Chapter 2
The O ldest C ri mes
Prehistoric crime–problems
Even before people learned how to read and write, they were certainly
committing crimes, and the evidence for some of these is still with us.
Archaeology can only reveal a tiny fraction of such incidents. In most
circumstances, little remains of the lives of prehistoric people apart from some
stone tools, pottery sherds and bones. It is usually only the bones that can tell
us about crime during the many thousands of years between the development
of our species into modern humans, and the beginnings of literacy. We can
presume that there must have been thefts and robberies, arson and rape,
assault and fraud, but we simply do not have the proof, and never can have
unless there are very exceptional circumstances of preservation.
Nevertheless, there is a tiny amount of evidence for possible assaults and
murder in prehistoric and early societies. Only possible, because we are
faced with an enormous set of problems in deciphering what happened from
the shreds of fact that we can recover. There is evidence of armed attack on
settlements in Neolithic Britain 5,000 years ago or so– burned houses,
spreads of arrowheads showing attacks on gates in defensive ramparts of
enclosures such as Carn Brae in Cornwall and Crickley Hill in
Gloucestershire, and even sometimes the bodies of the slain. The problem
comes in trying to decide whether these attacks werecriminal. A mass
grave, with a large number of victims, would suggest that we are looking at
the evidence of a massacre or the aftermath of a battle (in which case the
deaths could be categorised as the result of an act of war) or the resting
place of victims of a sudden deadly epidemic. An alternative suggestion,
which could apply also to single graves, is that we are looking at some sort
of ritual sacrifice or slaughter. Study of the damage to the bones can help
sometimes to distinguish which explanation is most likely. It is not normally
the case that a criminal act would result in the deaths of a large number of
people at once (although of course it can and does happen–in cases of
arson, for example).