Prehistoric Warfare and Violence

Andrea Dolfini is a specialist in the later prehistory of Europe and the Mediterranean. His research interests encompass early copper and bronze technology, funerary practices, and ancient weaponry and warfare. He is particularly keen to investigate the life-histories of early metal tools and weapons by wear analysis and experimental archaeology. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in Later Prehistory at Newcastle University (UK). Rachel J. Crellin is a Lecturer in Later Prehistory at the University of Leicester (UK). Her key research interest is in the study and theorisation of change. She specialises in the in the Later Neolithic and Bronze Age of Britain and Ireland and is an expert in metalwork wear-analysis. Christian Horn is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden) and a researcher for the Swedish Rock Art Research Archive in the Torsten Söderberg Foundation project. He studied pre- and proto-history, classicalarchaeology, and medieval history at the Ruhr-University in Bochum. In 2011, he finished his PhD thesis on Copper and Bronze Age halberds in Europe and received his doctorate from the Free University Berlin. His current research focuses on representations of metalwork in Bronze Age petroglyphs, the transformation of rock art, and new applications of 3D modelling in rock art studies. He is also a specialist in metalwork wear analysis concentrating on the complex interplay of functional and ritual aspects of metalwork. His research interests include material culture studies, human-object relations, and warfare. Marion Uckelmann is a researcher of the European Bronze Age, specializing in weaponry, warfare and metalworking technologies. She is currently an Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Archaeology, Durham University (UK).

• Introduction.- Chapter 1. Interdisciplinary approaches to prehistoric warfare and violence: Past, present, and future.- Chapter 2. Patterns of Collective Violence in the Early Neolithic of Central Europe.- Chapter 3. Perimortem lesions on human bones from the Bronze Age battlefield in the Tollense Valley: An interdisciplinary approach.- Chapter 4. Martial practices and warrior burials: Humeral asymmetry and grave goods in Iron Age male inhumations from central Italy.- Chapter 5. War and peace in Iberian prehistory: the chronology and interpretation of the depictions of violence in Levantine rock art.- Chapter 6. Fast like a war canoe: Pragmamorphism in Scandinavian rock art.- Chapter 7. “In the beginning there was the spear”: Digital documentation sheds new light on Early Bronze Age spear carvings from Sweden.- Chapter 8. Rock art, secret societies, long-distance exchange, and warfare in Bronze Age Scandinavia.- Chapter 9. Body armour in the European Bronze Age.- Chapter 10. Conflict at Europe’s crossroads: Analysing the social life of metal weaponry in the Bronze Age Balkans.- Chapter 11. Ritual or lethal? Bronze weapons in late Shang China.- Chapter 12. Standardised manufacture of Iron Age weaponry from Southern Scandinavia: Constructing and provenancing the Havor lance.- Chapter 13. An experimental approach to prehistoric violence and warfare?- Chapter 14. Value, craftsmanship and use in Late Bronze Age cuirasses.- Chapter 15. Untangling Bronze Age warfare: The case of Argaric society.- Chapter 16.The science of conflict.