And it probably helped with the smell.Īt some sites in southern France, archaeologists have found pillars or lintels where severed heads might have been displayed, but they have found no physical evidence of the kind of embalming described in the ancient texts-until now. Some archaeologists speculate that embalming may have kept those famous facial features recognizable, at least for a while. “They never gave back the head belonging to the most famous and brave person, even for an equal weight of gold,” both historians wrote. The heads of especially famous foes became prized items for the community. He described Celtic fighters claiming the heads of the bravest and most renowned of their defeated enemies after a battle, then carrying them home to be embalmed and displayed. The 1st-century BCE Greek historians Diodorus and Strabo both recorded the account of a Greek traveler to southern France around 100 BCE. Scrape marks on the undersides of some of the skulls’ lower jaws suggest that ancient embalmers may also have removed the tongues.
On some of the skulls, bone had been chipped, cut, or scraped away to widen the foramen magnum-the hole at the back of the skull where the spinal cord enters-probably to remove the brain. Many of the bones bear the telltale cut marks of decapitation but also evidence of the work that went into preparing these grisly trophies for display. They were mingled with weapons, coins, and broken pottery in a layer dating to 300 to 200 BCE, when the town was an Iron Age Celtic community. The fragments of at least a hundred human skulls lay buried in an open area just inside the town’s walls. According to those texts and sculptures, it’s likely that the skulls belonged to defeated enemies. That suggests that the heads had been embalmed with resin and plant oil before being displayed at the settlement, a practice described in ancient Roman texts and portrayed in sculptures at other Celtic sites across southern France. 2019 reader comments 44 withĪrchaeologists found microscopic traces of conifer resin and plant oils on bone fragments from skulls scattered just inside the walls of Le Cailar, a 2,500-year-old walled settlement near the Rhone River in southern France.
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