Weaponry

In subject area: Social Sciences

Weaponry refers to the tools and instruments designed for combat and warfare, encompassing a range of devices that evolve over time in response to military strategies and technological advancements.

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Chapter

Conflict and War, Archaeology of: Weapons and Artifacts

2015, International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition)Helle Vandkilde

Weaponry

Weaponry divides arbitrarily into implements with a potential for war and real weapons intended for offensive and/or defensive purposes. Bows and arrows, points, axe blades, knives, and daggers, made of various organic or nonorganic materials, belong to the first category. 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. The second category comprises mainly swords, spearheads, shields, and body armor, but also maceheads and battle-axes. These objects were definitely produced with warfare in mind using selected materials to effectuate this purpose. Weaponry for war is a late phenomenon measured on the background of millennia of human history. 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. The early third-millennium BCE also brings us the first clear evidence of warband institutions: Organized frames for warfare and warriorhood.
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 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. In the Bronze Age the warband seems to grow in importance and its internal organization to be based on hierarchical principles.
The above typology of weaponry roughly suggests that most weapons have potential uses outside warfare, notably hunting. 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 boundary between prestige hunter and warrior can be blurred, as famously illustrated by the lion-hunt dagger from Shaft Grave IV at Mycenae. Dating to c.1600–1500 BCE, it shows warfare against the lion. This is likely a metaphor for bravery in combat and for the princely warrior chieftain in early Mycenaean society. 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.
The multifunctionality, or ambiguity, of material culture in general implies that weapons cannot be reduced merely to tools of war. A series of other potential functions and meanings presents itself. Notably, weapons often maintain identities of gender, age, rank, or various other types of group identity like kinship, ethnicity, and profession. In European prehistory the cultural biographies of weaponry typically ended with a ritual deposition either in burials or in votive offerings. Such depositions may comprise one item or a combination of several items depending on cultural and social factors. From the Bronze Age of temperate Europe and in several similarly organized societies around the world numerous weapons exist; the sheer quantity being ample testimony to warfare as an option that could be acted upon and indeed to the presence of warriorhood as an identity feeding from bellicose interaction and from ideologies of war. Macro- and microwear analyses of swords and other weapons confirm that many have indeed been put to repeated and forceful use. It is often speculated that some of the most spectacular weaponry: shields, helmets, giant axes, and body armor – for reasons of construction – cannot have been very suitable for warfare, but again such splendid items likely had several social uses in addition to warfare. Such weapons may have had ritual functions in funerary games, religious performances, and/or were parade armor that should impress and scare. This may be supported by the pictorial slabs from the Kivik tomb in Scania from around 1500 BCE, rock-carving scenes from various places in the Eurasian Neolithic and metal ages, and by Patroklos' funeral games in Homer's Iliad. By contrast, a substantial series of other weapons exists that were surely meant to wound and kill other human beings: spears and arrows definitely belong here, as do the swords. Especially the swords are central to our understanding of the Bronze Age and later prehistory/history as they mediate tales of supreme, active, and symbolic warriorhood among privileged strata in society. However, albeit less prestigious, spears and in particular arrows were key weapons for attack and defense, as shown by their massive presence in the early battlefield of Tollense near Greifswald in north Germany dating to around 1200 BCE. Projectile points of flint, and later in metal, sitting in situ in human bone constitute a frequent form of skeletal trauma and cause of death throughout later prehistory, especially from Neolithic farming communities in the ninth to eighth millennia BCE and onward.
The exquisite and highly specialized craftsmanship of many of these weapons of metal suggests organized warriorhood in warbands. It would also support the suggestion that such warrior institutions were recruited and organized internally according to hierarchical principles, and thus not unlike the system that can be deduced from the Iliad, from Tacitus' Germania, and from a large number of ethnographically studied cases. A material hierarchy of weapons arguably existed, which was differentially constituted in different periods; in the later Bronze Age from c.1200 to 700 BCE likely with metal-hilted swords and body armor in the top part, followed by organic-hilted swords, axes, spearheads and arching equipment lower down, and wooden clubs and similar items in the bottom part. Such hierarchies of weaponry may be suggested to reflect social divisions within warrior institutions.
Weapons can be highly individualized objects – swords usually are – and thus invested with personalized names and meanings while simultaneously mediating in variable measure gender, status, rank, kinship, ethnicity, profession, and so on. Weapons may have whole biographies and stories attached to them, which could have been invoked on special occasions. The famed boar's tusk helmet which Odysseus puts on for a nightly spying expedition is a case in point, which could very well generally apply when looking at the finest prehistoric weapons, such as the twin horned helmets of bronze (c.1100 BCE) found in a bog at Viksö in Denmark. Such particular weapons are perhaps likely to be inalienable possessions kept in the family as tokens of memory and inheritance or ritually exchanged with the gods in sacred places or with very particular ancestors in monumental tombs.
The potential multifunctionality of material culture thus implies that weapons cannot be reduced merely to being war implements, but became intertwined with other social uses, as also suggested by contextual evidence. Even the most frightening or deadly of weapons very often had alternative social functions outside the strict sphere of waging war. Albeit the spotlight has here been on weaponry and what it can tell about warfare and its organization it is equally true that countless archaeological data exist that inform about peaceful moments, domains, and times.
The cultural biographies of weapons typically ended with a ritual deposition either in burials or in votive offerings. Such depositions in later European prehistory comprised one item or a combination of several items depending on cultural and social factors. The archaeologist thus obtains intimate knowledge mostly of the concluding activities, the ritual death of things, which may have had several very active lives prior to the final deposition. These final destinations of weaponry, however, may still be able to deliver information about the living society, as outlined above and substantiated below.
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Chapter

Conflict and War, Archaeology of: Weapons and Artifacts

2015, International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition)Helle Vandkilde

