The Unknown Warrior (3 page)

PRACTICE AND DISCIPLINE

We have no remains that relate to anything resembling a training camp or training feature in the Bronze Age, nonetheless the weaponry used will have required a modicum of experience; the rapier is a weapon that needs practice if it is to be used effectively. Furthermore, anyone who has picked up a Bronze Age sword would probably be surprised at how small the handles seem – the way of holding such a weapon was to have some of the fingers on the handle, but others closer to the blade of the sword, on the small ‘ricasso' notch just below the handle. This is something that would take some getting used to if one was to wield a sword to the desired effect.

THE LIFE OF THE SOLDIER

In the following chapters we shall look at elements of the soldier's life – his pastimes, religion, the food he ate, the availability of alcoholic drink and its significance, and his enjoyment of tobacco. Unfortunately, this is not possible within the context of the Bronze Age, as it is rare to find conclusive evidence of military settlement or of those engaged in combat. Evidence of warfare is often isolated. We might find food traces in a Late Bronze Age midden (such as Chisenbury on Salisbury Plain), or within the confines of a defended settlement, but this is not the same as, say, a latrine in a fort. We cannot be sure of the diet being specifically martial. Further work also needs to be done to analyse human bones, as the information such analysis can provide on diets could be applied to those we think are combat victims.

Drinking

If we are indeed looking at an elite form of warfare in the Early Bronze Age, followed by warriors collected in loose war bands, can we see any parallels in succeeding chapters for obligations that would ensure alliance? In the Saxon and Norse eras there is constant literary evidence for warriors being provided with hospitality and rewards by their leaders and rulers in return for their service. Those who were at the top were known by such terms as ‘ring-givers' and we see throughout the epic poem
Beowulf
references to drink being taken in the great halls. By building up ties and obligation, so one could ensure service. Gift-giving and reciprocity is well known in the anthropological record and there is a possibility that this is what we are seeing occasionally in the archaeological record.

To this end, the Beaker Culture ‘package' is especially interesting. Decorated ceramic drinking vessels – the ‘Beaker' – are often found in burial assemblages within barrows associated with items of warrior paraphernalia, such as arrowheads and archers' wristguards. Occasionally, a site such as Barrow Hills (Barclay and Halpin, 1999) produces elements such as gold ‘basket earrings' (or hair decorations), and very occasionally a fabulously rich burial is found, such as the Amesbury Archer excavated by Wessex Archaeology, with all of the above items and more, including a bronze dagger (see Wessex Archaeology, 2004b).

There is also the possibility that the inhumed were accompanied by leather jerkins and ornamental belts as part of the warrior's costume, such as those depicted on stelae in Switzerland (Osgood and Monks, 2000: 84). Why would a ceramic vessel be included in the same package as items reflecting a martial character – the arrowheads, wristguard, dagger – or of great wealth in gold and bronze?

Although a new type of vessel, the technology behind the ceramic beaker was not new. It is possible that we are seeing the ceramic vessel as part of the martial package – the symbol of obligation, feasting and bonding through drinking, like the warriors depicted in the Saxon chronicles, epic poems and Norse sagas. Strong liquor does indeed seem to have been part of a status assemblage: ‘Some of the interments in Scottish graves appear to have been accompanied by vessels containing fermented drinks, as indicated by the analysis of scrapings taken from a beaker found at Methilhill, Ashgrove, Fife, and a food vessel from North Mains, Strathallan, Perthshire' (Clarke
et al.
, 1985: 201).

Sherratt (1994: 253) thinks that bell-beakers began as a variant of corded ware drinking vessels, as the latter tradition in northern Europe saw an assemblage accompanied with stone battle axes, as opposed to the archery equipment of the Beaker package. He writes: ‘These vessels suggest individual hospitality rather than the great communal ceremonies at gathering places, which had hitherto dominated the ritual life of Western Europe.' Such hospitality could still be used to reinforce ties and bonds between warriors in local elites – perhaps the alcoholic drinks would also provide a form of Dutch courage to warriors, too.

