Militarism in temperate Europe 155Near East were protected by scale corselets, and in Greece plate armor was worn
by chariot drivers at least by the end of the fifteenth century BC. In temperate
Europe, in contrast, bronze armor and shields are unattested until late in the Bz
D period. Marianne Mödlinger has studied this closely and gives us a succinct
summary:
Bronze Age European metal defensive armour, as opposed to weapons, is
scarce. With a few exceptions such as the armour from Biecz, Dendra or Knos -
sos, the first armour appears in Central and Eastern Europe in the beginning
of the Urnfield culture (ca. 1300 BC).^90Mödlinger goes on to say that “we know of approximately 120 helmets, 95 shields,
55 greaves and 30 cuirasses from the European Bronze Age,” but most of these
date from the centuries just before and just after 1000 BC.
Marion Uckelmann, whose catalogue of European bronze shields was published
in 2012, found that the earliest known bronze shields in Europe were made in the
Bz D or the Ha A1 period, and no earlier than the thirteenth century BC. The earliest
(nos. 1–6 in Uckelmann’s catalogue) are the Lommelev types, named after a type-
site in Denmark but coming mostly from hoards deposited in the Carpathian basin.^91
On the use of bronze shields as such, Uckelmann proposed that “their development
and spread should probably be seen in relation to the use of swords,” and he is
probably correct.^92 Because in temperate Europe metal shields lagged some 300
years behind the appearance of swords, however, it is reasonable to wonder how
frequent was the use of swords or of any other weapons in combat in the Bz A2–Bz
C periods.
Militarizing of the Carpathian basin: summary
The advent of cheekpieces and battle weapons in the Carpathian basin indicates
that ca. 1600 BCmuch of the basin—beginning with Transylvania—was taken
over by men equipped with chariots, axes and spears. Soon after their arrival the
military men obtained Type A rapiers to display their position, and within a
generation or two they replaced the Type A with the shorter but much more
serviceable Apa sword. The intruders evidently came from a land where chariots
were drawn by horses bridled with Scheibenknebel cheekpieces, and that points
to the steppe beyond the Dnieper. Motivation for the takeover seems to have been
the gold and copper in the Carpathian and Apuseni ranges.
Beyond these conclusions, based on the material record, we must resort to
speculation. The intruders probably came on ships over the Black Sea and up the
Danube. And the takeover may have proceeded piecemeal over several years, with
each of several expeditions taking control of yet another portion of the metal-rich
ranges. We need not imagine that the expeditions together consisted of more than
a few hundred chariots and a few thousand men, enough to take control of a
population of a few hundred thousand people who had neither chariots nor any
military tradition.^93