The late LBK period around 5000 BCE saw concentrated violence unlike earlier Neolithic eras. Prof. Furholt cautions against viewing this through modern Western frameworks of warfare. The diverse mortuary treatments suggest communities recognized they'd crossed cultural boundaries, inventing justifications on the spot. This was ritualized behavior, deeply embedded in society.
Neolithic crisis and cultural norms breakdown in late LBK
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Key facts
- Late LBK period around turn of 6th millennium BC shows concentrated violence described as a 'crisis'
- Furholt argues warfare model assumes Neolithic people were guided by worldview similar to Western rationality
- Variety of mortuary treatments across sites suggests people recognized they had stepped beyond normal cultural bounds
- Different groups invented justifications on the spot to normalize their behavior
- Peak concentration of violence in this era is not normal for the broader Neolithic period
- Patterns may reflect ritualized, intentional, deeply embedded social practices rather than single catastrophic events
Sources
Talheim Death Piten.wikipedia.org
It is most likely that the violence occurred among LBK populations since the head wounds indicate the use of weapons from LBK cultures and all skeletons ...
(PDF) Beating Ploughshares Back into Swords: Warfare in the ...researchgate.net
Linearbandkeramik (LBK) people first attacked the hunter-gatherers they encountered and then entered a period of increasingly violent warfare against each other ...
The massacre mass grave of Schöneck-Kilianstädten reveals ...pnas.org
by C Meyer · 2015 · Cited by 235 — At least 26 individuals were violently killed by blunt force and arrow injuries before being deposited in a commingled mass grave.
LBK massacres – who killed whom? - Armchair prehistoryarmchairprehistory.com
by E Pegler · Cited by 1 — Is the violence of the LBK culture, in Northern Europe's Neolithic, due to warfare between villages or violence within villages?
Patterns of Collective Violence in the Early Neolithic of Central Europeacademia.edu
LBK, which are mainly characterised by haphazard body positions, the absence of grave goods, and, in most cases, obvious signs of perimortem lethal violence.
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