Writings

In the following chapters we shall see many interesting facets connected to writing and the infantry: inscriptions – often of the owner's name – on weaponry, graffiti scratched by soldiers in buildings, and letters describing conditions found at fortress sites. In Bronze Age Britain there is no such resource. Carvings have been found that reflect the importance of weaponry or ‘prestige goods', such as the extensive carvings of axes on one of the Stonehenge trilithons recently highlighted by a programme of laser-scanning. Unfortunately we have no writings – it is probably safe to suggest that the warrior of the British Bronze Age was illiterate.

Although there are no writings, there are depictions of warriors and the panoply of arms, which are as expressive. These are present throughout northern Europe – with many examples in Scandinavia. Here, spears, shields, swords and helmets are all depicted and there are images of combat on ships. In Britain there are possible rock carvings of shields in Ireland – Harrison (2004) has recently examined these carvings in depth.

Accommodation

As we have no regimental system in the Bronze Age and as those that did the fighting in this period would have used the same style of huts and enclosures as other members of society, it is next to impossible to differentiate something approximating a ‘barracks' in the archaeological record. Bronze Age huts have been found, sometimes in walled enclosures like those from Grimspound on Dartmoor, Devon, and sometimes with fences such as Blackpatch, Sussex, and Trethellen Farm, Cornwall, but the main areas worth looking at are the large fortified centres or ‘hill forts' of Bronze Age date.

In earlier publications (Osgood, 1998: 55–67; Osgood and Monks, 2000: 10–15) I have summarised some of the evidence for the emergence of these structures in Britain and Ireland. Many early hill forts were sited to dominate passes and to protect trading routes, primarily rivers, and areas of production – Dinorben in Wales controlled the routes to Ireland and the region's gold industry. The ramparts of these fortified sites could be elaborate affairs. The various phases of timber palisades and ditches at Rams Hill, Berkshire, for example, date from 1410–1047
BC
(Bradley and Ellison, 1975). Although these forts had substantial defences, the size of the population within would have been too small to garrison the entire perimeter. Perhaps this indicates that, in turn, raiding parties would have been too small to mount any form of siege and that the fortifications were more than adequate to provide protection to a tribal grouping when threatened. Perhaps warfare was so formalised that the gateway was generally the focus of the attack. At some point, the Late Bronze Age warrior is likely to have resided, even if only for a very short time, in one of these fortifications.

The competition for trade routes and prestige goods could lead to conflict between societies and individuals, particularly when added to the claims for land through division of the landscape that occurred from the Middle Bronze Age onwards with the cutting of huge linear ditches. These could run for many kilometres – like those on Quarley Hill, Hampshire, and the massive ditches that survive on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire. Some ditches are still impressively deep, such as the double-ditches running up to Sidbury Hill and the example that skirts the huge longbarrow, known as ‘Old Ditch longbarrow', close to Tilshead on Salisbury Plain. Digging these ditches, without recourse to metal tools, would have been a huge task in terms of the organisation of labour and must have been undertaken for major reasons, not simply to provide cattle ranches. These ditches are an important statement in the soil – an expression of land ownership and power, and thus territory. The ownership of territory is a source of dispute and thus potential conflict.

MEMORIAL AND BURIAL

The most visible elements of memorial in the Bronze Age are the burial mounds, the tumuli or round barrows that we see from the earlier part of the period. These mounds are often located by an early Beaker burial mound with a grouping or ‘cemetery' of barrows then being created. Some of the more dramatic of these cemeteries are to be found on Salisbury Plain, close to Stonehenge. Silk Hill, Snail Down, King's Barrow Ridge and Normanton Down all have collections of round barrows and, from what we can glean from the excavation notes of the antiquarians who dug into them, many contained elements of weaponry. Some have been given names evoking the burial package of those inhumed, such as the Hunter's Barrow at Snail Down. As we shall see in
Chapter 3
, these barrows were often the focus for burials carried out by later societies, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon period, and were where people with weaponry were interred.

Despite the fact that we get weaponry from these burial mounds, prestige goods and an expression of a possible martial character of the deceased, it is rare to find proof positive of their involvement in warfare. As far as the commemoration of an individual warrior is concerned, the barrows are our most likely source of evidence, but must remain inconclusive. Unfortunately, John Aubrey's comments in the introduction to this chapter are thus impossible to corroborate.

