GÖTTINGEN, GERMANY—Science Magazine reports that researchers led by Raphael Hermann of the University of Göttingen created bronze swords and staged battles with them in order to determine if Bronze Age warriors actually fought with weapons made of the soft alloy, or reserved them for ceremonial purposes. Hermann and his team members planned a series of blade-on-blade blows, and strikes on shields and spears, and recorded marks left on the new bronze swords. They then asked members of a medieval dueling club to use the new weapons in ways described in medieval combat manuals. The researchers noted the wear patterns on the swords after the mock battles, and compared them to microscopic marks on actual Bronze Age weapons dated from 1600 to 600 B.C. As a result, the researchers were able to assign wear patterns to specific sword moves and combinations. Not only did the wear marks on the ancient weapons suggest Bronze Age warriors used them to fight, the researchers noted that fighting styles developed as well-practiced techniques that spread across Europe over time. “In order to fight the way the marks show, there has to be a lot of training involved,” Hermann explained. Read the original scholarly article about this research in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. To read about the grave of a Bronze Age Mycenaean warrior buried with a gold-pommeled sword, go to “World of the Griffin Warrior.”
