Bronze Age Warfare in Barbaric Europe - Current Trends and Perspectives in the Future

Abstract

Research on prehistoric warfare is in progress since 60 years. But investigation specifically on Bronze Age period, when some tools are exclusively created for fight and the warrior societies are emerging, is always young. Scholars there were mainly interested on the origins of violence in mankind, on the fighting in the Neolithic or, if Bronze Age, on the wars in the empires of the Near East or in the Minoan civilization. But the warfare in the European Bronze Age up to a decade ago, it was dealt marginally. Violence and warfare in Bronze Age in "barbarian Europe", to use an expression by Jaques Briard, can be defined as a "fashion" since the mid-2000s. Recent trends are analyzed according to various perspectives: generals, theoretical, study of material cultures and context, and interpretative tendencies. So will be discuss what the commonly accepted theories and what also remain subject of doubt and debate to draw a perspective for the future.