The interpretation of such damage is genuinely difficult, because similar-looking damage can be caused by several entirely different processes.

The first possibility is violence.

A blow to the head — from a weapon, from a fall, from some form of interpersonal conflict — could produce the kind of skull damage visible in Cheddar Man’s remains.

Interpersonal violence in Mesolithic communities is not unknown from the archaeological record; other Mesolithic sites in Europe have produced skeletal evidence of violence.

Whether the Mesolithic was a particularly violent or relatively peaceful era is itself debated, with different sites and different researchers producing different assessments.

The second possibility is taphonomic damage — damage caused not by violence but by the natural processes of burial and preservation.