Archaeologists in England have uncovered three extraordinary burials that may belong to Celtic women who were ritually sacrificed more than 2,000 years ago.
A Mysterious Burial in Dorset
In Dorset, England, researchers from Bournemouth University discovered the skeleton of a young Celt buried face down inside a pit — an unusual position that could point to an ancient murder mystery.
The discovery occurred during excavations for the TV series “Sandi Toksvig’s Hidden Wonders.”
Lead archaeologist Miles Russell explained, “This appears to be a body that was likely thrown into a pit with the hands tied in front. We haven’t yet analyzed the DNA, but we believe the individual was a young woman.”
Evidence of Ritual Sacrifice
The burial contained no grave goods, and the skeleton was found face down at the bottom of an abandoned pit. Combined with signs that the hands had been bound, this suggests the girl could have been a ritual sacrifice by the Durotriges tribe, a Celtic community that lived in southern Britain before the Roman invasion.
And she wasn’t the only one.
Russell noted that two other similar burials were found at the site — a teenage girl discovered in 2024, and a young adult woman with her throat cut, uncovered in 2010.
Ancient Celtic Society and Female Victims
These unusual burials are part of the Durotriges Project, which studies pre-Roman settlements in southern Britain. The cemetery dates to the early to mid–1st century BCE, roughly a century before Rome’s conquest of the region.
Recent DNA studies show that Celtic communities like the Durotriges were likely organized around maternal bloodlines — consistent with ancient Roman writers who described men joining their wives’ families after marriage.
Given this matrilineal focus, it’s striking that all three of these possible sacrificial victims were young women or girls.
Russell suggests that they might have belonged to the lower end of the social hierarchy, possibly outsiders or individuals not related to elite families — people society saw as “more expendable.”
Ongoing Research
While the 2010 skeleton has been fully analyzed, researchers are still studying the two more recent discoveries. Future tests will look for signs of trauma, disease, diet, and geographic origin to better understand who these girls were and why they died.
According to Russell, the discovery of multiple female victims implies that ritual sacrifice among Iron Age Celts may have been more common than previously thought — though “we still don’t know what socio-political or environmental factors triggered these acts.”
