Session format:
Regular session
Title:
Prehistoric Warriorhood in Transition
Content:
The session invites theoretically-oriented papers exploring Neolithic to Late Bronze Age notions of martiality and warriorhood as laid out in individual ‘warrior graves’ and cognate evidence. In large swathes of Europe, the late 5th to 2nd millennia BC witnessed the emergence of a new funerary language centring on individual furnished burials. While all gender and age groups were interred in this way, male burials equipped with impressive panoplies of stone and metal weapons have drawn the keenest interest from scholars. For many, these burials are thought to embody a major transition to (a) individualising forms of prestige and sociopolitical ranking; (b) a binary gender ideology; (c) novel cosmological principles governing funerary behaviour and society; (d) a ‘heroic’ male persona defined, in life as much as in death, by martial valour; and (e) new migratory dynamics originating from the Pontic-Caspian steppes. While all these readings provide valuable insights into the social dimensions of warrior graves, none are conclusive due to a fractured theoretical landscape and oft-overheated debate. Consequently, even the definition of a ‘warrior grave’ and underlying social notions of warriorhood are contested.
The session discusses new perspectives on warrior burials from Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Bronze Age Europe focusing on the relationship between martial ideology and martial practices; markers of received or inflicted violence and related bioarchaeological evidence; and the funerary and non-funerary dimensions of grave kits. Papers may also discuss the gender dynamics underlying warrior graves as well as meaningfully associated or comparative evidence, e.g., unfurnished or differently furnished burials. True to the session’s focus on transitions, papers are also welcomed, which investigate the shift from weapon-poor to weapon-rich burials in the Neolithic and the transformation of warrior burial and ideology during the Bronze Age. A parallel poster session will host narrower studies, e.g., those solely focusing on bone trauma.
Keywords:
Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe, Warriorhood, Warrior graves, Burial, Gender, Violence
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Andrea Dolfini (United Kingdom) 1
Co-organisers:
Catherine Frieman (Australia) 2
Eleanor Harrison (United Kingdom) 1
Barry Molloy (Ireland) 3
Affiliations:
1. Newcastle University
2. Australian National University
3. University College Dublin
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