Weaponry in Ritualized Contexts

Weapons and other objects were from early on systematically deposited in burials and at other ritual sites. This may have happened for a variety of overlapping reasons such as emotion, social ambition, social rivalry, and social identity, commemoration of persons and events of war, and to sustain cultural values and norms, including religion. Ritual actions such as funerals and offerings can be carried out routinely as the way things should be done or more deliberately as political announcement questioning or legitimizing existing relations of social power.
Numerous graves with weapons are known from different periods all over the world, but their direct or indirect relationship with warriorhood has only just begun to be studied. From the Final Neolithic in temperate Europe – the Corded Ware and Bell Beaker periods – good cases can be made of warrior identities and institutions although allowing for cultural variations. From the Bronze Age and Iron Age one can easily identify conspicuous individual graves with rich weaponry attached to mature males who may have been high-ranking warriors and warleaders, perhaps still actively engaged in war and/or this role was mainly effected on a symbolic level as heads of society. Females were not usually buried with weapons, albeit notable exceptions exist such as Scythian–Sarmatian interments, so-called Amazons, at the Don and Volga. Women's roles in warfare – to judge from written sources – probably were more active and motivating than often assumed.
It seems in many cases clear that the deceased were commemorated as warrior heroes by kin and community in the same way as warriors and soldiers have been celebrated and remembered in history and in our own time. Such presentations of the warrior's ‘beauty,’ glory, and valor are of course strongly ideologically colored, contrasting with the knowledge that the warrior is an identity also sustained by violence. Grooming items such as razors, combs, awls, and tweezers in addition to ornaments for dress and body very often accompany elaborate weaponry in so-called warrior burials; hence tallying with a cross-cultural inclination of warriors to be preoccupied with their bodily appearance. Presentations of warrior identities, as mediated in burials and other ritual context, are rooted in specific historical events but also in myths of war and its heroes. This also exemplifies ancient social strategies of distancing ‘us’ from ‘them.’
The existence of elaborate weapons in metal dividing into several categories may suggest that warriors in later prehistory organized in warrior institutions. This is in general harmony with the funerary evidence, which is however also a very complex data source. Weapons and dress accessories in burials may be a direct statement of the roles played by the dead individual in life. Swords seem in the Bronze Age very rarely associated with child or female interments, and sword burials would then be generally suggestive of male warriorhood. Yet, weapons and dress accessories may additionally be used to make more general metaphoric statements and thus have a less direct bearing on the lived identities of the deceased. This may include symbolic warriorhood in the sense of an earlier warrior identity, heroic status or ambition, political authority, or high social rank; all of it possibly in combination. Likewise, weapons accompanying small male children and young adolescents, such as those found in some Corded Ware communities between 2800 and 2500 BCE are likely to be metaphors originating in warrior values rather than signs of active warriorhood.
The inhumation cemetery at Neckarsulm in Baden-Württemberg dating to c.1300 BCE, the early Urnfield period of the Late Bronze Age, is interesting in terms of active warriorhood. The majority of the 51 bodies turned out to be adult males of excellent health and physique, bow-legged as a consequence of horse-riding. Most had standard equipment of fine pottery and body accessories, but were surpassed materially by three sword graves situated close together at the eastern margin of the cemetery. Many burials contained several interments of males who apparently died on the same occasion. It is fairly clear from this case that the cemetery was devoted to warriors, that is, the buried males were active warriors who died and were buried companion wise, and finally that the warrior institution(s) had an internal ranking defined by those with swords and those without swords. A similar picture is conveyed by the numerous skeletons of young adult males at the above-mentioned site of Tollense, also containing horse skeletons, deposited under circumstances of battle and, fairly certainly also as a consequence of elaborate and violent postbattle rituals in the adjacent river.
As warfare is definable as a flow of social interactions, it needs to be somehow initiated and concluded, and rituals on individual and group level present themselves as obvious choices. Indeed, a large number of weapons are known from sacrificial deposits all over northern and central Europe, and far beyond these regions, and many of them have been retrieved from wetlands. This tradition of ritually depositing weapons and other valuables commenced in the first farming communities but grew over time in significance and likely became linked to beliefs in otherworldly existences. This specific ritual practice has been explained with reference to several overall purposes: rites of passage, gifts to the gods, and ‘potlatches’ to promote the importance of particular persons or social institutions and to legitimize or question power and authority. Among the Northwest Coast Indians, potlatch rituals only became truly elaborate when the Canadian government prohibited warfare, hence potlatch in this case became a substitute for waging war.
It seems that warfare in prehistoric Europe could have been systematically linked with postwar rituals finalizing armed conflict or they were somehow interwoven with ongoing warfare. This accords well with the above-mentioned Bronze Age site at Tollense from c.1200 BCE, which has yielded weapon offerings and numerous skeletons along the stretch of the river. The rich and elaborate war booty offerings of the north European Iron Age and the commemorative deposits of weapons from Greek shrines throughout Antiquity constitute similar cases of postwar rituals. Ancient authors from Tacitus to Pausanias amply describe such depository traditions relating to war, which even today is intertwined with rituals. While Neolithic depositions contain mainly implements with the potential for war, the more monofunctional weapons in depositions from the Bronze Age make an association with warfare more clear. War booty offerings, a generally accepted find category in Iron Age Europe sustained by written sources, could well be rooted in the Neolithic and especially the Bronze Age. While warfare cannot in general be understood as a ritual, it nearly always contains aspects of ritual. However, it is important to note that prehistory all over the world is replete with funerary and other ritual deposits containing mundane and extraordinary items with peaceful purposes.
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Chapter

Conflict and War, Archaeology of

2001, International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral SciencesL. Keeley

3 Weaponry

Weapons of war have often been indistinguishable from those used for hunting or, in the case of axes, from more prosaic implements. Indeed, many implements were used for both military and everyday functions. Weapons specialized for warfare do appear in the archaeological record. Such implements have features that make them less suited for nonhomicidal activities and/or are only found in contexts that indicate that their functions were usually, or only, military. Because of their use in the most terrible and frightening of human activities, weapons of war usually acquire symbolic significance and roles in ritual. Projectile points used primarily for war often have stems and barbs that make them difficult to extract, or increase the likelihood that they will cause an infection. For example, many war points had easily slipped hafts so that when the arrow or spear shaft is pulled out, the head stayed in the body whereas hunting points were tightly hafted. For example, one type of Late Archaic (around 3000 BC) spear point from the US Southeast was found almost exclusively associated with homicide victims' skeletons. Unlike the more common other Late Archaic point types, this one had a short stem that would have easily slipped its haft. Judging from their food remains, the Early Neolithic (around 5000 BC) farmers of northwest Europe almost never hunted, yet a common find on their sites is a distinctive triangular arrowhead that would have easily slipped from its haft. A few human remains from this period have been recovered bearing traumas from points of this type. There is no profit in killing a prey animal days or weeks later by infection but, alas, the opposite is true regarding an enemy. There is archaeological evidence that some prehistoric people designed their weaponry with this point in mind.
Axes and adzes are common archaeological finds in many regions and time periods over the past 10000 years. They are always interpreted as woodworking tools even though there is rarely any independent or direct evidence for this assumption except their form. But some prehistoric axes and adzes obviously also had more violent functions. The stone axes and adzes of the early Neolithic people of northwestern Europe and those of the Late Prehistoric Midwestern US were certainly used to kill people as the holes knocked into the heads of the victims at Talheim and Crow Creek (see Sect. 1) attest. More problematic are instances, such as those of the Late Prehistoric (after AD 1000) Great Plains and desert Southwest of North America, where trees were rare and wood-working a necessarily unusual activity yet labor-costly ground-stone axes of ‘expensive’ imported raw materials were nonetheless common. There are many ethnographic instances of such axes and adzes simultaneously serving as woodworking tools, media of exchange, items of wealth, symbols of (adult male) status, and weapons of war. Just because an implement was used as a tool does not preclude it being used as a weapon of war.
Some ancient implements of copper, bronze, and iron, such as swords, halberds, daggers, and broad axes, had no other possible or plausible direct use except as weapons of war. Increasingly since 1950 it has become fashionable to interpret these artifacts as nothing more than symbols of wealth (i.e., primitive monies) or (adult male) socio-political status. The geographic rarity of metal ores and the high labor costs of their reduction to implements would enhance the prehistoric economic and social value of any metal artifacts, even prosaic tools. Metal weapons of war could only be more valuable than the latter because war and warriors were known and valued by the general populace or the ruling elites. Similarly, their symbolic values only arise from their use or possible use in the most fearsome of human activities.
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Chapter

