Overview
- Archaeologists recovered 78 individuals from overlapping deposits in ditches at the Vráble Veľké‑Lehemby settlement, and only one skeleton retained its skull.
- First analyses published in June 2026 report cut marks, missing lower jaws, and neck vertebrae placements that point to careful post‑mortem removal rather than chaotic battlefield decapitation.
- Researchers will run ancient DNA and isotope tests and will excavate the remaining roughly 160 meters of unexamined ditch to look for the missing skulls and establish kinship or geographic origins.
- Team members say the missing skulls could have been stored, displayed, or used in ancestor or ritual practices elsewhere, though no secondary deposit has been found so far.
- The site dates to the Linear Pottery Culture about 7,000 years ago, and the find adds to other Neolithic examples of skull manipulation that specialists use to rethink death rites and social practices in early farming Europe.