The Things They Carried
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| Citation | |
| Description | Over the last decades, a lot has changed about our understanding of war, warfare, and warrior societies in prehistoric Europe. It is especially true about the Bronze Age which benefited greatly from the new scientific methods as well as from the introduction of more elaborated theoretical models. The beauty in this fact is that we finally start to realize how multi-layered the world of prehistoric warriorhood was and how much there is still to uncover/understand. In this paper, we would like to focus on two regions, Bohemia and Central Danube area, from the Early to the Late Bronze Age. We will shortly sum up the current state of research in terms of warfare/warriorhood evidence in the focus area, including the basic models as we understand them. This will provide the background for us, so we could tell stories. However, these stories will not be based solely on rich burials. There are other data that are often overlooked, even if they could provide us with excellent opportunities for interpretation. Therefore we will focus on weapons - mostly swords - lost or deposited in rivers, forests, fields, etc. With the help of metal wear analysis, experimental archaeology, and maybe even some metallography, we could tell stories that are not as much affected by the agenda of past or present. From the first look, one could almost say that some of them may even challenge our safe binary constructions. |