Dying for the Gods: Human Sacrifice in Iron Age and Roman Britain. - book review

Folklore, April, 2003 by Juliette Wood

By Miranda Aldhouse-Green. Stroud: Tempus, 2001. 224 pp. Illus. 25.00 [pounds sterling] (hbk). ISBN 0-7524-1940-4

This is a timely and elegant volume on a popular and controversial subject. Not so long ago, scholarship was at pains to demonstrate that Iron Age peoples were not given to sacrificing their fellows to appease the gods every time the wind changed. Grunting barbarians seemed likely to give way to proto-Enlightenment philosophes with an interest in science and art who possessed a complex and humanistic culture. Pendulums, alas, never stay still. As mounting evidence suggests that human sacrifice had been practised in the ancient world, hardly a grave is excavated nowadays without someone, usually in a television special, speculating on sacrificial rituals. This makes Professor Aldhouse-Green's sensible study all the more useful in that it combines in one volume a comprehensive review of the material, a scholarly evaluation of the theories, and a number of suggestions about the motivation, function and mindset that surround sacrificial rituals.

The scope of the book encompasses Europe during the Iron Age and Roman periods. The author is quite clear about the problems inherent in the subject. It is difficult, and frequently impossible, to distinguish between ritual behaviour towards bodies after death and outright sacrificial killing. In addition, it is seldom clear in Iron Age sacrificial contexts (as opposed to classical ones) to whom the actual sacrifices were made. Was there a difference between votive offering (of objects) and destruction of living beings? Offerings (whether votive or sacrificial) seem to imply an idea of reciprocity. From a modern perspective there is an immense difference between inanimate and human offerings, but this may not have been so in other periods. All these problems are made even more complex due to the text-free nature of the archaeological record at this period.

Nevertheless, Aldhouse-Green sets out to clarify even where she cannot solve the problems. For example, she emphasises the importance of place, rather than the presence of a specific deity, in relation to sacrifice. This is particularly relevant to the placement of bodies in bogs or in settlements. Modern Western thinking tends to a personalised divinity, but it is quite possible in other contexts that no specific deities were invoked or that the deity and the place became identified. The author seems to favour the latter view, but of course a body with evidence of ritual murder placed deliberately in a particular context may still hold few clues to the ritual that surrounded it or to the deities, if any, to whom the ritual was directed. Such judicious caution is very welcome.

The study begins with a consideration of the nature of sacrifice. Aldhouse-Green surveys current thinking on reasons for human sacrifice, but never loses sight of the difficulty that modern society has in fully understanding the religious sanctions for such actions. As with any philosophical investigation, there is a wide range of possible definitions, and the problem is made all the more difficult by the fact that one must take on an ancient and alien worldview. Classical sacrifices recorded in written documents can provide some clarification, as can material from other cultures. Sacrifice--even human sacrifice--may have functioned within a system of values in which individuals who were somehow marginal were selected for rites aimed to avert harm or attract benefit. Alternatively, sacrifice may have been a voluntary process by individuals with special status. The bulk of the study covers archaeological instances of possible sacrifice. Some of the material is well known and has already been the subject of extensive discussion, such as the bog bodies from Denmark and Lindow Man from Britain. Less well known are the striking seated burials from Acy-Romance in the Ardennes, which date to the second century B.C. While clear direct evidence is absent, circumstances point to ritual murder and subsequent interment. One possibility is that these were prisoners, a state of affairs that would tend to support classical comments about the use of prisoners as sacrifices in Gaul at this period. There are substantial sections on other important topics related to sacrifice, such as the archaeology of the head, and the importance of a priesthood in ritual murder. Now that the topic is on the agenda again, this is a welcome survey.

Juliette Wood, Cardiff University, UK