Militarism in temperate Europe 141
The weapons are usually richly decorated with engraved spiral and geometric
motifs, which we may interpret as the increased material and symbolic
elaboration of a warrior elite identity. Some of the weapon hoards contain
only one or two items, which may represent the weapons set of a leading
warrior, while others contain numerous weapons. These may be connected
to rituals involving groups of warriors.^41Laura Dietrich, studying the Bz A2–Bz B elite in the southeastern part of the
Carpathian basin, noted its preference for hilltop settlements, at least partially
fortified, and saw in both the design of the settlements and the characteristics of
the weaponry close connections with the military class in Greece.^42 In still another
recent study, focusing on the weaponry and on the cheekpieces for bits, Carola
Metzner-Nebelsick parallels the Kriegerelitenof the Carpathian basin and of Greece
in the Shaft Grave period.^43 Although specialists are well aware of the plentiful
evidence for the militarizing of the Carpathian basin, the topic is crucial for the
argument of this book and so warrants a presentation here in some detail.
The arrival of tamed horses in the Carpathian basin
In recent years much has been learned about Bronze Age chariots, especially in
temperate Europe and the steppe. The chariot burials at Sintashta and elsewhere
in the southern Urals and along the upper Volga have been well publicized. The
carbon dates that David Anthony obtained for the Krivoe Ozero chariot burial place
it shortly before 2000 BC. The early dates, although slightly lowered, have been
essentially confirmed by Pavel Kuznetsov, who sampled eleven chariot burials at
four sites in the Urals-Volga region: kurgans at Krivoe Ozero and at Utyovka (near
Samara, on the middle Volga) and two cemeteries at Sintashta.^44 The same type
of cheekpieces—Scheibenknebel, or studded bone disks—found at Sintashta, and
also in Shaft Grave IV at Mycenae, have also been found in an elite grave in
Tajikistan, tentatively assigned to the BMAC culture.^45
Most importantly for purposes of the present book, we are now in a position
to see that in the second half of the Bz A2 period chariots arrived in the Carpathian
basin and especially in the piedmonts of the Apuseni range and of the western
Carpathians. This would have been at about the same time, late Middle Helladic,
that chariots and militarism came to Greece: on the historical chronology not long
before 1600 BC(and on the carbon chronology ca. 1700 BC). Although neither
chariots nor representations of chariots survive from that period in the Carpathian
basin, evidence comes from the cheekpieces of bits. Much of what is known about
these artifacts we owe to Hans-Georg Hüttel, who catalogued all known Bronze
Age cheekpieces and bits from the western steppe and eastern and central Europe.^46
His catalogue remains an essential resource for understanding the arrival of
“tamed horses” in temperate Europe.
Domestic horses had been kept here and there in the Carpathian basin at least
since 2500 BCand possibly since 3000 BCbut they were food animals (and probably