Puzzling artifacts found at Europe's oldest battlefield
Archaeologists have spent decades trying to figure out who fought near Germany's Tollense River some 3,300 years ago. Now, an unusual cache deepens the mystery of the brutal battle.
Since 1997, archaeologists have been excavating miles of land along the Tollense River in northern Germany and recovering the weapons and remains of hundreds of men who fought on its banks here around 1,200 B.C. The sheer scale and violence at Tollense— considered Europe’s oldest battlefield site—put to rest a stubborn 20th-century idea that Bronze Age Europe was a relatively peaceful place.
But what prompted the fighting at Tollense? Was this a battle between different groups of people from across Europe, or just a very large, localized family feud? Researchers continue to examine clues from bones and weapons found at the site, and a paper published this week in Antiquity looks at an unusual group of artifacts that provide
