National Geographic
More than 3,000 years ago, two ancient armies clashed in a river valley in what’s now northern Germany.
No one is sure who took part in the conflict or the disagreement that led to the bloodshed—Europe’s earliest-known battle, and the largest from the time. But a new study suggests that some of the arrows unearthed at the ancient battlefield were made far away, in the south of Central Europe—and so supposedly they were used by warriors from that region.
Some earlier studies had suggested that only locals took part. But the new research, published today in Antiquity, indicates that some combatants were foreign warriors, maybe even part of an invading army.
“Maybe this was some warlord or some charismatic leader with his retinue, working as mercenaries,” says archaeologist Leif Inselmann, a doctoral student at the University of Berlin and the lead author of the study. “Or do we already have some kind of kingdom, with a dynasty? Or was there a coalition of many tribes?”
An ancient battlefield
Inselmann and his colleagues examined 54 bronze and flint arrowheads unearthed at the Tollense Valley archaeological site, about 80 miles north of Berlin.
The site is now a placid riverside field, but in 2011, researchers recognized the location as an ancient battlefield where up to 2,000 people fought on each side around 1250 B.C.
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Such a large number of combatants was unexpected, and no traces of battles of similar size from this time have been found in Europe.
Archaeologists now think the death toll was between 750 and 1,000 people. From thousands of human bones, they have identified the remains of at least 150 people—mostly young men aged between 20 and 40, but also two women.
Though excavations turned up wooden clubs and arrowheads, no swords have been found—but some skulls bear cut marks that suggest swords were used.
One arrowhead in the latest study was even found embedded in a skull. And the presence of bones from at least five horses indicate that some warriors may have also ridden into the battle.
Arrowheads have been key to learning about what happened at the Tollense Valley site almost from the beginning. Human remains and pieces of ancient weapons—including spearheads, arrowheads, and the blades of bronze knives—had been found there since the 1980s. But early researchers weren’t sure that the site was an ancient battlefield until a metal detectorist on their team showed them a box of bronze arrowheads, recalls archaeologist Thomas Terberger of the Georg August University of Göttingen, who carried out excavations there almost 20 years ago and coauthored the new study.
“It was clear to me that this was the breakthrough, the ‘smoking gun,’” he says. “Today we know that the bow and arrow were the most important weapons in the conflict.”
An excavation called Weltzin 20 site (shown) at the Tollense Valley battlefield yielded the remains of 90 individuals.
Photograph by S. Sauer
The latest research compares the arrowheads from the Tollense Valley site to more than 4,700 arrowheads from contemporary sites across Europe.
Most look like others found in the region, which is now in the state of Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania.
But some of the arrowheads have distinctive shapes—including “rhombic” bases and barbs—that indicate they were probably made further south in Bavaria in modern Germany or in Moravia in modern Czechia.
Such arrowheads are not found as offerings in local graves, which indicates local people had not acquired them through trade, Inselmann says; instead, southern warriors likely brought arrows with them to fight in the battle.
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Locals and foreigners
Earlier attempts to figure out where the combatants came from used the isotopes in their bones—chemical signatures that can reveal where a person lived and what they ate.
The arrowhead results accord with a 2016 study that linked the isotopes in some of the human remains from the Tollense Valley site to origins farther the south.
A 2020 isotope study, however, suggested instead that only locals had taken part in the battle.
But that study may have been misleading because it only sampled a small number of the remains, says Joachim Burger, an anthropologist and population geneticist at the University of Mainz who led the analysis; and he describes the latest research as “exciting.”
Some of the bronze artifacts unearthed from the riverbed at the Tollense Valley site match objects from the same period in southern Germany and eastern France, further complicating the story.
Archaeologist Barry Molloy of University College Dublin, an expert in ancient warfare who wasn’t involved in the study, is impressed by the researchers’ attention to detail.
Arrows were an important weapon in the Bronze Age battle. This arrow shaft was uncovered at the Weltzin 28 excavation site in Tollense Valley.
Photograph by Joachim Krüger
“Most of the time, people try to address big questions using trendy approaches like genetics or isotopes,” he says. “But this one is good old-fashioned archaeological work, and it really presents a convincing narrative for me.”
For Terberger, the growing evidence that warriors from the south took part in the battle indicates the nature of the conflict, which may have involved regional powers. He is also interested in how such large armies might have been reflected in the organizations of their societies. Evidence from burial sites elsewhere in Germany indicates “warriors” were already established as a social class by this time, and the construction of many hillforts at this time may be a sign that these more stratified societies increasingly led to warfare, he says.
Bronze Age conflicts
Until the discovery of the ancient battlefield, many scholars had assumed that the Bronze Age was mainly peaceful, and that trade was the most important factor for cultural development.
But the discoveries at the Tollense Valley site shows “large violent conflicts were a part of Bronze Age life,” Terberger says.
Europe was undergoing significant cultural changes at this time, which probably contributed to such conflicts—and Terberger sees signs of this in studies of the Urnfield Culture, which occupied much of Central Europe at this time and may have been the origin of any foreign warriors.
“The transition to the so-called Urnfield Culture in the 13th century B.C. saw major religious and political changes, and the transformation of society at that time was more violent than expected,” he says.
Inselmann adds that other archaeological sites in Germany from this time show greater numbers of arrowheads than before, which also suggests violent conflicts had become more frequent.
The reasons are unknown, but he notes this was roughly the same time as the “Late Bronze Age Collapse” when empires fell apart in the Mediterranean, possibly due to climate, disease and other pressures; and similar societal challenges may have impacted parts of Europe.
Many archaeologists think warfare often took place in Bronze Age Europe because many fortifications were built at this time, often atop hills in Germany and Britain, that needed relatively large armies to defend them.
“There seems to be an increasing pattern of building sites that require large armies,” Molloy says. “And at the same time [military] technology is emerging to allow large armies to fight.”
