periods, Branigan catalogued more than 400 Aegean daggers. Scarcely a dozen
of these were found on the Greek mainland.^104 While the dagger was a personal
weapon, the spear was potentially a military weapon, and before the Shaft Grave
period very few men on the Greek mainland seem to have owned a spear. Branigan
counted more than fifty Aegean spearheads, but of these only two—one from EH
Lerna and one from MH Sesklo—come from the Greek mainland.^105 The Sesklo
spearhead reappears in Robert Avila’s catalogue of some 200 bronze spearheads
from the Greek Spätbronzezeit, and is the only entry in Avila’s long catalogue
that seems to date from before the Shaft Grave period.^106 The Sesklo spearhead
was “shoed,” a not very effective method of attaching a metal head to a wooden
shaft,^107 and the founder’s mold discovered in the Sesklo cemetery shows that
someone in MH Thessaly was making “shoed” spearheads. The type may have
originated along the Adriatic (of the seven known to Avila, one came from the
island of Lefkas and two from Albania).^108
Fifty years ago R. J. Buck summarized what evidence had been found for war
and warriors on the Greek mainland before the Shaft Grave period:
The Middle Helladic people certainly possessed weapons, but compara-
tively few bronze ones have been discovered, if we except the rich finds from
the Shaft Graves of the very end of the period. The bow and arrow were
employed; for obsidian arrow-heads and stone arrow polishers and straighten -
ers occur not infrequently. A fairly short bronze dirk or dagger, sometimes
with a pommel, is found occasionally; it may have Cycladic affinities.^109Excavations in the last 50 years have not much changed Buck’s characterization
of MH Greece. The 1046-page Mesohelladikavolume published in 2010 includes
sixty-three papers on MH Greece,^110 but none of the papers deals with weapons.
In her contribution to the volume Maria Kayafa analyzes the 260 metal objects
that she has catalogued from the MH Peloponnesos before the Shaft Grave period.
Half of the copper-based objects are ornamental, another third are either personal
implements or tools, “while the rest of the finds constitute small minorities.” The
weapons Kayafa mentions are a few daggers and one sword.^111
The discoveries on Keos and Aigina are spectacular, but they tell us not about
the Greek mainland but about Cretan rulers’ ambitions to control valuable
resources, and in particular the mines at Laurion. More problematic is a cist grave
with a warrior burial discovered in 1982 at Thebes. The burial has been seen by
some as earlier than the Shaft Graves of Mycenae.^112 The warrior at Thebes was
buried with a Type A rapier (0.86 m long), a spear, at least five arrows (and
therefore also a bow), the arrows having heads of flint and obsidian, and evidently
a boar’s-tusk helmet. That is the same “kit” of weapons and helmet found in the
rich MM II burial at Kolonna on Aigina. If the two burials are of the same date,
I would suppose that the “warrior” at Thebes was also the local chief, serving the
ruler at Knossos, and possibly the commander of a small chariot unit. Although
the Theban burial is regarded by some as dating to the MH II period, it is more
80 Warfare in Western Eurasia