Ancient Weapons New Research Perspectives on Weapons and Warfare Giacomo Bardell

This edited volume is the outcome of a 2019 conference on ‘Ancient Weapons’ at the Römisch-Germanische-Zentralmuseum, Mainz, and the nine chapters published here cover a wide chronological range from the Late Bronze Age to the Italian Iron Age, c. tenth to third centuries BC. The contributions focus mainly on Italy, with single chapters on western Hungary, North Macedonia, Greece and western Turkey. Each chapter offers a detailed study of weaponry, mostly recovered from ritual contexts. The emphasis is on the roles of these weapons within rituals in sanctuaries and burials, and more broadly within society, rather than on what they can tell us about warfare and craftmanship. The collected papers use different research strategies and analyses to achieve a new understanding of objects which have long been the focus of scholarship.