My friend David wrote to me last night, and suggested "perhaps of interest to your roleplaying friends?" I thought yes, I think Greg might enjoy this, as the talk David attended was cutting edge research, and possibly the Bronze Age historians and archaeologists on the list might enjoy it. I have not really thought through if any of it has any Gloranthan implications, but it is quite interesting. If it's considered junk mail, I apologise in advance...
Dave wrote
I've just come back from a talk given to the university Archaeological and Anthropological Society by Anthony Harding, one of the professors of archaeology at Exeter University, on Bronze Age warfare in Europe. It was actually really fascinating, especially as he brought along a replica Bronze Age sword and two shields, one of bronze, the other of leather.
The subject of his talk was warfare in Bronze Age northern Europe, away from the mass armies of the advanced civilisations of the Near East and ancient Greece. He defined war as being organised violence between two political groups (factions) which could lead to killing, and suggested that warfare in this period was closer, at least in numbers, to the kind of warfare conducted by the Dani people of Irian Jaya (the Indonesian part of Papua New Guinea) as portrayed in the 1964 film 'Dead Birds'. Dani warfare could last for years, even decades, but was highly formalised. Wars were generally fought over pigs and women, not over land-rights, as one would expect. There were set battles on designated battlefields, as well as surprise raids, against which watchtowers were constructed. Combat generally took the form of 10-15 minute bouts, of which there could be about 200 in a day. During the years of aggression, however, the actual amount of fighting done was quite small, and battles mostly consisted of the hurling of insults more than the hurling of spears. When physical combat occurred, it was bloody, but rarely led to fatalities. Quite often it was an occasion to put on one's best feathers preparatory for battle. Battles could also be called off in bad weather when these head-dresses could get wet and not look their best.
So, concluded Prof. Harding, there was a lot of aggressive behaviour, but little aggressive emotion.
In Bronze Age Europe the proportions of people involved in warfare would have been on a similar scale - scores, rather than hundreds. He reviewed the evidence for battle on rock carvings in Scandinavia, Switzerland, Valcamonica in Italy and Corsica. These showed warriors, but not necessarily battle. He also discussed the evidence from armour, such as the bell helmets recovered from German graves and an iron cuirass from the Aegean. He also discussed the leather and bronze shields which have been recovered from Irish and other graves. When John Cole, a very esteemed veteran archaeologist took part in an experiment in the 60s to see which offered more protection, the leather or the recreated bronze shield, it was found that the bronze shield was extremely flimsy. The slide accompanying this part of the presentation showed Cole holding it while his fellow researcher cut a long, gaping gash right the way through one side of the shield from rim to rim. Cole concluded from this that the bronze shields were used for display, not practical combat, though this is now being challenged by an Irish archaeologist who has evidence that most bronze shields were much thicker and tougher. The leather shield, although scratched, was not significantly damaged. Prof. Harding then invited us to try our hand to see how tough the shields were after the lecture, though not to the point of putting another hole in them. It's an opportunity I couldn't resist and so joined the queue of people picking up and hefting the sword and shields after the talk.
According to Prof. Harding, few, if any swords, come from graves in Britain. About 40 per cent of them come from water contexts, like bogs and rivers.* Others seem to have been deliberately buried in hordes. On the continent they're found in both hordes and graves. Afterwards one of the archaeologists present stated that there was evidence from France that after the battle, the victors took parts of the enemies weapons and deliberately broke and burned them, not to melt them down for the metal, but simply to ritually kill them and make them unusuable.
He also reviewed the human evidence for warfare from the remains of people apparently killed in combat. Bodies recovered with arrows still in their remains have been found in Tormarton in Gloucestershire, Stonehenge, and in many other places, including Velim in the Czech Republic, which he had just excavated. This site had possessed earthworks which had been damaged by burning, two skeletons of children, one of which had been a newborn, which had been thrown into a waste pit, and a pit of people who had fallen in violence. This constituted about 14 per cent of the population. It was a sizable amount, but the deaths had occurred at different times. He felt that it showed that warfare was endemic to that society. He did not, however, feel that warfare was endemic to the Bronze Age per se, as the incidents tend to be isolated and separated by hundreds of years and miles. The violence at Velim was far different from the massacre of 500 men, women and children c. 1325, whose remains were found at Crow River in America.
He also considered the evidence from the hill forts that grew up in this period, such as Talpain Law (if I've got that right) in Scotland. These appear in the late Bronze Age before persisting into the Iron Age. They were, he believed, due to state formation by the Bronze Age peoples. It was this process which led to the rise of the warrior band, which persisted well into the Middle Ages.
What this process showed, he believed, was the gradual evolution of weapons and warfare from agricultural tools. One archaeologist he mentioned, whose name escapes me, had shown how the dagger developed from the hunting knife used to despatch animals. Hunting was a prestige activity, and the warrior, or at least his equipment, developed out of the type of equipment, like bows and spears, originally used for hunting which were then turned on other people. During questions, Ron Hutton, one of the history professors at Bristol Uni with a strong interest in prehistory and the perception of prehistory by antiquarians, historians and modern Pagans, suggested that warfare was cyclical. There was a lot of evidence of organised warfare in the Neolithic, especially within the causewayed enclosures. This seems to have died out, to re-emerge in the Bronze Age.
David
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