SOCIAL VIOLENCE AND WAR

2008, Encyclopedia of ArchaeologyNam C. Kim, Lawrence H. Keeley

Weapons

Depending on context, weapons designed for use against humans can indicate the presence of warfare. The main challenge lies in delineating a military function for various implements, to separate tools from weapons. In many prehistoric contexts weapons were virtually indistinguishable from everyday tools, and in some cases many implements were used for both military and everyday functions. Various researchers have pointed out the long-term process of separation and distinction between everyday tools and specialized weapons. Over time the tools of war began to be distinguished from the general category of tools, leading to the manufacture of objects with a combined use, then others that were predominantly used as weapons, and finally others exclusively for use against people.
Axes and adzes are common archaeological artifacts in many regions and time periods over the past 10 000 years. In most cases, they are interpreted as woodworking tools only. However, some examples of axes and adzes had clearly acquired more violent functions. The stone axes and adzes of the early Neolithic people of northwestern Europe and those of the Late Prehistoric Midwestern US were certainly used to kill people as the skeletal remains at Talheim and Crow Creek attest.
The archaeological record clearly shows the emergence of specialized weapons of warfare as the product of a long evolution in tool technologies. Examples of specialized weapons for warfare include close-range shock weapons such as tomahawks, maces, lances, daggers, and swords, as well as long-range projectiles. Projectile points used primarily for war often have stems and barbs making them difficult to extract, or that increase the likelihood they will cause an infection. Many war points had easily slipped shafts allowing the head to remain embedded when the arrow or spear shaft is removed. In contrast, hunting points were tightly hafted.
Some ancient implements of copper, bronze, and iron, such as swords, halberds, daggers, and broad axes, had no other possible or plausible direct use except as weapons of war. Some researchers interpret these artifacts as only symbols of wealth and status, given the geographic rarity of metal ores and the labor-intensive costs of their reduction to implements. However, the symbolic values for these items only arise from their actual or possible use in fearsome activities of warfare and social violence. It was through their practical application that these implements usually acquired additional symbolic and ritual significance.
In regards to visibility of weapons, various factors can lead to a reduction in the number and quality of weapons found archaeologically. Firstly, many societies made weapons out of perishable, organic materials. Some wooden javelins or spears, maces, clubs, and other items have been recovered within Palaeolithic contexts, indicating the possibility that many more existed. Furthermore, written sources from antiquity and ethnographic accounts demonstrate their use into more recent times. For example, historical documentation indicates that parts of the Persian army under Xerxes that invaded Greece in 480 BC wore armor made of organic materials and used wooden weapons for assault. Without historical documentation, our knowledge of the use of such tools or implements of warfare would have been sorely lacking. Secondly, some morphologically atypical weapons elude archaeological interpretation, as these are only exceptionally retrieved in specific, functional contexts, such as hand-thrown stones or pebbles used as slingshots. Another group of weapons difficult to grasp archaeologically is represented by all-purpose tools (such as knives and axes), animals (such as war dogs), and poisons or objects. Finally, highly specialized weapons, those with social significance, were rarely left in their original archaeological contexts in settlements or on the battlefield.
Along these lines, warrior or elite burials can provide better clues as to both the existence of war weaponry and the social significance of warfare. Evidence from the prehistoric Longshan period in China, during the third millennium BC, demonstrates how elite burials had symbolic weapons and paraphernalia, including prestigious and labor-intensive jade. The presence of these weapons not only documents the possible presence of warfare, but also hints at an emerging ideology linking warfare, relatively high status for males, and ritual. The trend becomes intensified during the early Bronze Age, when the earliest identifiable state emerges in the central Yellow River valley. In this manner, both iconography and specialized weapons can inform discussions around warrior ideologies and the social significance of military activities within societies.
Warfare and its effects on the social fabric of communities can be significantly impacted by the introduction of new and superior weapons technologies. Gunpowder and nuclear weapons clearly illustrate this in a more modern context, and similar patterns are discernible in the distant past. In general, the emergence of a new military technology can exacerbate warfare, where military advantages conferred by new weapons can lead to exploitation by possessors. Research on the introduction of the more powerful sinew-backed bow in the American Southwest indicates how such a new technology can play a role in the onset of violent conflict.
In situations where neighboring, autonomous societies such as chiefdoms did not have clear military advantages, larger political consolidation may have been less likely. The introduction of a considerably superior weapons technology, however, can dramatically impact the social evolution of those societies. For example, the introduction of the sword, lance, and chariot as part of aristocratic warfare throughout Europe from the early second millennium BC and onwards coincides with the rise of a new type of chiefdom structure based upon the institution of warrior aristocracies and retinues. Elsewhere, the potential social impact that a new weapon can have is almost certainly what prompted General Hideyoshi of sixteenth century Japan to collect and confiscate all of the muskets within his domain, merely a few decades after the introduction of firearms by the Portuguese.
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Reference work
Encyclopedia of Archaeology
2008, Encyclopedia of Archaeology
Nam C. Kim, Lawrence H. Keeley

Review article

U.S. Marshals Service and FBI

2016, Aggression and Violent BehaviorChristine M. Sarteschi

3.4 Weapons

Details about the weaponry of threateners were available in 89% of the cases (n = 51). In six (11%) cases, it was unclear whether the suspect was in possession of a weapon. Fifty-four percent (n = 31) of the cases involved suspects having weapons in their possession at the time of the incident. Seven percent (n = 4) had plans to acquire needed weapons. The majority of cases involved the possession of at least one firearm (n = 30, 53%). Forty-seven percent (n = 27) had more than one firearm. Of those with weapons, 55% (n = 17) had guns only; 16% (n = 5) had a combination of firearms and bladed weapons (e.g. swords, bayonets or machetes); 13% (n = 4) had a combination of firearms, bombs and or incendiary devices or materials and 10% (n = 3) had a combination of firearms, bladed weapons, bombs and or incendiary devices or materials. One suspect (3%) was in possession of knives, surgical gloves, sponges and a shovel. One (3%) was in possession of poison (cyanide).
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2016, Aggression and Violent Behavior
Christine M. Sarteschi

Chapter

WEAPONS AND WARFARE

2008, Encyclopedia of ArchaeologyFrancisco M.V.R. Queiroga

Weapons and Warfare

Military efficiency is a functionalistic relation between the warrior's capabilities, the quality of the weapons, and an adequate strategy. Military leaders tried to combine the fighting ability of the soldiers with the capabilities conferred by their weapons for a particular purpose. Types of weapons often define the style of fighting, and this also demands an association, or set, of weapons. A short sword is only suitable for nimble close-range combat; and will not be efficient without a shield and, eventually, a helmet.
So, weapons are the tools that soldiers use to gain supremacy over the adversary. The types of weapons utilized throughout times over the world are too vast to be referred to here, and even to summarize their categories can be risky in such a short essay. Weapons can be so important as to confer an unthinkable superiority to an able warrior. Let us remind ourselves how Francisco Pizarro in 1530 conquered the Inca Empire by facing an army of many thousand Inca warriors with his mere 180 soldiers. The difference rested on horses and weapons that were not just different but technologically superior, made out of good Spanish steel.
Military intelligence can be an important weapon. To know the intentions and movements of the enemy or of the people who are bound to become an enemy in the future has proved to be an important handicap in warfare. This was acknowledged from the very early wars in the Near East, and became increasingly important with time, once military leaders realized how the outcome of war depended on informed decisions. Sun Tzu argues that “what enables an intelligent government and a wise military leadership to overcome others and achieve extraordinary accomplishments is foreknowledge.” This can only be brought to mind here, to add to the extensive paraphernalia of the available weapons.

Protection of the Body

Cuirass
The protection of the body against offensive weapons has been one of the major preoccupations of warriors. The evolution of weapons and their efficiency in combat gave rise to a major development of effective protection designed to resist specific weapons. The solutions are innumerable. A Mongol warrior, similar to the Japanese samurai, would wear a hardened leather composite cuirass that conferred reasonable protection against sword slashing, but would be of questionable efficiency against arrows. So he wore a silk robe under the cuirass to better remove the arrows that might hit him. The body-protective gear evolved from the plain composite breastplate and armor made out of leather and bronze, to the massive and heavy medieval steel armor. The effectiveness of the cuirass depended on its strength, and yet strength often prevented mobility. Articulations were designed according to particular fighting techniques and movement needs, to the extent that the armor of a foot soldier and that of a horseman would greatly vary in design. The use of composed cuirass made out of small metal plates – an old model used mostly by aristocracy – opened up the way to the invention of chain mail. Its first use is recorded in Celtic Europe, around the fifth century BC. Although it conferred a substantial mobility to the fighter and a good protection against cutting, it did not prevent perforation from arrows and spears.
The rigid bronze breastplate gained substantial popularity in the classical world with the emergence of the hoplite. It conferred reasonable protection against perforating and cutting weapons, and matched efficiently with the round shield – the hoplon – and the helmet.
Helmet
The protection of the head is one strong concern of protective gear from all historical periods, since the head and the important organs it bears are the most fragile and disabling parts of the body. Early helmets were mostly made out of hardened leather in later prehistory, but the spread of bronze metallurgy made bronze the preferred metal for helmets (Figure 1), even until later phases when iron became common. This is probably due to the ductility of bronze, which enabled the crafting of the helmet from one single metal piece by using the hammering technique.

Figure 1. Calchidean style bronze helmet dating to 525–500 BC. The helmet has efficient neck and nose guards, and the cheek guards are in the shape of ram's head. Source: National Archaeological Museum of Naples, Inv. n° 5737.

The Greek Corinthian helmet was a major typological improvement, as it protected the neck and face, being the model widely adopted in the Greek world throughout the first millenium BC. The structure of helmets did not vary so substantially with time, being the cap-type, such as the Montefortino used by early Roman legions from fourth century BC – the most widely used model in Celtic Europe (Figure 2). Only medieval armor would later introduce noticeable variations in helmet typology and the widespread use of steel.

Figure 2. Two bronze helmets of Montefortino type dating to the first century BC, found in one Northern Portuguese Iron Age hillfort, at Castelo de Neiva, Viana do Castelo. Each helmet was crafted from one single piece of bronze, and hammered to shape, then polished and profusely decorated. The Montefortino type was a very popular protective item in Western Europe during the late Iron Age, used by both Roman Republican soldiers and the various Celtic peoples. Source: Photo taken by Francisco Reimão Queiroga.

Shield
The Celtic world shared the use of the round shield with the rectangular model (Figures 3 and 19). Celtic shields were mostly of wood pieces often coated with leather and reinforced with metal parts, like the shield-boss. Their shape and structure varies not only with culture but also mostly with fighting patterns. Callaican light infantry warriors, for example, used a small caetra, or wood and leather shield, that being concave would drive the impact of the attacking weapon towards its center, where a metal shield boss would both absorb the blow and retain and redirect the opponent's weapon, thus opening the way to counter-attack (Figure 4). Fighting in close rank formation, as the hoplites or the Roman legionnaires did, demanded larger shields that covered a wider surface of the body.

