Warfare in Bronze Age Society by Horn Christian & Kristiansen Kristian

Author:Horn, Christian & Kristiansen, Kristian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2018-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

8.7: The varying relationships in death of the different aspects of the Sintastha communities discussed.

While often considered as such, it is notable that warrior burials in the southern Urals are considerably more moderate than their later or European counterparts (cf. Kristiansen 1999), and, given the abundance of ore resources in the region and the obvious ability to smelt metal, the absence of accumulated material wealth needs to be accounted for. Beyond the presence of chariots, it would be difficult to define warriors at all. So, if warriors did exist in the Middle Bronze Age southern Urals, then they did not command the ability to accumulate prestige metal goods as they did elsewhere; indeed metal weapons were predominantly made from only pure copper. When exotic alloys do begin to appear in burials at the end of the period, they were reserved for elaborate female adornment (Hanks et al., 2015).

So then, with such a small accumulation of metal wealth and the apparent significance of wooden chariots, the presence of metallurgical debris in such elaborate funerary settings could be considered out of place. However, it may have been the ability of metal producers to fashion carpentry tools – such as the flattened chisels which are often found in both burial and settlement contexts – which gave them such status, maybe simply as dexterous and skilled individuals who played a role in the construction of the vehicle which ultimately transported important people to death. So, in death at least, the relationship between charioteers, craftspeople and ritual specialists seems to be regionally distinct, but how this relates to the organization of production in the region is also significant because this may give insight into how the identity and power of the warriors was forged and mediated. Fieldwork and analysis carried out by the Sintashta Collaborative Archeological Research Project has also shown that production is practiced on a very local scale, with each settlement exploiting resources from its hinterland and with production centred in the settlements, albeit at an episodic scale (Hanks et al. 2015).

Therefore, if production and access to metalwork was controlled at such local levels, then it seems likely that power was also maintained at this level, with each community having access to copper producers and charioteers whose power was enfranchised by the wider community. The distribution of power within these communities therefore seems much more horizontal than the typical European model, with control shared, negotiated or competed for among different, interrelated groups (Fig. 8.8). The presence of craftspeople, charioteers and other individuals in similarly proportioned kurgan burials would suggest the lack of a single, dominant ruling class because there is comparatively little accumulated wealth within these graves beyond that mentioned previously.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.