Militarism and the Indo-Europeanizing of Europe - Robert Drews

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66 According to McLeod 1965, p. 14, experiments showed that “the best ranges attained
by wooden self bows were 170–210 yards (155–190 meters).”
67 Kern 1999, p. 18.
68 Lafont 2009, p. 5.
69 For texts vividly illustrating desperation of the besieged see Hamblin 2006,
pp. 234–235.
70 Even in the Late Bronze Age ÉRIN.MEŠoccasionally denotes a labor force. See
p. 159 in Harry Hoffner’s Letters from the Hittite Kingdom (Atlanta: Society of Biblical
Literature, 2009 [edited by Gary Beckman]). Letter 39 of the corpus reports that in
various places an ÉRIN.MEŠis engaged in the harvesting of grasses. Observing that
the translation of the term as Soldatenis inappropriate in this context, Hoffner here
translates ÉRIN.MEŠas “work-gangs.”
71 Although we cannot take at face value what the sources say about how many men
Shamshi-Adad I took with him on campaigns, Nele Ziegler concludes that it was
“plusieurs dizaines de milliers d’hommes” (Ziegler 2008, p. 51).
72 Branigan 1974, nos. 1–422.
73 See now Kletter and Levi 2016. Reporting on the ubiquity of bronze daggers in several
MB II cemeteries at Rishon Le-Zion, south of Tel Aviv, the authors challenge the
traditional labeling of male burials with daggers as “warrior graves.” The dagger seems
to have been a standard accoutrement for adult men in the southern Levant.
74 Branigan 1974, nos. 423, 424, 429, 430, and 431. The only socketed spearhead in
Branigan’s catalogue is no. 472, from Malthi, which was dated MH by the excavators
but would now be placed in the LH period.
75 Marinatos 2005.
76 On this site see Broodbank and Kiriatzi 2007. At p. 268 the authors comment on the
intensive “Minoanization” in the MB period: “As far as can be assessed, the indigen -
ous pottery tradition had more or less vanished by the First Palace period (beginning
ca. 1950 B.C.E.), and henceforth, Kytheran site assemblages are exclusively based
on Cretan models for some 500 years.”
77 Fig. 13 and 14b in Rutter 2001.
78 Manning 1986, p. 286.
79 See Manning 1986, p. 286:


At the closest and most Minoanised sites of Kastri on Kythera, Akrotiri on Thera,
and Trianda on Rhodes, there were no fortifications. In this respect they resemble
contemporary sites on Crete. However, the more distant sites, like Ayia Irini on
Keos, and Kolonna on Aegina, remained fortified during this period.
No MH fortifications on the mainland have been found. The fortified village at Malthi
seems to date to the LH III rather than the MH period assigned to it by Natan Valmin.
See Dickinson 1994, pp. 59–60.
80 See Dickinson 1994, p. 98, and Watrous 2001, pp. 173–176, on Cretan metalwork
in the MM I and II periods. Watrous brings down to MM some of the metalwork
that Keith Branigan had assigned to the EM period.
81 See Gale and Stos-Gale 1982, p. 18:


Several lines of evidence suggest that the Laurion was one of a number of import -
ant sources of copper to the Bronze Age Aegean, including our lead isotope
analyses. Our finding that Laurion copper was important for Crete harmonizes
with our earlier finding that the Laurion was an important source of lead for
Crete in the Bronze Age.

82 Davis 1986.
83 Abramovitz 1980.
84 On MM II Kolonna see Niemeier 1995 and Gauss 2010, pp. 744–746.


Warfare in Western Eurasia 101
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