Grisly Iron Age Scottish burial practice

[guy]

(Above scene from the movie “The Eagle”)

 

A 2,000‑year‑old burial in northern Scotland has revealed an unusually modified skeleton of an adult woman whose brain was likely deliberately removed and whose arm and leg bones were broken and whittled into sharp, tool‑like points.

 

 

Archaeologists discovered her remains—alongside those of a teenage boy—beneath a stone cairn near Loch Borralie. Cut marks inside the skull and a targeted fracture at its base suggest the brain was extracted shortly after death, possibly to preserve the skull for display or as part of a ritual that may even have involved cannibalism, though this remains uncertain. 

The woman’s remains date to roughly 2,000 years ago, specifically between 50 B.C.E. and 70 C.E., based on archaeological assessment of the burial at Loch Borralie in northern Scotland.  

 

 

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/reconnecting-the-dead-in-iron-age-britain-funerary-processing-and-longdistance-connectivity-at-loch-borralie-scotland/450BC6B98B6F1FECE3E42941F26C8619