Bronze Age Swordsmanship: New Insights from Experiments and Wear Analysis
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Bronze Age Swordsmanship: New Insights from Experiments and Wear Analysis Raphael Hermann 1 & Andrea Dolfini 2 & Rachel J. Crellin 3 Quanyu Wang 4 & Marion Uckelmann 5
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# The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The article presents a new picture of sword fighting in Middle and Late Bronze Age Europe developed through the Bronze Age Combat Project. The project investigated the uses of Bronze Age swords, shields, and spears by combining integrated experimental archaeology and metalwork wear analysis. The research is grounded in an explicit and replicable methodology providing a blueprint for future experimentation with, and wear analysis of, prehistoric copper-alloy weapons. We present a four-step experimental methodology including both controlled and actualistic experiments. The experimental results informed the wear analysis of 110 Middle and Late Bronze Age swords from Britain and Italy. The research has generated new understandings of prehistoric combat, including diagnostic and undiagnostic combat marks and how to interpret them; how to hold and use a Bronze Age sword; the degree of skill and training required for proficient combat; the realities of Bronze Age swordplay including the frequency of blade-on-blade contact; the body parts and areas targeted by prehistoric sword fencers; and the evolution of fighting styles in Britain and Italy from the late 2nd to the early 1st millennia BC. All primary data discussed in the article are available as supplementary material (Appendix) so as to allow scrutiny and validation of the research results. Keywords European Bronze Age . Experimental archaeology . Metalwork wear analysis .
Warfare and violence . Combat archaeology
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-02009451-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
* Raphael Hermann [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
Hermann et al.
Introduction The last two decades have witnessed a substantial change in the study of interpersonal violence in prehistoric and preliterate societies. Spearheaded by Keeley’s seminal monograph War before Civilization (1996), and aided by the new cultural and political milieu that followed the end of the Cold War, archaeologists and anthropologists have increasingly turned their attention to the nature and social significance of sanctioned aggression and warfare (Fry 2013; Otterbein 1997, 2004). In the field of European Bronze Age studies, this novel disciplinary interest has intersected longstanding research strands investigating warrior burials, hoarding practices, fortified settlements, martial imagery on rock art, osteological markers of injury, and weapon studies (Dolfini et al. 2018; Horn and Kristiansen 2018; Kristiansen 2018; Kristiansen and Larsson 2005; Kristiansen and Suchowska-Ducke 2015; Molloy 2017; Vandkilde 2013). The latter had long focused on one of the most iconic inventions of the Bronze Age world: the sword. The new
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