Figure 3. Celtic style long shield retrieved from the Thames River. The long shield is a widespread model mostly for foot-soldiers fighting with spear or long sword. Weapons thrown into rivers, probably as offerings to water deities, are common throughout Europe from the Bronze to the Iron Ages. Source: The Celts: Europe's People of Iron, Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, page 144. © The British Museum.

Figure 19. Military display of cavalry and foot warriors followed by trumpeters. Some of the bowl-shaped helmets, probably Montefortino type, are topped by an animal figure of totemic nature. Horsemen wear spurs, and the horse gear set appears to be elaborate. Celtic and Germanic horsemen often acted as auxiliary troops in the Roman legions. The ‘Gunderstrup cauldron’, probably originating from Thrace, dates to the first century BC. Source: The Celts: Europe's People of Iron, Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, page 62. © The National Museum of Denmark.

Figure 4. The Callaican warrior in full combat gear. A nimble and swift infantry soldier, according to Strabo, he fought with a short sword and spear, and was protected from blows by a small concave leather shield. Drawing of one-granite statue found in the North of Portugal, dating to the first century BC/AD. Source: Silva, A.C.F. A Cultura Castreja do Norte de Portugal. Paços de Ferreira, 1986. © The author.

Greave
Greaves are a very ancient protection of the infantry soldier, recorded to be used by Goliath, and commonly used in the Bronze Age Levant and by the Greek Hoplites, the Roman legionnaires, and the Celts. They could be of padded cloth, hard leather or metal pieces. Their function was to protect legs from frontal attacks, and they could cover just the lower leg, or extend to the thigh.

Combat with Blades

Edge weapons
The use of blades to slash or perforate the opponent is the most widely spread and extensive in the history of warfare. Knives, daggers, swords, have been an indispensable item to the warrior's gear to the extent that, regardless of his preferred weapon, a warrior would always carry at least one type of side knife or dagger for close-range defense. The shapes of knives and daggers vary immensely. They are designed for particular models of hand-to-hand fighting, or display, or ritual purposes, and the shape of the blade is modeled accordingly. A knife with a blade made out of gold, for example, is useless as a fighting weapon, but a remarkable item for social display and ritual purposes. The materials used range from flint or ivory to silver, gold, bronze or steel, in addition to the even more varied hilt and scabbard decorations and inlays. Swords survived and have kept their prestige in present-day military gear as display and parade weapons.
Copper daggers of the Bell Beaker culture were small, since copper was scarce. The Bronze Age brought the availability of a stronger metal, with a bigger tensile strength, and swords emerged, such as the Carp's Tongue sword – an elaborate model designed for slashing and stabbing. The longer the sword is the safer the warrior is at the opponent's distance. Yet, only steel would provide enough strength to enable the increase of the sword's length; but then again its weight increased. Handling a long sword also demands a strong hand. Long swords were preferred by the Northern European peoples, such as Germans, Celts, and Vikings. The post-medieval development in steel metallurgy enabled the thinning of the blades, so they became much lighter.
The numerous types of swords range from short to long straight blade swords, and short to long curved blade swords.
The best example of the short sword is probably the Roman gladius, used by legionaries from third century BC onward in close range combat, and the early first century AD Roman cavalry adopted a longer gladius, the spatha, which became the model for long swords until middle age.
Among the short curved blade swords, the falcata is an unusual model used by the southern Iberian peoples, from the fifth to the first centuries BC, both in combat and rituals. This weapon is typologically affiliated to the Greek kopis, and southeastern European mahaire. The Iberian falcata is a short powerful weapon for the foot soldier, adequate for the close range combat of light infantry to the extent that its effectiveness was referred to by Caesar and Polibius. The long curved blades are later, dating to The Middle Ages. The most significant representatives of these models are the Japanese katana and the Middle Eastern scimitar or the Persian shamshir.

Fighting at a Distance

Bow
The bow developed enormously the art of fighting and killing from a distance. The use of the bow both for hunting and warfare spread surprisingly fast from the late Palaeolithic onwards to virtually all cultures in the world. It was the most characteristic weapon of the Bell Beaker warrior, judging by the wrist-guards and arrowheads found in graves. This simple, and yet effective weapon, gained a particular role in both land and sea battles when handled by specialized warriors: the archers. The bow's technical simplicity did not evolve noticeably from Neolithic onwards – except for the use of metal arrowheads – until the composite bow was developed by the Scythians from the Pontic steppes. This fascinating warrior people is fairly well known to us thanks to the accounts of the Greek historian Herodotus, written in the mid-fifth century BC, and the numerous finds from their mound tombs, the kurgans.
The Scythian bow was slow and carefully built from a single wooden core to which plates of special wood, bone and antler were added, glued on and wrapped round with animal tendon and horse hair string, all seasoned for five to ten years (Figure 5). This bow was extremely powerful, and its small size, normally not exceeding one meter, made it ideal to be nimbly handled on horseback. The fighting effectiveness of the Scythian composite bow cannot be dissociated from the penetrating and damaging capacities of the poisoned three-tongued barbed arrowheads (Figure 6), in addition to the mastery of this weapon by fierce warriors on horseback at full speed. The three edges enabled the razor sharpening of both point and edges before battle, thus implementing an extraordinary penetrating power. In addition, the arrowheads were impregnated with a poison known in antiquity as scythicon, a recipe referred to by Theophrastus, Aristotle and Pliny. It was a blend of putrid poisonous snake, human blood and dung, which may have formed a cocktail of poison, bacteria, and gangrene germs only comparable today to the ‘Komodo dragon’ bite, so even a slight wound would prove fatal on a short term.

Figure 5. Magnificent gold bowl depicting aspects of a Scythian warrior's daily life. A Scythian warrior is setting the string of one bow, while another bow is hanging from his belt in its special quiver, the ‘gorytus’. Scythian bows were the most elaborate, and certainly the most effective, weapon known in the Iron Age. Bowl, probably of Greek craft, found in the Kul'-Oba kurgan, dating to the fourth century BC. Source: Web source. © The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.

Figure 6. Three-edged Scythian arrowhead. The structure of this weapon made it easier to razor-sharpen before battle. In conjunction with the powerful composite bow, the penetrating capacity of this arrowhead was unparalleled prior to the emergence of firearms. Source: Web source.

Scythian weapons and horsemanship were the predecessors of the military excellence that became characteristic of the peoples of the steppes, among them the Huns and the Mongols.
The technological successor of the bow – the crossbow – was first used in battle in China in the fourth century BC. It survived throughout Classical Antiquity not as a hand weapon but rather as a ballista, to throw large spear projectiles, until it suffered a substantial evolution in Middle Age, as a reaction against the development of the protective armor of mounted warriors, over AD 1000. The crossbow became so powerful by the end of the medieval period that a bolt could penetrate a steel breastplate at over fifty meters distance, and certainly changed the course of military history until the introduction of firearms. This weapon had become so lethal in the twelfth century that Pope Innocent II condemned the use of crossbows in wars between Christians.
Slings
Testifying to the early use of this weapon are the frequent references in the Bible, and its depiction on a cave wall near Çatal Hüyük, dating to the seventh millennium BC. Assyrian representation of slingers (Figure 7) is abundant (thirteenth century BC), thus suggesting the importance of this weapon, but they were also frequent in the Mycenic (sixteenth century BC); have been found in the tomb of Tutankhamen (c. 1323 BC) and are depicted Greek art from geometric period on, Egypt, Scythia.

Figure 7. Composite army of Assyrian slingers and archers fighting on close ranks in a bucolic setting of vines and trees. Mural scene from the palace of Sennacherib seventh century BC. Source: Mesopotamia: The Mighty Kings, Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, page 111. Tel Aviv University Institute of Archaeology, © The British Museum.

