifices." No historian should really believe we are better and more rational, just lucked into different circumstances.

Judicial executions and ritual sacrifices were often mixed together as they both served social functions. In Rome's arenas, newly captured foreign tribesmen would be "sacrificed" in games along with local criminals.

Your point that lynching is just "ritual sacrifice" by a different name is valid. But I doubt the lynched would agree we lucked into better circumstances.

This could also have been a disposal pit for cursed sick people - perhaps they believed that by putting them in this particular spot they could not transfer the curse to anyone? That would explain why some bones more placed there after death.

There could be a ton of reason to do this, I too don't buy that this is sacrifice.

My mother who studied archaeology told me that her professor said it once up-front that when they don't have any clue what purpose something served, it's often labelled as used for religious reasons.

There are no recorded instances (AFAIK) of any behaviours like that in Britain in that time period.

OTOH we do know human sacrifice was practiced. [1] and [2] give a reasonable overview of what we do know.

Beware that there is some attempt to manufacture a controversy over human sacrifice in Britain. The Celts didn't keep written records of their practices, and Roman records are often interpreted as propaganda.

In my view, the combination of archaeological records[3] with the fact that those digs match the Roman records fairly well makes a compelling case.

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/british_prehistory/huma...

[2] http://news.nationalgeographic.com.au/news/2009/03/090320-dr...

[3] eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindow_Man#Interpretation

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