The analysis of Bronze Age arrowheads found in the Tollense Valley, in the German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, has revealed that some of them were not produced locally. This finding has brought to light the oldest evidence of a large-scale interregional conflict in Europe, suggesting that an army from the south participated in what is considered the “oldest battle in Europe“.
The Tollense Valley is well known for being the site of a major conflict that took place around 1250 B.C. The number of human remains found, exceeding 150 individuals, suggests that more than 2,000 people participated in this battle, an unprecedented figure for the Bronze Age in northern Europe. The site was first proposed as a battlefield in 2011, and since then has been commonly referred to as the oldest known battlefield in Europe, as no other conflict of such magnitude that predates this one has been discovered.
However, despite the significance of the discovery, until recently, very little was known about the participants in this battle: Who were the people who fought and died there, and where did they come from? To try to answer these questions, a team of researchers from several German institutions compared the bronze and flint arrowheads found in the valley with more than 4,000 contemporary examples from other regions of Europe.
According to Leif Inselmann, lead author of the study and former member of the Seminar for Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology at the University of Göttingen, arrowheads are a kind of irrefutable evidence. Much like how a murder weapon in a criminal investigation provides clues about the culprit, the arrowheads offer us insights into the combatants in the Battle of the Tollense Valley and where they came from.
Most of the arrowheads found at the site are types occasionally found in the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania region, suggesting that many of the combatants in the battle were locals. However, other types of arrowheads were identified, such as those with straight or rhomboid bases, unilateral barbs, or a tang instead of a socket, which are more common in southern regions of Europe, such as present-day Bavaria and Moravia. These arrowheads have not been found in local burials in the Tollense region, indicating that they were not simply acquired through trade by the local inhabitants and used in the battle.
This discovery suggests that at least some of the combatants in the Battle of the Tollense were not locals, implying the involvement of warriors from the south, or possibly an army from that region. In several contemporary sites in southern Germany, large quantities of bronze arrowheads have also been found, indicating that the 13th century B.C. was a time in European prehistory marked by a widespread increase in armed conflicts.
Most importantly, this is the earliest example of an interregional conflict in Europe, suggesting that during this period there was an increase in the scale and professionalization of organized violence. The conflict in the Tollense Valley occurred during a time of great change, raising questions about how these violent confrontations were organized.
According to Inselmann, who now works at the Free University of Berlin, this raises questions about the organization of these violent conflicts. Were Bronze Age warriors organized in a tribal coalition, acting as the personal guard or mercenaries of a charismatic leader, a kind of “warlord,” or were they even the army of an early kingdom?
The evidence suggests that conflicts in Bronze Age Europe were not only more common than previously thought, but also involved combatants from different regions, revealing a degree of military complexity and organization far greater than previously imagined for this era. The Battle of the Tollense Valley was not simply a local skirmish, but an indication that interregional wars were already part of European reality more than 3,000 years ago.
SOURCES
Inselmann L, Krüger J, Schopper F, Rahmstorf L, Terberger T. Warriors from the south? Arrowheads from the Tollense Valley and Central Europe. Antiquity. 2024:1-19. doi:10.15184/aqy.2024.140
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