Being made of perishable materials very few remains were preserved to the present day. It has never been a prestige weapon, however its simplicity and effectiveness in the hands of experienced slingers made it a widespread weapon in battle and its use is known in the Mediterranean shore from prehistory to middle ages. The use of slings can be spotted by the presence of sling projectiles, such as round pebbles, clay balls or, more rarely oval lead sling bullets. The latter were used in Grece from the fifth century, often engraved with political propaganda or just plain insults to the enemy. Many Iron Age hillforts throughout Europe show deposits of variable size of sling stone bullets, but the most acclaimed slingers in antiquity were the Balearic islanders, who were widely used as auxiliary troops in the Punic Wars.
Siege weapons
The first sedentary agricultural communities became vulnerable to the incursion of neighboring societies who envied their economic surplus, so early sedentary cities became defended by walls in order to prevent attacks. This is the case of the biblical city of Jericho where massive defensive walls encircled the city, built in the eighteenth millennium BC. In the western Mediterranean, where the communities settled much later, so did the first heavily defended sites, such as Los Millares (in Spain) and Zambujal and Vila Nova de S. Pedro (in Portugal). So, from their early stages of sedentarization, European and Asian communities gradually disseminated strongholds, a feature that was not so widely spread in Africa and in the Americas. From defended villages and defended cities to forts and castles, where only a military garrison lived, the spread of defended places starts reshaping the strategies of war. Defenses, which were normally formed by one or more defensive walls, and sometimes reinforced with ditches and ramparts, provided reasonable stability for the inhabitants. This panorama soon promoted the need to fight from a distance, and therefore the emergence of adequate weapons to overcome the defenses: the siege weapons. These are a product of military engineering in permanent response to the evolution of defense engineering.
The first siege weapons were plain slings and bows. Hamoukar, a Mesopotamian city dating to 3500 BC was literally destroyed by a bombardment of sling pebbles. Soon the variety and complexity of siege weapons increased.
Assault towers were siege weapons used to safely transport troops approaching the defended site and allow them to gain its interior.
Other weapons relied on the destruction of the gates and walls in order to gain entrance. To achieve this they could use catapults to throw projectiles such as large stones either against the walls or into the interior of the enclosure, in order to damage both buildings and besieged, or then hammer walls repeatedly with a battering ram. The Chinese had a rather advanced engineering knowledge and knew extensive chemistry principles. They are reported to have catapulted pots containing a mixture of arsenic and lime which liberated poisonous gas in the wars against the Tibetans. Philip II and Alexander from Macedonia promoted a remarkable development of siege weapons, close only to the Romans who improved greatly the engineering and practical use of several types of catapults and siege devices.

Deployment of Weapons

Horse
For many centuries, and prior to the introduction of mechanized vehicles in the early twentieth century, the horse has been an efficient means of combat and displacement, to the extent of being considered a weapon in itself. The horse has been the basis of military supremacy for some peoples, not only for the power and fast deployment of horsemen in battle, but also for the ability of a mounted army to cover vast distances in a very short time and therefore to surprise the unaware enemy. It has been suggested that, in as early as the fourth millennium BC, there would be warriors on horseback wandering through the steppes around the Black Sea, the Caspian, and the Caucasus.
The early use of the mounted horse in warfare expeditions in the Mesopotamian area dates to the early second millennium BC. From then on, cavalry developed and attained an enormous prestige both in war and in social status. The almost permanent political turmoil of the Near Eastern and Anatolian regions, where much action was going on in the course of the second half of the second millennium and onwards, makes it no surprise that the continuous warfare gave rise to substantial developments in both weaponry and fighting techniques.
Chariot
Soon after the horse was domesticated there started the use of wagons and chariots for displacement and combat in the steppes. It spread to other regions such as the near eastern kingdoms where vehicles were technically developed toward local specific needs, mostly by Hittites and Egyptians (Figures 8 and 9). The geographical dissemination of the war chariot was relatively limited and never became popular in the western Mediterranean due to the irregularity of the terrain. Nevertheless, the ritual prestige of the wheeled transport reached Celtic Europe where aristocracy was buried in highly prestigious wagons.

Figure 8. Queen Nefertiti parading on a war chariot, followed by pharaoh Akhenaten. Mural scene from Amarna, Egypt (circa 1340 BC). Source: Web source.

Figure 9. Gold war chariot pulled by four horses, carrying a driver and what appears to be a warrior nobleman. The chariot shows careful technological craftsmanship, namely the knobbed wheels, to prevent sliding at full speed. This piece from Afghanistan was a part of the Oxus Treasure, dating to the fifth/fourth centuries. Source: Persians: Masters of Empire, Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, page 111. © The British Museum.

Ship
Boats and ships were built in innumerable materials and shapes. The Callaican and Bangladeshian leather boats and the early Egyptian reed boats, used mostly for inland waters, are examples of simple technology, but only wood would provide the necessary robustness to a cargo or battle boat, to which metal was added at a later stage. The capacity to be in constant movement, throw projectiles of high damaging capacity and at the same time displace troops for swift attacks, turned battle ships into an important and effective weapon.
The Mediterranean basin saw an early development of both seamanship and boatbuilding, since the inhabitants of its shores were already engaged in trade and in warfare in the third millennium BC.
At first, warships were mere means of transportation (Figure 10). The celebrated, as yet vaguely known, Sea Peoples, raided the western Mediterranean in the twelfth century BC, moving southwards with their families towards Egypt.

Figure 10. Bronze Age rock carving representing one ship carrying warriors who are brandishing their weapons, apparently swords and axes. From Late Neolithic onwards, ships of various sorts and sizes became common in the Atlantic shores and the Mediterranean for trade and warfare. Image from the rock art complex from Bohuslan, Sweden. Source: Early Europe: Mysteries in Stone, Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, page 138.

The use of boats in battle depended on two major aspects: the mobility and the capacity to maneuver. The first was approached with sails, but only the introduction of oars enabled mobility regardless of climatic conditions. Oar propulsion, already in use in the Egyptian old kingdom, was extensively used from that time onward. Still, the major revolution took place in Greece, where in the beginning of the first millennium propulsion was improved with two-banked gallery and, later in 800 BC, the creation and development of the ram transformed the ship into a weapon in itself, due to its ability to collide with and sink other boats. Outflanking and encircling the enemy ships in order to better throw projectiles, or even find a weak spot to ram became standard naval practices.
The joint evolution of these aspects gave rise to the state of the art battleship of Mediterranean antiquity. The addition of successive layers of oars created the biremes, triremes, quinquiremes, and so on, to which were added variations in the number of oarsmen per oar. Triremes were certainly fighting naval battles in the early fifth century, namely at Salamis and in the Peloponnesian war.
The maneuvering of the ships was done mostly by the synchrony of the teams of oarsmen, rather than the efficiency of the rudder, which at this time was an oar mounted at the rear end of the ship. This system had been known in the Mediterranean since 3000 BC, and only at the end of the twelfth century did a more effective model – the stern-mounted rudder – make its appearance in Europe, although it had already been in use in Chinese junks from the first century AD. Unlike Roman oarsmen, who were mostly slaves, Greek oarsmen were trained professionals from lower classes. Athenian battleships were reinforced with side armor for protection against ram collision; but with Alexander the triremes and quinquiremes evolved, becoming armored platforms for ramming, boarding, artillery and throwing a reasonable variety of missiles available at the time.
The Viking drakkar was a remarkably eclectic ship designed for speed and dexterity and used in both warfare and exploration (Figure 11). Equipped with one square sail and oars to provide more speed and self-sufficiency when wind lacked, the Viking longship had a long and narrow hull, as well as a shallow draft, ideal to ease landings and troop deployments in water as shallow as one meter deep. This boat could navigate up small rivers and even be transported over land to overcome river falls.

Figure 11. Stone slab of funerary nature, from Gotland, Sweden. This slab depicts the tale of a Viking warrior who dies in the battlefield and is carried to the Valhalla on a drakkar. Rituals of passage, for both integration and disintegration, were important for the cohesion links among warrior societies. Source: Vikings: Raiders from the North, Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, page 31. © Statens Historiska Museum, Stockholm.

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Reference work
Encyclopedia of Archaeology
2008, Encyclopedia of Archaeology
Francisco M.V.R. Queiroga

Chapter

Weaponry, Evolution of

2008, Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, & Conflict (Second Edition)Dave Grossman

A Brief Survey of Weapons Evolution

Having established an understanding of the physical factors required for effective weapons (force, mobility, distance, and protection) and the psychological enabling factors required to effectively employ these weapons (posturing, mobility, distance, leaders, groups, and conditioning), an overall survey of weapons evolution becomes possible. Although parallel evolutionary, weaponry processes have occurred around the world, the process is most easily observed in the West, and it is in Western civilization that the evolutionary development of weaponry achieved a degree of ascendancy that permitted Western domination of the globe starting as early as the sixteenth century and culminating in total Western domination in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Combat throughout ancient history generally involved more and more effective applications of force, moving from rock, to sharp rock, to sharp rock on a stick, to swords and spears using the latest metal technology. This aspect of close-range, hand-to-hand combat remained the same until the late nineteenth century when reliable, repeating gunpowder weapons replaced swords and bayonets as the weapon of choice to kill repeatedly at close range. Some aspects of distance weapons have been present, in the form of archers and slingers, since ancient Egypt, but until the introduction of the longbow the available armor (generally just a shield) was sufficient to stop these weapons from becoming decisive.

