Richard Osgood - Bronze Age Warfare

Sarah Monks & Richard Osgood

Defining Warfare Terminology

Richard Osgood

Introduction

Settlements and Fortifications

Burials and Palaeopathology

Weaponry and Armour

Iconography

Conclusions

Sarah Monks

Introduction

Settlement Patterns and Fortifications

Burial and Skeletal Evidence

Weapons and Warrior Accoutrements

Iconography

Conclusions

Richard Osgood

Introduction

Settlements and Fortifications

Burials and Palaeopathology

Weaponry

Defensive Equipment

Iconography

Conclusions

Judith Toms

Introduction

Chronological Note

Settlements and Fortifications

Weapons and Armour

Defensive Equipment

Burials and Palaeopathology

Iconography

Conclusions

Sarah Monks

Introduction

The Neolithic Aegean

The Bronze Age

Settlements and Fortifications

Burial Evidence

Palaeopathology

Weaponry

Shields

Helmets

Corselets and Greaves

Iconography

Warfare at Sea

Linear B Archives

Conclusions

The End of the Bronze Age

Sarah Monks & Richard Osgood

Warfare at the Start of the Bronze Age

Summary

Warfare in the Middle and Late Bronze Age

Defensive Equipment

Iconography

Mobility

Causes of Conflict

Summary

The original idea for this book was conceived by Richard Osgood following the completion of his thesis in 1996, subsequently published as Warfare in the Late Bronze Age of North Europe. He is responsible for writing Chapters Two and Four on north-western and central Europe respectively. He is currently involved in a number of field projects in northern Europe, including excavations of the Bronze Age linear ditch and human burials at Tormarton in south Gloucestershire.

The contributions of Sarah Monks and Judith Toms, who both have significant research interests in the Bronze Age, gave the project a more pan-European approach and allowed a broader range of evidence to be studied and evaluated.

Sarah Monks, who has co-written the book and is responsible for writing Chapters Three and Six, has been carrying out research on warfare in the West Mediterranean, and specifically Spain, for the past five years. Her thesis The role of conflict and competition in the development of prehistoric West Mediterranean societies from the late 4th to early 2nd millennium BC was completed in 1998. Her research interests have focused largely on Copper and Bronze Age societies in many different parts of the Mediterranean, though specifically within Iberia, Cyprus and the Aegean.

Judith Toms has written Chapter Five on the Italian Bronze Age, and has given advice on the book as a whole. Her main area of research is the proto-history of Italy, and she has studied in particular Villanovan cemeteries and the symbolic nature of material culture in Villanovan and early Etruscan contexts.

The authors are grateful to the following people and organisations for their help and advice in bringing this book to fruition. Richard Osgood would like to thank Professors Richard Bradley, Anthony Harding, Barry Cunliffe and John Evans; Simon Pressey, Alison Wilkins and Kenton White for a number of the illustrations; Ian Cartwright for several of the photographs and Dr Mike Parker-Pearson who originally suggested that he should take a further look at Tormarton. Sarah Monks would like to thank Professors Richard Bradley and Robert Chapman; Dr Sturt Manning; David Mason (for some great photos); Simon Pressey (for the reconstruction drawing); Eva Baboula and Gerry Cox. Judith Toms would like to thank Doctors A. Sherratt, S. Sherratt, J. Robb, E. Macnamara, S. Swaddling and L. Vagnetti. Illustrations not otherwise credited are the work of the authors.

In addition, we wish to thank all the museums, institutions and individuals that granted us permission to use many of the photographs in this book. Finally, our thanks go to Rupert Harding and Sarah Cook of Suttons for their patience and perseverance.

There has been a recent rise in the popularity of archaeological studies of warfare, although most of these have focused on a particular regional area or on specific case studies. Much of this work has been undertaken on the Roman or medieval periods where we have good documentary evidence to aid the interpretation of warfare, warriors and weapons. Prehistoric warfare has generally been treated with greater caution and many believe the evidence is too unreliable, uneven and open to many different interpretations. There has also been a tendency, when referring to the prehistoric period, to use ethnographic analogies to fill in the gaps where evidence is patchy or difficult to interpret. Although the use of ethnographic case studies makes an important contribution to the study of archaeology, this present study tries to avoid the use of cross-cultural analogies between the prehistoric data and information on warfare from more recent societies.

A few recent publications have been significant in raising the profile of prehistoric warfare, including Ancient Warfare (John Carman & Anthony Harding, eds), Material Harm (John Carman, ed.), War before Civilization (Lawrence Keeley), Warfare in the Late Bronze Age of North Europe (Richard Osgood) and Troubled Times: Violence and Warfare in the Past (Debra Martin & David Frayer, eds). In addition, there have been a number of articles in journals, although these typically focus on particular regional areas or specific cultural groups, or on types of analysis, for example, use-wear studies on weapons, skeletal studies or interpretations of rock art.

So where does this book fit in? It is intended to provide a general approach to warfare in Europe, addressing many of the key issues within warfare studies on a broad scale. The various chapters are specific to particular regions, and are written by people with a keen research interest in those areas, and within each chapter a multi-disciplinary approach is adopted, discussing a range of different types of evidence to produce a more rounded picture of the nature and frequency of combat, the weapons and armour employed, and the role of warfare in society, seen through burials and artistic traditions. The aim is not to provide a complete review of all the evidence, interpretations and theories on the data, because each region would then require a book of its own, but rather to identify general patterns and trends in the evidence for warfare and cite specific examples where appropriate. Of course, the period defined (and dated) as the Bronze Age differs from region to region, a matter that is raised and discussed in each chapter. None the less, a cogent argument as to the essence of conflict in the Bronze Age of Europe can be produced.

Each chapter begins with a brief look at the preceding Copper Age or Neolithic period as a way of introducing the evidence for the Bronze Age. This is followed by a study of the various strands of evidence for warfare: settlement patterns, fortifications, burial and skeletal evidence, weapons and body protection, art and iconography. In terms of settlement patterns and fortifications, we consider what types of site were being occupied and the evidence for natural and artificial defences, and look at how the fortified, hilltop and non-fortified sites relate to one another in terms of their location, inter-visibility, function and so on. We cite examples of fortified sites, describing the nature of their defences and their development through time, including phases of destruction, repair and elaboration. The question of whether the defences were purely functional, or whether they served other social or symbolic purposes, is assessed.