After burials in barrows, there was a period of cremation. Cemeteries of urns have been found across Europe, but they are disastrous in terms of our chances of finding pathology to indicate combat. By the Late Bronze Age, burials were rarer still. We might find the odd body as a chance discovery following the individual's burial outside the normal realm of a cemetery – such as at Tormarton, see pages 13–15 – but these are rare. Were bodies excarnated and their bones deposited in rivers or lakes as water became an important religious context (as Flag Fen has shown)? Several skulls of probable Bronze Age date recovered from the River Thames in London might hint that this is the case.

THE FALLEN

Despite the changes in modes of burial in this period, there are burials from the Early Bronze Age through to the Late Bronze Age that bear testament to violence. One must be careful to remember that weapon injuries might have been the result of a myriad of actions and may not even have been inflicted while the individual was alive (Stead, 1991); nevertheless, combat is probably the best explanation for the causes of death for the people described below and in the following pages.

Excavations by Oxford Archaeology at the site of Barrow Hills, Radley, Oxfordshire, produced a fine Beaker assemblage from a crouched inhumation in the central grave, F203. The skeleton was accompanied by many grave goods – a drinking vessel or ‘beaker' from which the package gets its name, a bone awl, a fragment of iron pyrites, a bronze awl, an antler spatula, several flint flakes and scrapers, and five barbed and tanged arrowheads near the foot of the burial, perhaps once within a quiver (Barclay and Halpin, 1999: 140–1). A further flint arrowhead was discovered lying in the ribcage, next to the vertebrae of the man who was buried here, with both of the barbs broken, and there was an impact fracture at the tip of the weapon. The authors believed that its presence in this location suggested the cause of the individual's death (
ibid.
: 140).

Another discovery in Oxfordshire gives evidence of fighting in the later Bronze Age. Work at Queenford Farm, Dorchester-on-Thames, in 1901, uncovered parts of a human skeleton – the frontal bones of the skull, and parts of a pelvis. The latter had been pierced by a triangular-bladed, basal looped spearhead, which had broken off in the wound when the attacker tried to recover his precious spear. The force of the stabbing and attempt to recover the weapon had not only broken the spear, but seems also to have twisted the metal. A radiocarbon date from this pelvis of 1260–990
BC
was obtained – Late Bronze Age (Osgood, 1998: 21).

UNKNOWN WARRIOR 1

As we have seen at Barrow Hills, the Beaker burial assemblage proclaiming the individual to have some martial prowess or function is at times linked to actual evidence of weapon trauma. Excavations by John Evans in 1978 at the icon of British prehistory, Stonehenge, were carried out to examine the palaeoenvironmental potential of the site. As with many archaeological digs, the penultimate day provided important results. On this day the collapse of the ditch section revealed the bones of a human burial some 1–1.2m below the surface, in the ditch silts (O'Connor in Evans
et al.
, 1984: 13). On full excavation this body was seen to be a classic Beaker burial, from the start of the Bronze Age, with some elements of the package of archery grave goods. The body was complete, although partially disturbed by the actions of a burrowing animal, hence the feet were missing and the right shoulder was displaced.

The skeleton was sexed as being male, from elements such as the pelvic sciatic notch and mastoid process on the skull. An examination of the bones and teeth seemed to indicate that he was between 25 and 30 years old when he died, was muscular and of general good health before death. What made the burial so interesting was its pathology. Three of his ribs bear witness to penetration injuries; the fourth left rib has cracks on its surface and a small hole containing the tip of a flint arrowhead, the rest of which was found lying by the right arm. The eleventh (left) and ninth (right) ribs also have cut grooves in them, probably resulting from a sharp projectile passing through the ribcage, and the back of the mesosternum had an embedded flint arrowhead tip. Overall, the evidence seems to suggest that ‘the man was probably shot at close range as none of the injuries show the penetration downwards that would be expected from an arrow falling in an arc' (Evans
et al.
, 1984: 17). A radiocarbon date (BM–1582) was obtained from the left femur of the man, a result of 2170 ± 110
BC
being obtained (
ibid.
: 22).