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A new analysis of dozens of arrowheads has allowed researchers to paint a clearer picture of the warriors who fought on Europe’s oldest known battlefield 3,250 years ago.
The bronze and flint arrowheads were recovered from the Tollense Valley in northeastern Germany. Researchers first discovered the site in 1996 when an amateur archaeologist spotted a bone sticking out of a bank of the Tollense River.
Since then, excavations have unearthed 300 metal finds and 12,500 bones belonging to approximately 150 individuals who fell in battle at the site in 1250 BC. The recovered weapons include swords, wooden clubs and a series of arrowheads, including some still found embedded in the bones of the fallen.
No direct evidence has ever been found for a previous battle of this magnitude. That is why the Tollense Valley is considered the site of the oldest battle in Europe, according to researchers who have been studying the area since 2007.
Studies of the bones have yielded some insights into the men — all young, strong, able-bodied warriors, some with healed wounds from previous skirmishes. But details about who was involved in the violent conflict, and why they fought in such a bloody battle, have long eluded researchers.
There are no written accounts of the battle, so archaeologists have been excavating more finds from the valley. They have used the well-preserved remains and weapons to reconstruct the story behind the ancient battle.
Now, a team of researchers studying arrowheads used in the battle has found evidence that it involved both local groups and an army from the south. The findings, published Sunday in the journal Antiquity, suggest the clash was the earliest example of interregional conflict in Europe — and raise questions about the state of organized, armed violence thousands of years ago.
“The arrowheads are a kind of ‘smoking gun,'” lead study author Leif Inselmann, a researcher at the Berlin Graduate School of Ancient Studies at the Free University of Berlin, said in a statement. “Like the murder weapon in a mystery, they give us a clue about the perpetrator, the fighters of the Tollense Valley battle and where they came from.”
Evidence of invasion
Previous discoveries of foreign artifacts, such as a Bohemian bronze axe and a sword from southeastern Central Europe, and analyses of the remains have suggested that outsiders fought in the Tollense Valley battle. But the researchers of the new study were curious to see what clues the arrowheads might provide.
When Inselmann and his colleagues analyzed the arrowheads, they realized that no two were identical — hardly a shock in the age of mass production. But the archaeologists were able to detect important differences in the shapes and features that indicated that some of the arrowheads were not made in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a state in northeastern Germany where the Tollense Valley lies.
Inselmann collected literature, data and examples of more than 4,700 Bronze Age arrowheads from Central Europe and mapped where they came from, in order to compare them with the arrowheads from the Tollense Valley.
According to the research, many of these arrowheads matched the style of arrowheads from other sites in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, suggesting that they were made locally and worn by men who called the region home.
But other arrowheads with straight or diamond-shaped bases and side spurs and barbs matched those from a southern region that now includes present-day Bavaria and Moravia, Inselmann said.
“This suggests that at least some of the fighters or even an entire fighting group involved in the Tollense Valley came from a very distant region,” Inselmann wrote in an email.
Inselmann and his colleagues suspect that it is unlikely that the arrowheads were imported from another region to be used by local warriors. Otherwise, they would expect to find evidence of arrowheads in ceremonial burials in the region that were practiced during the Bronze Age.
The spark of war
According to study co-author Thomas Terberger, a connecting road over the Tollense River, built about 500 years before the battle, is thought to have been the starting point of the conflict.
Terberger, a professor at the Department of Prehistoric and Historical Archaeology at the University of Göttingen in Germany, has been studying the site, a 3-kilometre stretch of the river, since 2007.
“The causeway was probably part of a major trade route,” he said. “Control over this choke point situation could have been a major driver of the conflict.”
However, the fact that researchers have not found clear evidence of sources of wealth, such as metal mines or salt mining sites, makes the trade route theory less likely, said Barry Molloy, a senior lecturer in the Department of Archaeology at University College Dublin. Molloy was not involved in the research.
“There were many causes for the warfare, but I think it is likely that this was one group trying to exert political control over another – something that has been going on for centuries – to systematically accumulate wealth over time, not just plunder,” Molloy said in an email.
The exact size and cause of the battle are still unknown, but the remains and weapons found so far suggest more than 2,000 people were involved, the study said. And researchers believe more human bones have been preserved in the valley, which could represent hundreds of victims.
The 13th century BC was a period of increasing trade and cultural exchange, but the discovery of bronze arrowheads across Germany suggests that armed conflict also arose at this time.
“This new information has significantly changed the picture of the Bronze Age, which was not as peaceful as previously thought,” Terberger said. “The 13th century BCE saw changes in burial rituals, symbols and material culture. I see the conflict as a sign that this major transformation process of Bronze Age society was accompanied by violent conflict. Tollense is probably just the tip of the iceberg.”
The new research also found arrow wounds on the remains buried on the battlefield, suggesting that shields may have protected the warriors from the front, while leaving their backs exposed.
The research underscores the importance of archery on the battlefield, which has often been underestimated in previous studies of Bronze Age warfare, Molloy said.
“This is a very compelling study which uses routine archaeological methods to great effect to provide insight into the nature of this important prehistoric battlefield site, in terms of aspects of battlefield action and the participants involved,” he said. “The authors make a strong case that there were at least two competing forces and that they came from different societies, with one group having travelled hundreds of kilometres. This is a crucial insight into the logistics behind the armies involved at Tollense.”
The magnitude of the conflict
The large scale of fighting is causing researchers to rethink social organization and warfare during the Bronze Age.
“Were the Bronze Age warriors organized as a tribal coalition, the retinue or mercenaries of a charismatic leader — a kind of ‘warlord’ — or even the army of an early kingdom?” Inselmann said.
For a long time, researchers claimed that Bronze Age violence was a small-scale affair involving dozens of individuals from local communities. According to Molloy, Tollense completely refutes that theory.
“We have many sites where we find evidence of mass murder and even the slaughter of entire communities,” Molloy said, “but this is the first time that the demographics of the dead are people who we can reasonably say were warriors and not, say, entire families who migrated.”
In the Bronze Age, societies built fortified settlements and forges to forge weapons. But Tollense shows that both were more than just displays of power, he said.
“Tollense shows us that they were also made for very real military purposes, including large-scale battles where armies were on the march, entering enemy territory and waging war,” Molloy said.
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