Violence in paradise: Cranial trauma in the prehispanic population of Gran Canaria (Canary Islands)

Abstract

The aboriginal population of Gran Canaria show a high frequency of traumatic injuries to the skull compared to other archaeological groups. Their frequent location in the anterior aspect suggests regular face-to-face confrontations. However, the lethal injuries typically occurring in large-scale combat are scarce. Practices such as ritualized combat, mentioned in ethnohistorical sources, would help to channel and mitigate inter-group conflict. The predominance of depressed blunt force trauma is in accordance with the weapons used by those populations: hand-thrown stones, clubs and sticks. The higher frequency in males indicates that they took part in direct violence more than females did. The hierarchical organization of their society may have led to frequent situations of conflict. The insular nature of a territory barely 1,500 m in size was a determining factor in competition for access to food resources, especially at times of climate crises or population growth.

Violence targeting children or violent society? Craniofacial injuries among the pre‐Hispanic subadult population of Gran Canaria (Canary Islands)

“…Some of these situations, uncommon judging by the data, would have led to the worst of consequences: death. As has also been argued for adults (Delgado‐Darias et al, ), the predominance of fully recovered injuries and the moderate severity of such wounds seem to indicate that the final objective of most of the aggressions would not intended to cause the death. It is more likely that this violence has its origin in specific confrontations due to socioeconomic factors and that they affect, albeit in an unequal proportion, the whole population.…”

“…Apparently, from the age of 5–6, the subadults participate in a general social model, even as victims of violence in similar proportions to the rest of the population. The similarities in the percentage of trauma among the different age groups of subadults, as well as between the group III of the subadults (22%) and that of the youngest adults (20.5%; Delgado‐Darias et al, ) helps to maintain this proposal.…”

“…The results indicate a high rate of traumatic craniofacial injuries in the subadult population over 5 years (21.54%), values that are much greater than those determined for other archaeological groups in different contexts and chronologies (Fibiger, ; Gaither & Murphy, ; Krakowka, ; Lewis, , ; Timmins et al, ). A recent study of more than 300 adult individuals at Guayadeque in Gran Canaria (Delgado‐Darias et al, ) reports a high prevalence of craniofacial injuries (27.4%; 95/347). As clearly it is reflected by the few differences in the percentage of injuries in adults and subadults of Gran Canaria, with no significant statistical differences between each group.…”

“…The research carried out to date for the island of Gran Canaria points to violence as the main cause of this type of trauma especially when considering position, dimensions, and typology (Bosch‐Millares, ; Delgado‐Darias et al, ; Owens, ). Recent studies on violence among the adult population of the ancient Canarians reveal that the greatest concentration of fractures are found on the frontal and facial bones (68.8% of the total) and that there is a higher incidence of lesions to the left parietal than to the right (Delgado‐Darias et al, ). This is a pattern of recurrent injuries corresponding to wounds resulting from interpersonal aggression, particularly from face‐to‐face confrontations (Guyomarc'h, Campagna‐Vaillancourt, Kremer, & Sauvageau, ; Kranioti, ; Kremer & Sauvageau, ).…”

“…In any case, the bias introduced by the collecting pattern does not seem to affect the representation of the subadults population in the cemeteries analysed, as it is deduced from the percentages of the two archaeological sites with the greatest number of individuals. In Guayadeque, where the remains were collected between the late 19th and the early 20th centuries, subadults represent 10.8% if they are quantified with an unselected sample of adults from this same place (Delgado‐Darias, Alberto‐Barroso, & Velasco‐Vázquez, ). In the cemetery of Maspalomas, excavated between 2009 and 2012, this same group of population represents 11.72% of its total.…”