War in the Bronze Age
The Bronze Age of Europe has many sites and artefacts which suggest it was a
warlike period – forts, weapons, depictions of armed warriors, even skeletons with
signs of trauma which might have been the result of war wounds. But what can we
really say about the nature of warfare in that period? Can we imagine massed armies
criss-crossing Europe, or was it rather more like the sort of thing that Homer
describes, duelling between individual heroes? The lecture will examine the evidence
for inter-personal and inter-group conflict, drawing on recent results from a site
excavated by the lecturer in the Czech Republic, and other relevant material.