The Chariot

The chariot was introduced to ancient Egypt early in the second millennium BC, and subsequently it was to become the first major, evolutionary weapons innovation. As a system it was made possible by the domestication of the horse, the invention of the wheel, and the invention of the bow and arrow – particularly the compound bow. The chariot was a two-wheeled platform pulled by horses (usually two) generally carrying a driver and a passenger. It was of limited value for commerce due to its small cargo capacity and was primarily an instrument of war. Its mobility gave it a high degree of utility in attacking vulnerable flanks or in the pursuit of a defeated enemy, and the passenger was usually an archer who would fire from the platform while on the move or during brief halts.
The ascendancy of the chariot for well over a millennium has been called ‘inexplicable’ by some historians, but an understanding of the chariot’s powerful psychological contribution makes its role clear. The chariot undoubtedly had many limitations: the horses were very vulnerable to archers and slingers and if just one horse was disabled the whole chariot was out of action, and the absence of a horse collar meant that the mounting system choked the horse, thus making the chariot’s effective range a fraction of that of the cavalry, which would later replace the chariot in its mobility role. And yet, in spite of these limitations, the mobility advantage of the chariot (useful primarily in the pursuit, when most of the killing occurred) combined with some group processes (driver plus archer) and some distance processes (archer firing from a mobile platform) made the chariot the dominant weapon of an era ranging from the Egyptian to the Persian Empires. Ultimately it would be defeated by the phalanx and replaced by cavalry.

The Phalanx

One limitation of the chariot (and later of cavalry) is that horses consistently refuse to hurl themselves into a hedge of sharp, projecting objects such as a phalanx, with its deep ranks of tightly packed men carrying 4-m spears and protecting themselves with overlapping shields. The Greek phalanx required a high degree of training and organization, but starting around the fourth century BC, the Greek city-states were able to use it to negate the impact of the chariot in battle. The tightly packed ranks of the phalanx created a group process that apparently permitted it to act as a vast, crew-served weapon. This factor, along with some distance (through the long spears) and the simplicity and economic viability of the phalanx, made it the dominant weapon system of its era. These aspects of the phalanx ‘combined’ with the later Greek mastery of horseback riding (albeit absent stirrups) in order to approach an enemy from vulnerable flanks and to exploit pursuits permitted the Greeks to conquer a vast portion of the world.
The Greeks were defeated by the Romans, but the inherent simplicity of the phalanx combined with its psychological fundamentals were so powerful that after the fall of the Roman Empire the phalanx again became ascendant, with the Swiss achieving the epitome of perfection of the phalanx in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance. The armies of the early gunpowder era continued to use phalanx formations of pikemen combined with formations of primitive, early muskets. The pikemen were replaced with the advent of the bayonet, which made every man a potential pikeman, and a remnant of the psychological dynamics of the phalanx could be seen in the great, column-based bayonet charges of Napoleon’s armies.

The Roman System

It must be remembered that the Roman Empire lasted for approximately half a millennium (and longer if we count the Eastern Roman Empire) and that to say ‘the Romans did this’ or ‘the Romans did that’ would generally be inaccurate when referring to a military system that evolved and changed constantly across the centuries. However, certain things did stay somewhat constant over the centuries in the Roman legions, and it was these constant factors that can be generally attributed to the extraordinary military success of the Roman Empire, starting in the second and first centuries BC and continuing for around 500 years.
The Greek phalanx required a high degree of training to be effective, but an efficient phalanx could still be achieved, for example, as the product of a local militia who trained in their free time. However, the Roman system was a highly complex professional army that devoted itself full time to the development of its skills and to the development of a leadership structure with systematic professional advancement based on merit, taking soldiers from the ranks and placing them in charge of larger and larger groups of men as they demonstrated competence at each level. The Roman open order of battle permitted their small-unit leaders to move behind the battle line, holding their men accountable and rewarding skill and valor with advancement and reward. Today most professional armies are designed around a professional small-unit leadership drawn from the ranks with advancement based on merit, and small-unit leaders who have proven themselves in combat (except in emergencies) are expected to stay behind their men in order to directly influence their actions in battle, but it must be remembered that the Romans were the first to truly, systematically introduce these factors to the battlefield on a large scale over a long period of time.
Another key aspect of the Roman way of war was the fact that each of their soldiers carried a variety of throwing spears (the number and type varied over the years) with which they were highly proficient. An approaching enemy was greeted with a series of volleys from these spears, which served to break up an enemy’s ranks and often to strip them of their shields. These ingeniously designed distance weapons often included light javelins, which were thrown at a long range, followed by a standard heavy spear (or pilum), which was thrown at a medium range, followed by a lead-weighted pilum, which was hurled, with enormous force, as one final volley before closing with swords.
After shattering an approaching enemy force from a distance with a series of spear volleys, the Romans closed with short swords designed and intended for stabbing. These swords were often qualitatively no different from those of their opponents, but the Romans were systematically trained to use their swords to stab and thrust in a highly effective way that was largely unprecedented prior to this. Like the post-World War II training that was to be developed two millennia later to condition men to fire in combat, Roman training used constant, repetitive training, to the point where it could be accurately described as conditioning, in order to insure that their soldiers would thrust in combat rather than use the more natural hacking and slashing blows. This was a technique that was to be used in later centuries to train some elite warriors in fencing and swordsmanship, but never before, nor probably since, has an entire army been trained to this degree of perfection.
This combination of projectile weapons, intense training, and the presence of effective small-unit leaders who moved behind their men and demanded effective killing activities was a devastating force that smashed approaching enemy formations, including the phalanx. The final ingredient in a Roman battlefield victory was the organization of their forces into small units with reserves; with dispassionate, highly trained, small-unit leaders operating behind their men; ready to maneuver their unit to exploit any exposed enemy flanks or penetrate deep into the enemy rear. Once the enemy was defeated, the final blow (and most of the killing) was executed by cavalry auxiliaries (which, still without stirrups, were little different from the cavalry of the Greeks), who would pursue and kill a broken, fleeing enemy.
The result of this complex process was the Pax Romana: hundreds of years of relative stability and peace in the Western world. However, it was a fragile strength, created through complexity and economic abundance, difficult to sustain in the best of times, and impossible to replicate (at least in Western Europe) for almost a millennium after the Roman Empire collapsed.

The Mounted Knight

With the fall of Rome the complex Roman way of war collapsed, to be replaced by simpler systems, such as the phalanx, and one new system, which was the mounted knight. The introduction of the stirrup (coming to Europe from China and India around the tenth century AD) made it possible for a man on horseback to strike an opponent with remarkable force without danger of being unseated. Furthermore, horse breeding had developed increasingly larger and more powerful mounts who could carry sufficient weight of armor to make both horse and man virtually invulnerable. A devastating blow could be delivered by a spear, or lance, which could be ‘couched’ or semi-attached to the knight. Charging at full speed, the spear point would strike an opponent with the combined momentum and weight of horse, man, and armor approaching at full gallop. After the initial blow with the lance the knight could continue to plow into an enemy formation, delivering blows from above with heavy weapons (sword, mace, flail, or morning star) assisted by the force of gravity and downward momentum. A formation of such knights, striking together, was an extraordinarily frightening and almost overwhelming force, combining high degrees of posturing, force, and mobility, which could only be stopped by a hedge of spears and the horse’s complete and consistent unwillingness to impale itself.
Thus, the answer to the knight was a phalanx, but the horse’s mobility made it possible to maneuver around a phalanx, or any enemy formation, in order to attack from a vulnerable direction and to pursue the enemy after they have been broken. This created the need for spear- or bayonet-equipped ground troops to form a ‘square’ that faced outward in all directions while keeping other units inside the protection of the square. This was an effective defensive maneuver as long as the infantry kept their nerve (if only a few men broke and ran the knights could move into that gap and break the entire formation), but until the introduction of the longbow and (later) gunpowder the forces inside the the square were completely neutralized and could often be held at bay by a small force of knights.
The longbow (and, later, gunpowder weapons) spelled the doom of the mounted knight and, ultimately, of all individual armor until the twentieth century. Cavalry would continue to exist on the battlefield for centuries, but their economic cost and their increasing vulnerability to small arms fire meant that by the late nineteenth century the utility of cavalry had reverted to that of the Greek and Roman era: useful for reconnaissance, to move riflemen rapidly to key a location where they would dismount and fight, and for mobility in the pursuit. During the twentieth century mechanization (trucks, tanks, etc.) would almost completely supersede the horse’s mobility contribution to the battlefield.

