Abstract
This paper explores the character of weaponry from the western and central Balkan Peninsula, a region that constitutes a crossroad between Aegean and Urnfield Bronze Age metalworking traditions. The objective is to explore how a biographic or lifecycle approach to weapons including swords, spears, axes and armour may serve to understand the social venues in which ideas about style and function were exchanged and materialised. By briefly evaluating sample datasets for taxonomic-functional analysis, metalwork wear analysis, metallography, contextual research and experimental archaeology, the paper considers some avenues through which these disparate fields of analysis on the same forms of material culture can be considered effectively in complementary ways. The paper then briefly explores the conduct of combat practices and warfare traditions relevant to the Bronze Age Balkans. Ultimately, the intention of this paper is to bring together different approaches that place material culture studies at the heart of Bronze Age warfare research.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to many colleagues who enabled the sampling of objects and wear analyses briefly reported on in this paper, with particular thanks to Dragan Jovanović, Marija Ljuština and Sanjin Mihelić. The ongoing analyses of samples are being conducted in collaboration with Peter Northover, while David Dungworth and Roger Doonan have also provided considerable help in undertaking this work. I am grateful to Marianne Mödlinger and Sue Bridgford for the advice on technical matters over recent years and to Anthony Harding, Marion Uckelmann and Andrea Dolfini for the advice on this manuscript. This research was hosted at the UCD Centre for Experimental Archaeology and Material Culture with Aidan O’Sullivan and received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 655023 for a project entitled “Breaking the Mould: A cross-cultural analysis of the character of bronze smiths and craft diversity in late Bronze Age Europe (1300-800 BC)”.
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Molloy, B. (2018). Conflict at Europe’s Crossroads: Analysing the Social Life of Metal Weaponry in the Bronze Age Balkans. In: Dolfini, A., Crellin, R., Horn, C., Uckelmann, M. (eds) Prehistoric Warfare and Violence. Quantitative Methods in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78828-9_10
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