Dismembered human remains from the "Neolithic" Cârcea site (Romania)
Dismembered human remains from the "Neolithic" Cârcea site (Romania)

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of this article is to study the osteological remains of some individuals discovered in the "Neolithic" site from Cârcea ("La Viaduct" and "La Hanuri" settlements). For this, we studied the human skeletal representation, and the taphonomic history of the assemblage. This analysis highlighted that the skulls and long bones (in different degrees of fragmentation, "cut" and some showing evidence for contact with fire) are the only represented skeletal elements. In the case of 10 individuals the results highlighted that the bones undergone certain processing stages, due to probably perimortem human action. The evaluation of the archaeological sample was made in the light of forensic and taphonomic analysis conducted on modern cadavers, and by comparison with similar archaeological discoveries. Unfortunately, it is not easy to determine what happened to the initial bodies of these individuals so that in the end only certain (fragmentary) body-parts were found, and finally "deposited" in a ditch and in pits. The proposed explanation is that the bones were processed in a desired manner for specific reasons, one of them being that of cannibalism.

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