Archaeologists have uncovered evidence of a brutal massacre at an Iron Age site in Serbia, where 77 individuals, mostly women and children, were violently killed over 2,800 years ago. The findings indicate an intentional act amid regional conflicts between pastoralists and settled farmers. The burial, accompanied by personal items and food remnants, points to a symbolic ritual.
In the 9th century BC, at the Gomolava tell site in the Carpathian basin of present-day Serbia, a mass grave containing 77 individuals was created following what appears to have been a deliberate massacre. This artificial mound, built up over millennia from human debris like mud-brick ruins and pottery, served as a settlement hub since the late 6th millennium BC.
Analysis by Linda Fibiger at the University of Edinburgh and her team, using bones from the Museum of Vojvodina in Novi Sad, revealed that 51 of the victims were children and adolescents. Among 72 individuals whose biological sex could be determined, 51 were female. Skeletal evidence showed unhealed injuries from violence, including defensive wounds and projectile impacts. Many injuries targeted the head with close-contact force, indicating intentional killings rather than accidents or disease—a contrast to a 1976 study that had suggested a pandemic.
"A lot of the injuries are to the head and most seem to be close-contact injuries. The size of the injuries speaks of uninhibited force, so intentional killing, not accidental killing," Fibiger stated. DNA from 25 individuals and isotope analysis from 24 others' teeth showed no close relations—even back 12 generations—and varied childhood diets, suggesting the victims came from a diverse but culturally linked society.
The event occurred during a period of instability, as mobile pastoralists from the Eurasian steppe migrated into the region, clashing with locals reoccupying tell sites for farming and enclosed settlements. Barry Molloy at University College Dublin noted, "You’ve got these two conflicting ways of using landscape," which may have fueled land disputes and displacements.
The predominance of women and children among the dead diverges from typical battlefield warfare. "That it was women and children suggests to us that something quite different was happening here from our usual reading of violent warfare," Molloy said. Perpetrators might have killed them to assert dominance, rather than enslaving younger ones.
The burial included bronze jewellery, ceramic vessels, a butchered calf, grinding stones, and burnt seeds—elements of a full food cycle—suggesting a careful, possibly symbolic rite. Molloy proposed the killers and buriers might have been different groups. Pere Gelabert at the University of Vienna cautioned, "It is difficult to interpret the massacre," amid the Iron Age's widespread armed conflicts, possibly ritualistic or resulting from absent men.
The study was published in Nature Human Behaviour (DOI: 10.1038/s41562-025-02399-9).