The Age of Projectile Weapons

Humans had always thrown rocks or fired arrows, but usually these could be neutralized by armor. With the advent of the longbow (c. 1400), for the first time the average combatant could single-handedly fire a weapon, from a distance, that would penetrate even the best of available, man-portable armor. This was a revolution that introduced a combination of distance and force that would continue in its basic format up until the present. The longbow began the process of rendering the knight extinct, but the advent of gunpowder introduced powerful posturing processes into the equation that quickly (in evolutionary terms) led to the extinction of both the knight and the longbow.
Once individual gunpowder weapons were introduced and widely distributed (c. 1600), the evolution of close-range, interpersonal weaponry subsequently moved along a single, simple path of perfecting this weapon. The early, crude, primitive, smoothbore, muzzle-loading, gunpowder weapons were pathetically ineffective. They were almost impossible to aim, very slow to fire, and useless in any kind of damp conditions. And yet their posturing (i.e., their noise) combined with their absolutely overwhelming force (when they could hit something) was so great that they soon came to dominate the battlefield.
Gunpowder was invented in China, but China was under a comparatively centralized government that appears to have seen gunpowder weapons as a threat to the established order and made a conscious decision not to develop this weapon. (Over a millennium later the Japanese would do something similar.) A powerful argument can be made that this single decision in weapons development resulted in the eventual subjugation of the East and the inevitable domination and colonization of the world by Western Europe. In Europe there were constant wars and turmoil and a complete absence of centralized authority, which created an environment that pursued a continuous development and refinement of gunpowder weapons. This process led to weapons that could be fired in wet weather (percussion caps), fired accurately (rifled barrels), loaded from a prone position (breech loaders), fired repeatedly without loading (repeaters), and fired repeatedly with no other action than pulling the trigger (automatics).
Almost all of this development of gunpowder weapons occurred in the nineteenth century. By the early twentieth century this developmental process had reached its culmination. One common myth in this area involves the increasing ‘deadliness’ of modern small arms, which is largely without foundation. For example, the high-velocity, small-caliber (5.56-mm/.223-caliber) ammunition used in most assault rifles today (e.g., the M-16 and the AK-74) was designed to wound rather than kill. The theory is that wounding an enemy soldier eliminates three people: the wounded man and two others to evacuate him. These weapons do inflict great (wounding) trauma, but they are illegal for hunting deer in much of the United States due to their ineffectiveness at quickly and effectively killing game.
Similarly, since World War I and until recently the US military’s weapon of choice in pistols was a .45 automatic (approximately 12 mm). In recent years the military weapon of choice has become the 9 mm, which has a smaller, faster round that many experts argue is considerably less effective at killing.
What these new, smaller ammunitions (5.56 mm for rifle and 9 mm for pistol) ‘do’ make possible is greater magazine capacity, and this has increased the effectiveness of weapons in one way, while decreasing it in another.
The point is that there has ‘not’ been any significant increase in the effectiveness of the weapons available today. The shotgun is still the single most effective weapon for killing at close range and it has been available and basically unchanged for over 100 years. Long-range killing technology (missiles, aircraft, and armored vehicles) have all evolved at quantum rates, but the basic technology of close-range killing through transferring kinetic energy has apparently achieved an evolutionary dead end in this century.

Enabling the Mind to Kill

Thus the basic, close-range killing weapon has not changed fundamentally in nearly a century, but there ‘has’ been a new, evolutionary leap in the conditioning of the ‘mind’ that has to use that weapon to kill at close range. The development of a psychological conditioning process to enable an individual to overcome the average, healthy, deep-rooted aversion to close-range killing of one’s own species is a true revolution. By changing from bulls-eye targets to pop-up, human-shaped targets that fall when hit, modern armies and police forces have learned to operantly condition their combatants to respond reflexively even when literally frightened out of their wits. This process has repeatedly demonstrated an ability to raise the firing rate among individual riflemen from a baseline of around 20% in World War II to over 90% today. This is a revolution on the battlefield, and it is a revolution that has also had an absolutely unprecedented influence on civilian violence and domestic violent crimes.
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Chapter

Conflict and War, Archaeology of: Weapons and Artifacts

2015, International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition)Helle Vandkilde

Weapon Combinations and Technologies

Weapon combinations in wetland depositions and in cemeteries can, used with caution, inform about the internal organization of the warrior bands and of the equipment and fighting methods of the warrior. The warrior may not be interred with his full equipment but rather only those parts of the equipment that had a certain symbolic meaning or could be spared by the living. Particular weapons may have been curated, rather than deposited, for any number of reasons; perhaps kept to be used in future wars and in effect transmitted from father to son as insignia of rank and warrior status. Close combat armament predominates in burials and hoarded depositions, which should not let us conclude that archery was unimportant during fighting, as the continued occurrence of arrows of flint and metal shows. Special eye openers in this respect are constituted by settlement sites from the early Neolithic onward showing numerous arrowheads in the banks and ditches of the fortifications. Similar evidence comes from skeletal trauma showing marks from clubs as well as wounding and death by arrow shots.
The social presentation of the warrior in funerary contexts varied systematically through time indicating that fighting methods also changed. In the mid-third-millennium BCE, in temperate Europe and somewhat earlier toward south and east, the battle-axe-wielding warrior gave way to the dagger-carrying archer, who in the mid second millennium at the threshold to the Middle Bronze Age became a sword, axe, and spear fighter with several fine toilet articles to groom hair and body. Battle-axes and other axes of potential use in war were still available, as were less conspicuous and less prestigious weapons made of wood and other organic materials. It is quite possible that body armor and shields of organic materials were in use and forming part of the full panoply of the elite warrior. Wheeled horse-pulled vehicles were also present, perhaps from the onset of the third-millennium BCE but grew in significance in the metal ages. From around 1300 BCE, weapons look increasingly effective and standardized with elite warrior equipment consisting of the whole suite: sheet bronze armor, helmet, round shield, sword, and spear. This was in addition to toilet implements for grooming and now more often a four-wheeled cart or a two-wheeled chariot. The wheeled vehicle was to bring the war chieftain to and from battle and to present him as a superior being on social and religious occasions. This impressive assortment of weaponry shows developments over time with new highlights in the Iron Age with tribal confederations, archaic states, and finally the empire of Rome. All along this trajectory, there are regional variations in the techniques of fighting and the employed weapons, but the general development is similar.
Weapon technology is not unimportant for the outcome of war. Improvements have been known to escalate the degree and viciousness of warfare in numerous ethnographic cases. It is thus possible that innovations in the technology of war could have increased the speed of social change in prehistory. A comparison of weapons over time can give clues to significant changes in weapon technology, understood as the quality of weapons and styles of fighting. The emergence of the sword around 1600 BCE in central and northern Europe is likely to have been such an important innovation with considerable social and symbolic effects in warlike as well as in more peaceful interactions inside society and between societies. Likewise, the introduction of horses for driving and riding, more systematically around 1200 BCE, would have changed conventional warfare as well as the whole social habitat, as documented, for instance, among the Grand Chaco Abipón in South America during the eighteenth century.
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Structural Dimensions

2022, Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, & Conflict (Third Edition)Jean Pascal Zanders

