In recent years Archaic Greek warfare has become one of the issues most often raised among scholars focused on Ancient Greece in general. Questions about the emergence of the phalanx, evolution of fighting styles and types of weapons feature prominently in the mentioned discourse. The considerations of the provenance of these innovations certainly do not go beyond the frames of that debate. Taking the vast scope of interactions between the Near East and the widely understood Greek world into account, presuming the possible presence of the Near-Eastern influences in Archaic Greek warfare seems to be legitimate. The aim of this paper is an attempt to point out archaeologically traceable solutions in the terms of weapons and tactics in Greek warfare which may have been drawn from the Oriental area and assess their potential significance for the development of Greek warfare.

The specific relationship between weapon-form and mode of use has become a subject of intense research regarding the martial practices of past societies. In recent years the application of wear analysis to bronze offensive weapons has allowed us to define their function on the basis of recognizable damage. This paper aims to present results of use-wear analysis conducted on a unique bronze sword that was found in Domasław, Poland in a cremation cemetery belonging to Lusatian culture. The sword reveals a broad range of traces, ones which may be attributed to respective fighting techniques. Another goal of the present work is to partially fill the research void which presently exists concerning warfare as practiced by the Lusatian culture people, and to point out the necessity of carrying out further studies of this kind.