Left To Rot At Sandby Borg

A few years after the archaeologists brought in the professional metal detectors and found the five treasure caches containing jewelry and gold solidi, they returned to Sandby Borg to excavate.  As I wrote yesterday, they have little funds and a small window of time each summer to dig at the ancient ring fort.  Over the past three years, they have uncovered three houses and a small part of a street.  Each summer, as they arrive to work at the site, and while they are working, local people return to inform them that the place is evil, is cursed, and that the dead of Sandby fort haunt the local cemetery.  When cleaning the treasure caches, it was found that the newest gold solidi, which the Romans used to pay their mercenary troops, had been minted in 478; many other gold coins found in the area are dated between 350 and 455.  So the archaeologists first decided the event, what ever it was, happened around 500.  After three years of excavation, they have placed the date at about 480.
  During the last day of the first dig, having traced the outlines of the first house, they cleared the doorstep - and found two feet sticking out into the street.  So far, the dig has found 26 complete bodies, and a few bones from young child.  There are two full skeletons of children, plus the part of the third, along with 24 males.  The eldest man was between 50 and 60 when he died; the youngest was about 2 years old.  Every single person met with a violent end.  The were all attacked with axes or swords.  None of the people killed have defensive wounds; all seem to have been struck down from the rear or the side.  One teenager appears to have been killed while kneeling, as the roof of the house was extremely low at the entrance, where he was killed.  The older man had received a blow that shattered the back of his skull, and he fell forward across the interior fire pit.  His pelvis was scorched by the flames.  Under the eldest man was discovered the femur of a child about two years old.  The archaeologists wonder if the child's bone was the older man's grandson...
   The dig has opened three houses and a small section of street, exposing twenty-six dead.  Two dead were found in the street, and they had received their death blows from the side.  One of them was carrying his scrip, with gold coins inside it. The fort contains 52 or 53 houses.  How many more dead will be found?  Where are the women?  Are there more children to be found?  At that point in time, slavery was common for people, clans and groups that were conquered - a very good profit could be made from women and children in local  and foreign slave trade.  Why were those two (or three) youngsters slaughtered?  Why was the livestock - pigs, goats, sheep, cattle, and horses - left to starve? (Stealing livestock from the dead would have been easy, and then the person stealing the stock would have been that much richer...) 
  Usually after a village or borg had been raided, distant neighbors would have buried or cremated the dead; food, if still edible, would have been divided, as would the livestock. Whoever found any treasure trove was either (a) likely to keep it, or (b) turn it over to his/her overlord and hope for a portion as a reward.  While (hopefully) the living mourned their neighbors, they would usually be enriched, even slightly, by their deaths.
   But the borg at Sandby is completely mystifying - the dead were left to rot as they lay, they were never looted, and their livestock was shunned and left to starve.  It seems to be without precedent.  Thatched and wooden roofs fell into buildings, covered the dead, and the accumulation of wind-blown sediment and sand did the rest.  At some point in time, the rocks used in the building of the protective wall were used to delineate new fields.  But the entire area was still spoken of with dread...  Why?   I found one sentence in one article stating that the borg had built over a Bronze Age cemetery.  Was this massacre a retribution for building on the cemetery?  Was this borg, possibly, the home of tax-gatherers for the overlord? 
   Sandby Borg's massacre in 480 is a huge puzzle today.  I really hope that much more funding will be made available to the archaeologists who are conducting this dig.  It's silly, but I, personally, want to know why these people and all their belongings were left to rot; and why, 1,538 years later, the place is still considered evil.  How did the massacre occur?  Did an enemy open the gates in the middle of the night for an uncontested killing spree?  Again - why and who?  Where are the women?  Where are the children? 
   What truly happened at Sandby Borg?