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LiveScience
LiveScience
Kristina Killgrove

'Nailed-head ritual' in Iron Age Spain was more 'complex than initially thought,' severed skulls reveal

Side view of a human skeleton on a grey table. There is a large corroded iron spike running from the forehead through to the base of the skull.

Prehistoric people in Spain severed the heads of dead people and drove giant nails through their skulls for very different reasons: to celebrate the community's ancestors and to intimidate their enemies, a new analysis of Iron Age skulls suggests.

In a new study, researchers examined seven severed skulls from two archaeological sites on the southeast coast of the Iberian Peninsula, with the goal of identifying where the decapitated people came from.

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