The Tollense Valley in northeastern Germany is home to the oldest known battlefield in the world, an archaeological site containing the remains of around 150 people dating back to the 13th century BC.
Now, analysis of arrowheads found at the site reveals that the weapons were not made in the region, suggesting that the conflict involved people from other parts of Europe. Ancient.
“The arrowhead is a kind of ‘smoking gun,'” says Leif Inselmann, a researcher at the Free University Berlin and lead author of the study. Ancient “Like murder weapons in a mystery novel, they give clues about the perpetrators, the warriors of the Battle of the Tollense Valley and where they came from.”
The site was first identified as a battlefield in 2011, but the parties involved in the conflict remain unknown. Based on the number of bodies left at the site, some researchers estimate that more than 2,000 people were involved in the fighting itself, according to the release. Now, a recent team of researchers has determined that at least some of the combatants were not locals from North Germany.
Inselmann collected nearly 5,000 arrowheads from across Central Europe and found that the battlefields contained a variety of arrowhead types. The arrowheads were made of flint and bronze; the flint arrowheads were typical of the region, while the bronze arrowheads were a mix of local and non-local types. Many of the arrowheads were found in the Tollense region, but the straight or diamond-shaped arrowheads are more common in more southern areas such as Bavaria and Moravia.
No foreign arrowheads have been found in graves in the Tollense region, indicating that arrowheads from elsewhere were not simply brought to the region through trade. Arrowheads were likely brought to Tollense for combat purposes, as evidenced by a set of artifacts at the site: a human skull pierced with a bronze arrowhead.
“The conflict in the Tollense Valley dates back to a time of great change,” says Inselmann. “This raises the question about the organization of such violent conflicts: Were Bronze Age warriors organized as tribal confederations, as retinues or mercenaries of a charismatic leader (a kind of ‘warlord’), or were they part of the armies of an earlier kingdom?”
Although the arrowheads do not reveal the parties involved in the conflict, they do suggest that acts of violence on a massive scale (for the time) involved groups from further afield than previously known. As the team points out in their paper, archaeological excavations at the site have not uncovered typical helmets or breastplates, so further excavations may be needed to learn more about the ancient fighters at Tollense, many of whose remains remain.
