In northeastern France’s Alsace region, a team from the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research has discovered graphic evidence for a violent Neolithic-era clash of cultures. While digging in a fortified village dating to between 4400 and 4200 B.C., archaeologists unearthed a storage pit that held the mutilated remains of five men and one teenage boy, as well as four severed left arms. Archaeologist Philippe Lefranc suggests the limbs were battlefield trophies, and that the skeletons belonged to members of a captured enemy war party. “I think we are seeing ritualized violence against captives who were initially alive,” says Lefranc. “It probably took place in the middle of the village during a victory celebration. All the remains were eventually thrown in a ritual refuse dump.” Lefranc thinks the enemy warriors were from a new population migrating into the area from the Paris Basin to the west. Despite losing this round, they eventually triumphed. At the end of the fifth millennium, the local pottery style and burial rituals were replaced by those of the newcomers, and all the old villages in Alsace were relocated.

In 1838, a cache of silver was found at Ley Farm in Aberdeenshire in northeast Scotland. While what came to be known as the Gaulcross Hoard might have originally contained more artifacts, only three pieces are known today from the original discovery. Almost 200 years later, archaeologists have gone back to the site and unearthed no less than 100 new silver artifacts from the hoard, including ingots, a crescent-shaped pendant, and a zoomorphic brooch, along with other jewelry fragments.

Some of the most interesting objects are what is termed hacksilver—plates, spoons, belt fittings, bracelets, and even coins that were deliberately broken, cut, or bent before being used as currency or melted down for reuse. “Our work is the first to acknowledge the existence of hacksilver extending beyond the Roman period and into the fifth and sixth centuries A.D. in Scotland,” says Alice Blackwell, who is studying the hoard as part of the National Museum of Scotland’s Glenmorangie Research Project. “It has long been apparent that silver was the main material used in early medieval Scotland to show wealth and power, but what we have lacked until now is any real understanding of how this most precious resource was managed.”

A skeleton found at the bottom of an abandoned well in Trondheim, Norway, seems to confirm a tale of defeat and destruction told in an ancient Norse saga. In 1197, a faction of the Norwegian aristocracy known as the Baglers attacked Sverresborg, the castle stronghold of the Viking king Sverre. The story of the siege—including the “killing” of the castle’s well by throwing the dead body of one of the king’s men into it—is well known, but its veracity has been questioned. “Sverre’s saga has very detailed descriptions of the battles between the king and his main enemy, and it’s also rich in references to places and people,” says lead archaeologist Anna Petersén of the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research. “The human remains in the well indicate that the saga is trustworthy. The proven relationship to events described in Norwegian history makes this discovery unique, and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”