A large mass grave from the Early Iron Age indicates selective violence towards women and children in the Carpathian Basin

Narratives about the motivations and conditions for mass violence as a persistent feature of conflict throughout human history have evolved in complexity and materiality. Victims of these events are key for understanding the evolution and transformative power of violent behaviour as it developed from simple intergroup conflict to more strategic mass violence. Here we present the results of a bioarchaeological study of 77 and biomolecular analysis of 25 individuals from a ninth-century BCE mass grave from Gomolava in the Carpathian Basin, Southeast Europe. The site is located at the interface of complex sociospatial relations, divergent cultural traditions and values, and competing ideologies of landscape use. We show that excessive lethal violence enacted mostly on women and children suggests a selective demographic bias. The people buried together shared few, even distant, genetic relationships, and so their killing presents striking evidence for an episode of cross-regional conflict and an underlying aggressive shift in power, violence and gender relations in the region. Gomolava provides evidence consistent with deliberate annihilation of select sections of a regional population as a motivation for mass violence behaviour in later prehistoric Europe. It also shines new light on the socioeconomic agency and importance of women and young individuals in later European prehistory.

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Publication Details

Journal
Nature Human Behaviour
Published
2026-02-23
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02399-9
Citations
2
Primary Topic
Ancient and Medieval Archaeology Studies
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
77.76
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article

A large mass grave from the Early Iron Age indicates selective violence towards women and children in the Carpathian Basin

Jovan Koledin, Lucas Anchieri, Jason E. Laffoon, Harald Ringbauer et al.
2 citations
Nature Human Behaviour
Ancient and Medieval Archaeology Studies
77.76
article

A large mass grave from the Early Iron Age indicates selective violence towards women and children in the Carpathian Basin

Jovan Koledin, Lucas Anchieri, Jason E. Laffoon, Harald Ringbauer, Sara Nylund, Caroline Bruyère, Cheryl A. Makarewicz, Barry Molloy, Robert Layfield, Alissa Mittnik, Barry Shaw, Saoirse Tracy, Dorothea Mylopotamitaki, Christine Winter‐Schuh, David van Acken, Anna Kjær Knudsen, Hannes Schroeder, Christopher Bronk Ramsey, Jazmín Ramos-Madrigal, Yuejiao Huang, Thomas Booth, Jonas Niemann, Neil J. Oldham, Linda Fibiger, Miren Iraeta-Orbegozo, Darko Radmanović, J. Stephen Daly
article en
2 citations

Abstract

Narratives about the motivations and conditions for mass violence as a persistent feature of conflict throughout human history have evolved in complexity and materiality. Victims of these events are key for understanding the evolution and transformative power of violent behaviour as it developed from simple intergroup conflict to more strategic mass violence. Here we present the results of a bioarchaeological study of 77 and biomolecular analysis of 25 individuals from a ninth-century BCE mass grave from Gomolava in the Carpathian Basin, Southeast Europe. The site is located at the interface of complex sociospatial relations, divergent cultural traditions and values, and competing ideologies of landscape use. We show that excessive lethal violence enacted mostly on women and children suggests a selective demographic bias. The people buried together shared few, even distant, genetic relationships, and so their killing presents striking evidence for an episode of cross-regional conflict and an underlying aggressive shift in power, violence and gender relations in the region. Gomolava provides evidence consistent with deliberate annihilation of select sections of a regional population as a motivation for mass violence behaviour in later prehistoric Europe. It also shines new light on the socioeconomic agency and importance of women and young individuals in later European prehistory.

Nature Human Behaviour
University College Dublin (IE), Leiden University (NL), University of Copenhagen (DK), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR), University of Nottingham (GB), Inserm (FR), Collège de France (FR), Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (FR), Klinički centar Vojvodine (RS), The Francis Crick Institute (GB), Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (DE), University of Oxford (GB), Max Planck - Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean (DE), Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (DE), Northern Ostrobothnia Hospital District (FI), Oxford Archaeology (GB), University of Lausanne (CH), University of Edinburgh (GB)
Gender equality
Openalex Percentile: Top 0%
Ancient and Medieval Archaeology Studies
77.76
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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