The Tollense Valley in northeastern Germany is home to what is known as the world’s oldest battlefield: an archaeological site containing the remains of some 150 individuals, dating back to the 13th century BC.
Now, analysis of arrowheads found at the site reveals that the weapons were not manufactured locally, suggesting that people from other parts of Europe were involved in the conflict. The team’s research was published today in Antique.
“Arrowheads are a kind of ‘smoking gun,'” says senior author Leif Inselmann, a researcher at Freie University Berlin and lead author of the study, in a paper. Antique “Like the murder weapon in a mystery, they give us a clue about the culprit, the fighters of the Battle of Tollense Valley and where they came from.”
The site was first proposed to be a battlefield in 2011, but it is not known for certain who took part in the conflict. According to the statement, based on the number of human remains left at the site, some researchers estimate that more than 2,000 people took part in the battle. Now, the team has determined that at least some of the combatants were not from northern Germany.
Inselmann has collected almost 5,000 arrowheads from across central Europe and found that there were a number of different types at the battle site. The arrowheads were made of both flint and bronze; while the flint ones were typical of the area, the bronze ones were a combination of local and non-local types. Many of the arrowheads were found in the Tollense area, but others – particularly those with straight or rhombic bases – are more generally associated with regions further south, such as Bavaria and Moravia.
Foreign arrowheads have not been found in graves in the Tollense area, indicating that arrowheads from elsewhere did not arrive in the region simply through trade. The barbs, it seems, were brought to Tollense for conflict purposes. One set of remains at the site makes this clear: a human skull cap, pierced with a bronze arrowhead.
“The Tollense Valley conflict dates back to a time of great change,” says Inselmann. “This raises questions about the organisation of such violent conflicts. Were Bronze Age warriors organised as a tribal coalition, as the retinue or mercenaries of a charismatic leader, a kind of ‘warlord’, or even as the army of an early kingdom?”
Although the arrowheads do not clarify who the parties to the conflict were, they do show that the large-scale violence (for the time) involved groups from further afield than previously known. As the team noted in their paper, no helmets or breastplates typical of the period have been found in archaeological excavations at the site, so further excavations may be needed to discover more about the ancient Tollense fighters whose remains remain at the site.