Archeologists working on a Hill Fort excavation in England have started to argue that ancient stone structures were meant for security during warfare in the Iron Age. This counters the more predominant theory, formed over the past 30 years, that stone walls served an ornamental function — represent prosperity and prestige rather than a military purpose.

The prestige theory apparently was based on an absence of evidence of threat, rather than evidence of the absence of threat (as Carl Sagan might have put it).

The dig site at a spot called Fin Cop is said to give new evidence of threats. It provides unique insight because the remains have been better preserved by limestone, which is harder and more acidic than other dig sites. Bones found in a mass grave, for example, are known to be women and children. Dr Clive Waddington of Archaeological Research Services suggests that they must have been victims who suffered a violent end after their fort was defeated.

“For the people buried at Fin Cop, the hurriedly constructed fort was evidently intended as a defensive work in response to a very real threat.”

The skeletons are of women, babies, a toddler and a single teenage male. The archaeological team believe they were probably massacred after the fort was attacked and captured.

All were found in a 10m long section of ditch, the only part to be excavated so far. The ditch was 5m wide with 2m deep vertical edges and would have guarded a 4m high perimeter wall.

Animal bones, also found in the ditch, suggest the fort’s inhabitants kept cattle, sheep and pigs. There were also remains from horses which indicate some of the fort’s inhabitants were of high status.

Ok, I’ll bite. What was the very real threat? It must have been something so powerful to eliminate or enslave all the men in the fort without leaving any trace of them. There is a curious disparity between bones found in the ditch. Was the ditch a pre-existing spot where animal waste was hauled outside the fort and then it was converted into a mass grave by attackers?

I wish they had given more evidence on how they formed the new hypothesis. The BBC fails to mention whether the skeletons have marks from iron or stone weapons, for example.

Given all that they’ve revealed to the BBC, maybe there are other angles to explore.

The men and women may have migrated away from another area to start a new fort and ran into harsh weather. The men went off to hunt or get help as the women hastily built the structure. The food soon ran out and the women died of natural causes.

Maybe the group was ostracized because of disease or other differences.

The men either died during the hunt or came back and found everyone expired. The bodies would have been dumped in the ditch, which already had the animal remains, and covered with the rocks of the failed settlement to make it into a grave.

The Guardian picks up some of these alternate theories.

There could be gentler explanations for the deaths: none of the nine skeletons show signs of violence, suggesting death would have been from flesh wounds or suffocation – or possibly disease.

Explanations could include a disastrous plague or the punishment of a household by the rest of the community.

We really don’t know whether the threat to the women and children was inside or outside the fort walls.

A clearer picture and more compelling analysis can be found on Diggings.

The fact that the bones were found together rather than scattered by weather or the depredations of wild animals indicated that she had been buried rather than simply discarded in the ditch – but all that buried her were the tumbled stones of the wall! In other words, whoever tossed her body into the ditch had then deliberately demolished the defences of the fort and covered her with the stones of the dismantled wall.

Jim Brightman, one of the project managers, said: “Quite a lot of very important finds cannot look like much on site, but when you get back to the lab and throw the scientific techniques and analysis at them, that’s when you start to get the story out. The bones are a great example of that, we found out so much more by analysing them.”

On the other hand, if you pull forensic data too far from the target you might lose the context necessary to make sense of it despite your best scientific techniques and analysis.