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would have caused immediate and permanent paralysis in the legs … The skull has a hole perhaps caused by a blow or wound. (R.W. Knight et al. , 1972: 14)
    In 1999 and 2000, the author, along with the archaeologist Dr Tyler Bell (Osgood and Bell, forthcoming), returned to this site to establish the context for these burials and to examine whether more material was present. Initial site work soon revealed that the gas pipe had, in fact, truncated a segment of a V-shaped Bronze Age linear ditch, into which the bodies had been thrown. The ditch was around 2.2m wide at the top and around 1.4–1.5m deep, of a type found in many areas of southern England in the Middle and Late Bronze Age. A great deal of skeletal material was recovered and, when combined with the collection recovered in 1968, was examined by the palaeopathologist Dr Joy Langston. She concluded that there were now at least four, and probably five, individuals represented by this sample. All were male and their ages ranged from around 11 years to late 30s.
    Table 1.1. Details of the Tormarton skeletons

    A radiocarbon date of 1315–1050 BC was obtained from the humerus of the oldest male; the interface of the Middle and Late Bronze Age. An interesting point is that only two of the bodies displayed weapon trauma although they were presumably all thrown into the ditch at the same time. An analysis of the mollusca within the ditch indicated that the ditch had been initially cut through recently cleared woodland and was promptly backfilled.
    The weapons used for this attack were clear, as parts of them are still embedded in their victims. A spearhead (the cross-section of which appears in the pelvis of Skeleton 1) was used to stab Skeleton 1 from behind. Another weapon was used on Skeleton 2; this man had again been speared from behind with such force that the spear passed straight through his pelvis, and snapped off when the assailant tried to remove the weapon, leaving it within the body. A spear thrust to the same man’s back had the same result with the weapon piercing the spinal column, a wound that would have resulted in the instant paralysis of the individual, and then becoming stuck – breaking off when the spear shaft was pulled to remove the weapon. If this was not enough, when this young man then fell to the ground as a result of his wounds, he was dealt a sharp blow to the side of his skull that would have killed him. It is possible that this was administered with the shaft butt (or ferrule) of the broken spear as the wound is circular.
    In both cases the wounds were inflicted from behind in a savage attack although others that may have left no trace on the skeleton might also have occurred – after all, the other individuals had no clear signs of weapon trauma. Why, though, were they attacked? It is my belief that the context is of great significance. The bodies were found in a linear ditch of a type that marked out territories and parcels of land in the Bronze Age, claiming areas for different groupings. The fact that these men were thrown into such a construction, which was then backfilled so soon after its cutting, may suggest that they were killed as part of a territorial dispute. One group had claimed the land and this claim had been disputed in the most violent of fashions.
    One final note is that Dr Peter Northover’s analysis of the metallurgy of the spear that ended up embedded in the back of Skeleton 2 pointed to the fact that the allotting of the tin and copper to form the bronze had originally taken place somewhere in the Alps. The spear itself was formed from this metal once the alloy had arrived in Britain. As such, it serves to indicate the long-distance trading of precious materials in this phase of prehistory (Northover, in Osgood and Bell, forthcoming).
    UNKNOWN WARRIOR 2
    The body of a man killed in a territorial dispute at Tormarton
    This man had suffered a brutal attack, probably in a territorial dispute, in