86 Kristian Kristiansen
study (but see Bürmeister and Müller-Scheessel 2007; Fuhrholt 2008; Fernandez Götz
2013). I propose that it is possible to delimit various forms of social and ultimately ethnic
identity, through a careful analysis of the geographical distribution of social institutions
and the symbolic meaning of their material culture (Vandkilde 1998; Kristiansen 2004).
By identifying the relevant institutional frameworks in the archaeological record, it is
possible to delimit various types of identities from local to global that helped to uphold
and reproduce these very same institutions over shorter or longer periods of time.
Coexisting “National” and “International”
Identities. Northern and Central Europe
1500–1300BC
In the Nordic realm, we can distinguish between two recurring types of male warrior
graves, which I will term “ritual chiefs” and “warrior chiefs.” The ritual chief is charac-
terized by a special package of objects, such as campstools, and drinking vessels with sun
symbols at the bottom, so that the sun would rise when lifting the cup that contained
mead. Also, the razor and tweeter are often linked to this group of ritual chiefs, which
share the exclusive use of spiral decoration, the symbol of sun cult and of Nordic iden-
tity. The sword would often be full hilted and rather used for parade than warfare, rarely
sharp, and rarely damaged (Kristiansen 1984 for an empirical documentation of the use
of different sword types).
The warrior chief, on the contrary, would have a highly functional, undecorated flange
hilted sword, an international type distributed from south-central Europe and the Aegean
to Scandinavia. It was the sword of the professional warrior, always sharp-edged and often
re-sharpened from damage in combat (Kristiansen 1984). The warrior chiefs would rarely
have any of the ritualized symbolic objects of ritual chiefs, which suggest that they were
deprived of access to this office. With ritual chiefs, they shared burial in an oak coffin
under a barrow, and a chiefly dress consisting of cape and round cap, both costly and
socially distinctive of the free man of chiefly lineage. They also shared burial in a barrow,
which is the corresponding ritual definition of “free men,” who owned cattle and farms,
in opposition to those who had smaller houses without stalling for cattle (Kristiansen
2006).
Finally, we have a third group with octagonal hilted swords of south German origin, but
also produced in Denmark by migrant smiths, as they employed a specific casting method
different from the Nordic smiths (Quillfeldt 1995; Bunnefeld and Schwenzer 2011). As
with the warriors, they do not have any of the paraphernalia of the ritual chiefs, and
they share some of the same international distribution as the flange hilted sword. They
represent a group of people who might be linked to elite trade and smithing (Kristiansen
and Larsson 2005).
These three groups are represented by several hundred burials, and they serve as a
prime example of Ian Hodder’s dictum that material culture is meaningfully consti-
tuted. In a rather straightforward way, they demonstrate that different sword types in
the Bronze Age were meaningfully linked to different social and ritual institutions, and