The warfare of the prehistoric aegean from the point of view of injuries (on the basis of archaeological, literary and iconographical sources)
Abstract
This paper is - as the work of an archaeologist specialized in the prehistoric Aegean warfare in a broader context - conceived from a different point of view using archaeological, iconographical and literary sources. After a basic introduction to the topic, a short overview of basic types of weapons and armour of warriors in prehistoric Aegean and the representations of battle situations - the images, where at least one warrior is injured - will follow.
In these representations, it is sometimes possible to identify a type of weapon and armour. Except for this, they also show us the commonest kinds of war operations and battle situations of that time.
The injuries sustained, which are possible to see on the representations, or which are described in the Homeric epics, can be sorted into several groups. The iconographical sources and preserved weapons and armour can also inform us which sort of injuries on the skeletons/bones we should expect (mainly head and forearm injuries), but they can also help us to get a better insight in the phenomenon of warfare and the meaning of the status of warrior (hero, soldier or just a killer?) in the prehistoric Aegean.
All these findings will be subsequently compared with the evidence of the skeletal material. The type of injuries sustained usually correspond to the iconographic evidence.
On the other hand, the burial equipment of the injured skeletons sometimes did not contain weapons (or other warlike elements) and these deceased are not - according to the one of the basic paradigms of European archaeology - considered to be "real" professional warriors. This paper is thus also trying to contribute to the re-evaluation of this paradigm - that the deceased, who was buried with weapons, had to be a warrior and could have died in a battle.
As will be also showed in this paper, this wasn't always true and a status of a "warrior" could more likely be a social phenomenon.