26-05-2025
The mafia-like turf wars of Iron Age Britain: Game of Thrones-style barons carried out 'gangland executions' of rival tribes leading to mass slaughter, new research reveals
Mafia-like gangs roamed the countryside executing rival tribes in bloody turf wars in Iron Age Britain, new research has revealed.
For almost a century, historians have blamed the invading Romans for mass slaughter events involving native tribes at hill forts across the west country.
But radiocarbon dating of human remains dug up in 1936 at one of Europe's biggest hill forts has revealed the victims were actually killed 100 years before the Romans arrived.
And far from a bloodthirsty invading army carrying out atrocities as they swept their way across the land, 'localised gangland infighting' was behind the brutal slayings.
Rival groups fought one another for control over territory.
The evidence shows the victims were killed by 'lethal weapon injuries' in very public displays as a warning to others not to fall out of line, experts say.
Dr Miles Russell, principal academic in prehistoric and Roman archaeology at Bournemouth University, has spent several years researching the burial site at Maiden Castle near Dorchester, where the remains of more than 50 people were found 90 years ago.
He said: 'We can now say quite categorically that these individuals died a long time before the Romans arrived and over a long period of time, not in single battle for a hill fort.
'The deaths were a series of gangland-syle executions.
'People were dragged up there and put to death as a way of one group exerting control over another.
'These were Mafia-like families. Game of Throne-like barons with one dynasty wiping out another to control trade links and protection rackets for power.
'What we are seeing is he people who lost out being executed.
'Most of them had cranial trauma with no sign of defensive wounds. They were repeatedly struck with a sword to the head with the skulls smashed to oblivion.
'You are talking overkill, not a single death blow. These were gangland executions carried out in a very prominent and obvious way as a warning to others.'
The research shows the executions took place over a long period of time between the late first century BC and the early first century AD.
The Romans didn't arrive in Dorset until 43AD.
The 'war-cemetery' at Maiden Castle is one of Britain's most famous archaeological discoveries.
In 1936 dig director Sir Mortimer Wheeler suggested the deaths were the result of a 'furious but ultimately futile defence of the hillfort against an all-conquering Roman legion.'
This account was accepted as fact, becoming an iconic event in popular narratives of Britain's 'Island Story'.
Dr Russell said: 'Since the 1930s, the story of Britons fighting Romans at one of the largest hillforts in the country has become a fixture in historical literature.
'The tale of innocent men and women of the local Durotriges tribe being slaughtered by Rome is powerful and poignant. It features in countless articles, books and TV documentaries.
'It has become a defining moment in British history, marking the sudden and violent end of the Iron Age.'
'The trouble is it doesn't appear to have actually happened.
'The archaeological evidence points to it being a case of Britons killing Britons and the dead being buried in a long-abandoned fortification.
'The Roman army committed many atrocities, but this does not appear to be one of them.
'After they landed in Essex they invading Romans fought organised armies of kings or queens in defensive positions.
'But as they moved further west the people and communities they encountered were more scattered and was very difficult for them to dictate to people that they were under their control.
'By this stage the Romans were more about exploiting territory and getting money out of it. In the Mendips it was extracting lead, in the Weald in Sussex it was iron and in Dorset in was farming.'
The work at Maiden Castle also brings into question how other archaeological cemeteries across the south west have been interpreted.
