often placed at the very end of the MH period, making it contemporary with the
earliest Shaft Graves in Circle B at Mycenae. Maria Kasimi-Soutou, who published
the grave, dated it to the transition from MH III to LH I.^113 Katie Demakapoulou
put it still later: at the beginning of the LH period.^114 A date in the MH II rather
than the late MH III or very early LH I period for the Theban burial depends in
part on the spearhead,^115 which must be added to the “shoed” specimens known
to Avila. Although the shoed spearhead is attested for the MH period, it evidently
survived into the Mycenaean period. One of the seven in Avila’s catalogue came
from Shaft Grave IV at Mycenae, showing that well into the LH I period a shoed
spearhead was occasionally seen.^116
Unless an early dating of the Theban tomb can be established, the fortifications
and weapons on the offshore islands of Aigina and Keos are virtually the only
indications we have that at least parts of the Greek mainland would have been
familiar with some kind of military presence in the MH (or MM) II period. If the
towns at Kolonna and Ayia Irini were subject to a king at Knossos, as is very
likely, he must have installed vassals to control the islands and also to police the
opposite coastal areas. Each vassal may have had a troop of spearmen at his disposal
and ships to take them wherever on the nearby coasts trouble was brewing or
military coercion was required. And I will suggest that both vassals, and also—
if he did indeed live in the MH II period—the man so impressively interred at
Thebes, may have employed several chariot crews to help them keep the peace
in their mainland bailiwicks.
Violence in temperate Europe in the Neolithic period
Although violence in temperate Europe is well attested by osteological evidence
for the Neolithic period, warfare is another matter. Evidence for massacres of men,
women and children early in the Neolithic period suggests that in temperate Europe
hostility between foragers and food-producers may have occasionally erupted into
violence. An atrocity at Talheim, in southern Germany, left the skeletons of thirty-
four individuals, most of them women and children, and all apparently killed by
an axe. Another massacre, at Schletz bei Asparn, in Austria, claimed at least fifty
victims, of both sexes and all ages. These atrocities occurred between 5000 and
4500 BCand the victims are identified with the Linearbandkeramik culture of central
Europe.^117 The bow and arrow were of course used most often in hunting, but
osteological evidence leaves no doubt that humans were also targets.^118 For the
British isles, R. J. Mercer concluded that “the archaeological evidence for warfare
is generally clearer during the Neolithic than at any time in Britain prior to the
Roman period.”^119 Violence continued throughout the Neolithic period. According
to Jean Guilaine and Jean Zammit, “the vast majority of human remains bearing
projectile-inflicted injuries date from the later stages of the Neolithic, between
3000 and 2000 BCE.” That datum is qualified, as the authors concede, by the fact
that in temperate Europe archaeologists have found far more graves from the third
millennium BCthan from the fifth or fourth.^120
Warfare in Western Eurasia 81