#WORLD WAR II ONLINE SPEARS WEAPONS SERIES#

#WORLD WAR II ONLINE SPEARS WEAPONS SERIES#

A series of other potential functions and meanings presents itself. The multifunctionality, or ambiguity, of material culture in general implies that weapons cannot be reduced merely to tools of war. In the thirteenth-century BCE, this symbol was appropriated by the royal house of Mycenae as their ‘coat of arms,’ visualized so vividly by the Lion Gate to the citadel. This is likely a metaphor for bravery in combat and for the princely warrior chieftain in early Mycenaean society. Dating to c.1600–1500 BCE, it shows warfare against the lion. The boundary between prestige hunter and warrior can be blurred, as famously illustrated by the lion-hunt dagger from Shaft Grave IV at Mycenae. Bone assemblages from Final Neolithic and Bronze Age settlements normally show little inclusion of wild animals, and it can thus be presumed that hunting in these periods, and most certainly in the Bronze Age, was more a matter of prestige than economic necessity for at least the privileged part of the population. The above typology of weaponry roughly suggests that most weapons have potential uses outside warfare, notably hunting. In the Bronze Age the warband seems to grow in importance and its internal organization to be based on hierarchical principles. Although the presence of warrior clubs is rather strongly indicated from around 2800 BCE in temperate Europe, their more precise position, central or marginal, in the societal meshwork is unknown, but could have varied enormously in the period 3000–500 BCE. This seems tied to the general inventiveness of these periods, but almost certainly also to reorganizations of institutions of war and new ideologies to support them. In the Final Neolithic (Copper Age) and particularly in the Bronze Age, the group of genuine weapons grew markedly in numbers and in technical and ornamental elaboration.

With the mature Bronze Age from 1700 BCE, or somewhat earlier in some regions, this picture becomes particularly distinct sustained by the innovations of spearheads and swords and adjacent novel techniques of fighting in the upper echelons of society. Throughout, the distinction between would-be weapons made in any material at hand, weapons such as bow/arrow with other uses, and genuine weapons made in special materials seems concurrent with social distinctions in society as such and with distinctions in warfare between war leaders, high-ranking warriors, and common fighters. The appearance of these first weapons – made unequivocally for waging war and often made in copper, bronze, or spectacularly colored stone – in many places coincides with the emergence of marked social distinctions with cogent forms of leadership and discrete organizations of war. Weapons for war typically occur in burials and other ritual contexts and they constitute a large category of finds from later prehistory and onward, hence testifying to the presence of warfare within a broader social domain. The early third-millennium BCE also brings us the first clear evidence of warband institutions: Organized frames for warfare and warriorhood. In Eurasia battle-axes and maceheads began to appear only after the introduction of farming, and particularly in Europe more systematic production and uses of these weapons are in particular attached to the so-called Corded Ware period dating to the onset and first centuries of the third-millennium BCE and which seem to link up with spread of Indo-European languages, wheeled vehicles, and probably horses from a homeland in the north Kazakh steppes. Weaponry for war is a late phenomenon measured on the background of millennia of human history.

These objects were definitely produced with warfare in mind using selected materials to effectuate this purpose. The second category comprises mainly swords, spearheads, shields, and body armor, but also maceheads and battle-axes. In fact, almost any object can find uses as weapon if need be, and this was certainly the case from the earliest times and throughout the history of mankind. Bows and arrows, points, axe blades, knives, and daggers, made of various organic or nonorganic materials, belong to the first category. Weaponry divides arbitrarily into implements with a potential for war and real weapons intended for offensive and/or defensive purposes. Helle Vandkilde, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), 2015 Weaponry

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