GÖTTINGEN, GERMANY—Science Magazine reports that 31 objects thought to have belonged to one warrior have been found in a cache in northeastern Germany’s Tollense Valley, where an intense battle was fought by as many as 2,000 warriors some 3,300 years ago, by a team of researchers led by Joachim Krūger of the University of Greifswald. The warrior’s kit included a bronze awl with a birch handle, a knife, a chisel, a decorated belt box, three dress pins, arrowheads, and fragments of bronze that may have been used as currency. Three thin bronze metal cylinders pierced with bronze nails found with the kit may have been fittings for a cloth bag or wooden storage box. More than 12,000 pieces of human bone, belonging to more than 140 individuals, have been recovered from the ancient battlefield. Almost all of the bones belonged to young men and showed signs of recent and past trauma. Chemical analysis of the bones indicates that not all of the men grew up locally, and the researchers note that the bronze items in the warrior’s kit are similar to those found in southern Germany and the Czech Republic. The researchers speculate that warriors from multiple regions may have been fighting over trade routes along the Tollense River. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Antiquity. To read about a Bronze Age tomb in Greece containing over 2,000 artifacts, go to “World of the Griffin Warrior.”
