A pottery jar containing chicken remains and engraved with the names of more than 55 curse targets has been discovered in the ancient Agora of Athens. Pierced with an iron nail and buried in a corner of the Classical Commercial Building around 300 B.C., the vessel was a class-action curse, an offering of dismembered chicken parts to the underworld deities to hobble the bodies and minds of dozens of named opponents.

The jar, a rounded cooking pot known as a chytra, was unearthed in 2006 by archaeologists from the American School of Classical Studies at Athens but has only now been fully translated and published, revealing that the simple unglazed pot was intended to be a weapon of mass destruction. The names of the curse victims were inscribed on the sides and bottom of the pot in two different hands. Today about 30 full names are legible; the rest have worn over the centuries and now survive only as a disconnected letter or lines. Inside were the remains of the head and lower legs of a chicken and one bronze coin.

The experts involved in the discovery believe that the nail and chicken parts together most likely played a role in the curse on the 55 different individuals. Nails, which are a common feature associated with ancient curses, “had an inhibiting force and symbolically immobilized or restrained the faculties of (the curse’s) victims,” [Yale Classics professor Jessica] Lamont stated in her scholarly article.

The archaeologists determined that the chicken that had been killed had been no older than seven months before it was slaughtered to be used as part of the ritual; they believe that the people who employed the magic may have wanted to transfer “the chick’s helplessness and inability to protect itself” to those they cursed by writing their names on the outside of the jar, Lamont stated.

She further explains that the head of the chicken, which had been twisted off, and its piercing, along its the lower legs, meant that the corresponding body parts in the 55 unfortunate people  would also be similarly affected.

“By twisting off and piercing the head and lower legs of the chicken, the curse sought to incapacitate the use of those same body parts in their victims,” Lamont notes.

Lead curse tablets were the most common means to activate the power of chthonic deities against enemies in antiquity. Thirty of them were found in just one 4th century B.C. well in Athens. Curse jars are far more rare. Tablet or pot, the mechanism of most of these curses was the same: they were binding spells, intended to disable a rival’s physical and cognitive prowess. The target would be named, the curse articulated, a nail driven through the conveyance which would then be buried, often near a source of water, to put them in closer proximity to the underworld gods being invoked.

The use of a pot in this case is extremely unusual, and may be directly connected to the beef. With so many names on the curse list, it’s likely the conflict was over a court case. Legal disputes were the subject of many of the Athenian curse tablets, and everyone involved, from litigants to lawyers to judges to witnesses, were often targeted for binding spells. Given the jar’s burial in a commercial building known to have been used by potters, it’s possible the vessel was used rather than a more traditional lead tablet to inhibit participants in a potter-related lawsuit.

The decapitated bodies discovered in a late 3rd century Roman burial grounds in Somersham, Cambridgeshire, were likely victims of Roman military executions. The remains were first discovered more than a decade ago during excavations of the Knobb’s Farm Quarry site, but thorough analysis of the findings has just been published now.

In three small cemeteries, archaeologists unearthed 52 burials, 17 of which were decapitated bodies buried with their heads at their feet or between their legs. By percentage, this is much higher than the average number of decapitation burials in Roman Britain — 33% versus up to 6%. In addition to the decapitated inhumations, 13 prone burials, which are even more statistically rare (2-3%), were found. Six burials were both decapitations and prone.

The Knobb’s Farm site was part of a large Roman farm settlement, which sadly has been most lost thanks to gravel quarrying activity in the 1960s. The cemeteries were located at the southwestern edge of the settlement. The farm was active from the 1st century A.D., and it expanded in the 2nd century to include extensive grain processing facilities. The buildings were dismantled and the site was abandoned in the late 3rd or early 4th century.

Osteological examination of the bones suggest the deceased worked at the form. There was significant skeletal trauma (breaks, fractures, dislocations) unrelated to decapitation. There are other pathologies evident in the teeth and bones that indicate childhood malnutrition and chronic illness, plus cavities, abscesses and tooth loss. Osteoarthritic changes and other signs of repetitive stress suggest the deceased worked hard in life.

“DNA shows there were nine different types of groups that had come from various places,” Isabel Lisboa, archaeological consultant on the project, told CNN on Monday.

“These settlements were extensive rural settlements that provided grain and meat to the Roman army.”

It’s not clear why so many were decapitated, but Lisboa said the most likely explanation is executions for crimes, with another possibility being ritual practice.

During the later part of the Roman occupation of Britain, the number of crimes carrying the death penalty increased from 14 to 60, as state instability became more prominent, according to research cited by the study.

“Roman laws seem to have been applied particularly harshly at Knobb’s Farm because it was associated with supplying the Roman army, so there were many decapitations,” said Lisboa, who is a director at Archaeologica, an archaeological consulting company.

“Crimes normally would have been let go, but there were probably tensions with the Roman army.”

Somersham is only 40 miles northwest of Great Whelnetham where another Roman-era cemetery was discovered in 2019 that also had an unusually high proportion (40%) of decapitated individuals. It was very high in prone burials too, bringing the overall total of deviant burials in that one cemetery to 60%. An unknown religious practice was proposed as an explanation for those decapitations and burials as the incision marks on the neck were made neatly under the jaw after death.

The sandy, highly acidic soil of the area left the Knobb’s Farm bones in very poor condition. Only four of the decapitated bodies were sufficiently preserved complete with at least some cervical vertebrae to attest to how and when the heads were removed. Only one had actual surviving cut marks. Even so, the evidence of the four makes it clear that these individuals were killed by a violent blow from behind severing their necks. The angles indicate the victims were kneeling. There are no defensive wounds, no evidence whatsoever of battle or a raid or any other type of conflict. For whatever reason, they were given the chop.

The study has been published in the journal Britannia and can be read in its entirety here.