Update: shackled men in mass grave were native Athenians

A new study of the remains of men discovered with iron shackles on their wrist in a mass grave in Athens, Greece, in 2016 has revealed that they were Athenian locals, not invaders or immigrants.

The mass grave was one of three, dubbed the “Esplanada,” that were found in an excavation of the Phaleron necropolis, in use from the 8th to the 5th century B.C. Pottery found inside the grave dates it to between 675 and 650 B.C. The bodies of 79 adult men, all young and healthy, all killed at the same time by the same method, so a deliberate execution rather than a battle, were discovered arms above their heads shackled at the wrists. They had been laid out in three orderly rows and buried with respect.

In the decade since the discovery, there has been much debate on who these men may have been and why they were executed. One possibility was that they were the noble youths who joined the failed coup of Cylon of Athens in 632 B.C., but the radiocarbon dates don’t quite fit. Another possibility was a mass execution of criminals at the dawn of state-enforced judicial power in Athens.

Researchers from Arizona State University’s Center for Bioarchaeological Research recently sought to answer some of the questions using strontium isotope analysis.

Strontium is absorbed into teeth from local food and water during childhood, leaving a chemical signature tied to where a person grew up. By comparing that signature to known local values, researchers can tell whether someone spent their early years near where they were later buried.

The team tested samples from 66 of the men in the Esplanada grave, along with 97 other individuals buried elsewhere at Phaleron. The results showed that nearly all of them, about 97 percent of the men in the mass grave, had local origins.

That figure closely matched the broader Phaleron population, where about 96 percent of those tested were also local.

These results confirm that the individuals interred in the Esplanada were killed by their neighbors, and that they had no significant differences in geographic background. The homogeneity of the results throughout the necropolis support the argument that Attica in the Archaic period was still insular with limited migration, even though the wider Aegean area was seeing increasing interaction and population movement.

* This article was originally published here