Grim evidence for violent death in the Corded Ware culture came recently with
the discovery, in 2005, of four graves at Eulau, in Germany’s Sachsen-Anhalt
state.^121 In the graves were thirteen skeletons, with cranial trauma showing that
most of the victims were struck from behind with battle-axes as they were trying
to escape from their attackers. The victims were two men (one of whom had a
flint arrowhead imbedded in a lumbar vertebra), three women, and eight children,
ranging in age from 1 to 9 years old. It is obvious that late in the third millennium
BCa settlement near Eulau was devastated by a raid and a massacre.
The Corded Ware culture of the third millennium BChas often been called the
“Battle-Axe culture,” because a battle-axe was commonly placed in the grave of
a male (in the burials at Eulau, stone axes were placed with the bodies of the men
and boys). We must assume that in the vast Corded Ware culture, which stretched
from near Nizhny Novgorod (far to the east of Moscow) westward to the Rhine,
a man frequently went about with a battle-axe suspended at his side. Wielded with
one hand, the “battle-axe” surely was used more often against animals than
against humans, and that it was intended for battles has never been clear and—I
suggest—is not likely. Until we have evidence to the contrary, that is, the “battle-
axe” should despite its name be regarded as a personal weapon rather than as a
weapon designed for battle. The axe had a stone head, often in the shape of a boat,
with a shaft-hole for attachment to a wooden handle that was perhaps 40 or 50
cm in length. However useful they may have been for personal defense, neither
the axe nor any other weapon available in the Corded Ware or the Beaker culture
seems to have been designed for combat: designed, that is, for a confrontation
with opponents who were also prepared and equipped for combat. The dagger
would have been no more effective in combat than the axe. Through the third
millennium BCdaggers were usually made of flint: a flint 20 or 25 cm long was
on one end shaped into a pointed and sharpened blade, and on the other end
was rounded into a handle and then wrapped with osiers impressed into a coat
of tar.^122
Because of the ubiquitous axes, the Corded Ware culture has for a long time
been thought of as warlike. Gimbutas imagined men of the Corded Ware (as well
as the Bell Beaker) culture as “vagabondic horse riders and archers” who were
frequently at war.^123 Evidence for war, however, has not been found.^124 Like
mainland Greece and unlike the Near East, temperate Europe was in the Neolithic
period at neither the state nor the urban level. The siege warfare that characterized
the Near East could obviously not have happened here. Homicide was of course
a danger, and from time to time there were sudden raids and sneak attacks on
villagers. Skirmishes, with exchanges of arrows shot from self bows may also have
occurred, because arrowheads are often found as grave goods in the Beaker
period and some men were buried with arrowheads lodged in their vertebrae. Many
Europeans died a violent death in the Neolithic period, but it is likely that most
of the trauma found on skeletons resulted not from combat between armed
opponents, but from crime, personal revenge, and the massacre of people who
were unsuspecting and unarmed.
82 Warfare in Western Eurasia