Battle(?) of Tollense revisited

[Andreas Johansson]

The reader may recall our previous threads on Tollense, the site of a substantial clash in Bronze Age (ca 1250 BC) Germany, detected in the form of dozens of skeletons with weapon trauma and various weapons and other gear left in the swampy river valley.

I stubbled across a blog post saying that subsequent finds make it look like it wasn't a pitched battle but an ambush on a trade caravan. So it would still be evidence of substantial armed forces, but not of a stand up fight of the sort we usually game.

(Whether you think that makes much difference might depend on to what extent you consider pitched battle a cultural habit or a natural consequence of large(ish) armed forces.)

[Erpingham]

While the ambush scenario seems plausible enough, isn't it a giant leap to assume that any group that contained women and children couldn't be an army?  Aren't the Romans constantly fighting tribal forces with families in carts?  That this isn't a straight clash between warrior forces is worth pointing out but the trade caravan seems a bit speculative.

[Andreas Johansson]

I have a suspicion neither the blog post nor the linked (German) article gives quite the full picture of the archaeologist's argument, but one concrete argument in favour of "trade caravan" is given: the presence of what may be trade goods.

Now that's obviously not definitive, it's easy to imagine reasons an army might be carrying such. What does seem indicated though is that the finds don't represent the actual site of a pitched battle; dependents, trade goods, and horses to young to ride would presumably not be carried in the battle-line by choice. Maybe a battle was fought on higher ground, and we're seeing remains of the rout, where dependents and baggage were over-run.

[Duncan Head]

I have a suspicion neither the blog post nor the linked (German) article gives quite the full picture of the archaeologist's argument, but one concrete argument in favour of "trade caravan" is given: the presence of what may be trade goods.

What struck me was the (apparent) assumption that the main item of "trade goods", the "cache of scrap metal and tools", was deposited at the same time as the massacre - and not a year or a decade or a century earlier, or later. If (part of) the site is a commonly-used river-crossing, "some form of causeway or bridge over the Tollense river" as one of the comments on http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/58234 suggests, there will have been plenty of other people wandering by over the years, and radiocarbon dating isn't going to be precise enough to differentiate them.

[Erpingham]

I think the idea that we haven't got the whole argument is a fair one because you'd need a rather better set of evidence of the "trade caravan" than a pile of bronze scrap, a few rings and some immature horses.  While we might not expect such things to be in a mobile raiding force, a force with more of a "tail" e.g. an expedition or migration might have such things. 

[Swampster]

Perhaps a raiding part caught with booty? Even some or all of the non-combatants could have been booty, killed as collateral damage as suggested for the horses by one of the comments at the end of the blog. There might be various reasons why the killers didn't take them for burial.

[Dangun]

What struck me was the (apparent) assumption that the main item of "trade goods", the "cache of scrap metal and tools", was deposited at the same time as the massacre - and not a year or a decade or a century earlier, or later.

Its internally inconsistent too, because if it was a raid on a trade caravan, you wouldn't leave the trade goods behind.

[Erpingham]

What struck me was the (apparent) assumption that the main item of "trade goods", the "cache of scrap metal and tools", was deposited at the same time as the massacre - and not a year or a decade or a century earlier, or later.

Its internally inconsistent too, because if it was a raid on a trade caravan, you wouldn't leave the trade goods behind.

I presume the thinking is that, as the bronze was found in the river, it had fallen in during the fight or been thrown in to save it from capture and wasn't noticed by looters.  However, a separate act of ritual deposition could also account for it, or even a separate accident if this was a route taken by itinerant bronze smiths.