Violence in Context. Lethal Traumas in the First Colonization of Lanzarote Island (Canary Islands)

Abstract Lanzarote is marked by a scarce preservation of skeletal remains of the Berber populations that inhabited the island before the Norman Conquest in the 15th century AD. This is an anomalous situation for people that lived uninterruptedly on the island for about 1,400 years.The recent study of the few available human bones is providing transcendental data for the knowledge of the ways and conditions of life and, especially, of conflicts involving physical violence. The aim of this paper is to analyse the evidence of bone trauma in two individuals, male and female respectively, and to discuss the manner of their deaths. The results suggest the male was repeatedly stabbed, while the traces in the female consist of several energetic blows to the skull. Both cases display patterns of lesions revealing different forms of violence of significant interest for the comprehension of the conflicts and historical contexts in which they occurred. Apart from the lethal injuries themselves, the early chronology of the remains and the type of weapons used provide an exceptional opportunity to explore one of the least known moments in the first human history of Lanzarote: the initial stages of the stable colonisation of the island by imazighen groups.