Broken bodies in Domestic Spaces: Direct and Structural Violence in an Atypical Mortuary Dataset from Iron and Viking Age Scandinavia

Abstract A major challenge for the understanding of violence in the past is that our main source of evidence comes from cemeteries, but a significant proportion of the victims of violence are not buried in cemeteries. Iron and Viking Age Scandinavia (c. 500 BCE –1050 CE ) is infamous for its emerging warrior ideology and hegemony of violence. Yet, somewhat counter-intuitively, trauma rates have typically been found to be relatively low in cemetery populations. Not everyone was afforded formal burial in cemeteries, however. The BODY-POLITICS project examines a previously neglected mortuary dataset: disarticulated and semi-complete human remains deposited in and around domestic spaces such as longhouses, pits, wells, postholes, and hearths. We report on 12 individuals inscribed with 19 ante- and perimortem traumatic injuries, analysed through osteological, bimolecular and digital imaging methods. The unusual post-mortem history of these individuals, set within a historical context of raiding, enslavement, and ritual violence including potential ‘human sacrifice’, allows us to explore multiple scenarios for inflicted injuries: war-like events (extra-community violence), interpersonal and domestic violence (intra-community violence), and ritual violence. Finally, by integrating trauma patterns, mortuary treatment, and contextual information, we discuss the broader life histories of these individuals and argue that some may have been vulnerable to structural, ‘slow’ violence that compounded over the lifecourse. This study thus contributes to broader discourse on direct and structural violence towards potentially marginalised people, as well as connections between ritualised violence and divergent mortuary pathways.