From Laws of War to Weapon Control

The policies of controlling armaments have their roots in the mid-19th century when the then sovereign powers considered formalizing the customs of war in conventional law. Some of the oldest written sources already point to limitations on the conduct of war in several ancient civilizations. Through the ages, the proscriptions gradually multiplied and widened in their reach. In the 19th century, however, the rise of science and technological innovation contributed to increased mechanization of warfare. Emerging industrialization progressively allowed the production more powerful, more precise weaponry in ever larger numbers, while centralized governments exerted full control over the national territory enabling them to mobilize both the population and the economy to support war efforts. The devastation of modern, industrialized warfare more and more challenged the customs of warfare, whereas novel types of weaponry seemed to controvert the basic humanitarian principles in armed conflict.
Since the early modern period (starting in the 15th century) when legal scholars began writing down and elaborating the customs of war, the control of weaponry evolved along three, not seldom intertwined lines, namely:
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Constraints on modes of warfare, which implied that weaponry could not be deployed indiscriminately. Monotheistic religions came to view certain categories of people as noncombatants who should, therefore, be spared the worst excesses of warfare. In this way, Christian and Muslim teachings condemned flooding and arson, which became outlawed in the early Middle Ages, and later also came to view poison use and poisoned weapons as unlawful. Postmedieval secular legal texts continued to restate these restrictions, as did military codes of the 18th and 19th centuries.
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Constraints on the use of specified types of weaponry. Derived from the general customs of war, these rules identified specific weapons based on their physical properties or their physiological impact on humans. They emerged during the second half of the 19th century as science and technology increasingly influenced weapon and munition design.
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Removal from a given geographic space of weaponry that could inadvertently contribute to the outbreak of hostilities.
An extraneous development also contributed to the framing limits on weapons and their use: the appearance of the sovereign state as an international actor. The earlier restraints applied only to members of one's own religious community; disciples of another religion were viewed as heretics and, therefore, as beyond the pale of customary protection. Military codes similarly represented a unilateral declaration of behaviors that did not constrain adversaries. Moreover, medieval and early modern wars were often highly personal whereby the enmity between the leading protagonists was automatically transferred to those fighting in the name of their social superiors. Atrocities were countless. Sovereign states, big or small, represented equivalent units in the international system, and military personnel became agents of the state until such moment they were hors combat, i.e., no longer capable of fighting (Zanders, 2003).

Emerging Science and Technology and Their Impact on Warfare

State sovereignty laid not only the foundation for the further elaboration of humanitarian principles and practices in war; it also allowed the conclusion of international agreements between equal entities. Thus, in 1675—27 years after the Peace of Westphalia, France and the Holy Roman Empire concluded the Strasbourg Agreement that reiterated the general customs of war that for the first time in an international document, included a specific prohibition on the use of poison or poisoned weapons. It also required the military authorities on both sides to punish those soldiers who violated the rule. The accord was binding for the duration of the war.
The Strasbourg Agreement was an early precursor of the efforts toward codifying the customs and laws of war two centuries later. It was no accident that the undertaking accelerated after the end of the American Civil War (1861–1865). The conflict marked a transition toward war fighting supported by science, technological innovation, industrial power, and mass mobilization of societies in support of the war effort. It resulted in unprecedented levels of destruction and human toll: over one million casualties, including over 60% military fatalities. This war pointed toward a trend. The Crimean War (1853–1856), which involved multiple nations and expeditionary forces, produced over half a million casualties, of whom 75% were fatalities. Its defeat made Russia, a mostly agrarian society, realize that technologically and in terms of capacities to wage war it lagged behind the industrializing nations in Europe. Three years later, having toured the battleground of Solferino (June 24, 1859) in northern Italy just hours after fighting had stopped, the Swiss businessman Jean-Henri Dunant proceeded to cofound the Red Cross in 1863. In October, he participated in conference on tending to wounded soldiers in Geneva, which led to the first Geneva Convention opened for signature in August 1864. Later, the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) brutally demonstrated how technological and industrial superiority decided the outcome of military conflict.
While the latter efforts led to the emergence and development of standards to treat combatants and noncombatants in armed conflict, legal experts and governments also began considering the lawfulness of weapons and munitions as part of a broader movement toward the codification of the customs and laws of war. An early milestone was the 1868 St. Petersburg Declaration Renouncing the Use, in Time of War, of Explosive Projectiles Under 400 g Weight. The agreement soon became obsolete, but for the first time a formal multilateral instrument framed the fundamental principle that the “employment of arms which uselessly aggravate the sufferings of disabled men, or render their death inevitable” is “contrary to the laws of humanity.”
This principle linked the laws of war, then under full development, with the Geneva Convention and would feature in all future international agreements limiting the use of weaponry in armed conflict. On August 27, 1874, 15 European powers agreed in Brussels on the International Declaration Concerning the Laws and Customs of War, but it never became binding on them because not all participating governments were yet prepared to accept it as legally binding. Notwithstanding, the document framed a second fundamental principle, one to lead eventually to arms control and disarmament: belligerents do not have unlimited power in the adoption of means to injure an enemy. As an explicit case in point, it viewed poison or poisoned weapons as especially forbidden. With the so-called Oxford Manual (The Laws of War on Land, prepared by the Institute of International Law in 1880), which proposed to outlaw the use of poison in any form whatever, the Brussels Declaration laid the foundation for the agreements to be achieved at the Hague Peace Conferences (Zanders, 2015a).

The First and Second Hague Peace Conferences (1899 and 1907)

Especially from the 1850s onwards, two threads in the evolution of warfare were gaining prominence: fast rising casualties and the impact of science and technology, combined with the ability to efficiently mobilize national resources. Both threads gave rise to international efforts to mitigate the consequences of warfare: humanitarian, on the one hand, and regulating how hostilities could be conducted, on the other hand.
Yet, a third motivator to control weaponry also emerged but lacked the distinctness of the other threads until the next century, namely neutralizing technological superiority held by competitors. Its defeat in the Crimean War forced Russia to confront the reality that as a mostly agrarian society, it lagged behind the industrializing nations in Europe both technologically and in terms of capacities to wage war. When Moscow proposed renunciation of exploding projectiles below 400 g in 1868, it feared that its discovery of fulminating bullets able to detonate munition storage on land and in ships would lead to an armaments competition it could not win. It also initiated the 1874 Brussels Conference. Concerns about this shifting balance of power led Russia to call for an international meeting to curb this quickening qualitative competition in armaments.
The First Hague Peace Conference (May 18–July 29, 1899) codified the customs and laws of war and at sea and also resulted in a convention of the peaceful settlement of international disputes, which established the still functioning Permanent Court of Arbitration. In contrast, negotiations essentially failed in the disarmament objective. Delegates did have to contend with challenges posed by novel technologies and modes of warfare and issued three declarations:
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(IV,1) Declaration relative to the prohibition of the discharge of projectiles from balloons;
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(IV,2) Declaration relative to the prohibition of the employment of asphyxiating projectiles; and
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(IV,3) Declaration relative to the prohibition of balls which expand in the human body.
The Second Hague Peace Conference (June 15–October 18, 1907) addressed almost exclusively the laws of war, the legal status of noncombatants and neutral powers, and some specific aspects of maritime warfare. Negotiators agreed 13 conventions and extended the duration of Declaration (IV, 1) until the Third Hague Peace Conference (that never happened).
In the genealogy of disarmament law is Declaration (IV, 2) of particular importance. Not only would it prove to be a key stepping stone to the present-day disarmament treaties banning chemical and biological weapons (CBW), it also pointed to a rising tension between the humanitarian premisses underlying the laws of war and the control of emerging technologies that could be, but were not yet applied in war. Few would dare to argue that asphyxiating gases are not poisons, whose use in combat Article 23 of the Convention (II) With Respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land explicitly illegalized. Yet, the delegates participating in the Hague Peace Conference adopted the provision without argument, whereas they heatedly debated the Declaration and ultimately reached no consensus decision. The outcome reflected a progressing semantic bifurcation whereby “poison” came to mean a noxious substance derived from nature (which up to the end of 19th century included sources of disease), on the one hand, and toxic chemical compounds discovered by science and produced by the advanced chemical industry, on the other hand. “Poison” thus referred to past use on battlefields no modern, civilized nation would practice anymore. “Asphyxiating gases” captured present and future technology.
The dichotomy ran deeper than mere semantics. The United States refused to sign the declaration because nobody had used “asphyxiating gases” on the battlefield and, therefore, argued that future weaponry may still prove decisive and not cause superfluous suffering in wars to come. In making the argument, the United States, thus, presented technology as value neutral until such harm was proven. This position counters what is known today as the precautionary principle, which calls for caution until evidence of harmlessness becomes available. This debate, ideological as it became, was to inform opposite positions on weapon control (Zanders, 2015a).
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Chapter

Violence and Nonviolence

2022, Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, & Conflict (Third Edition)Sheldon G. Levy

Overview

While the technological transitions in weaponry are clearly identifiable, there has been no such continuous development in norms of war. Depending on the historical era, the geographical region, and the nature of the group—nomadic, agricultural or urban, large or small, tribal or political state—beliefs and attitudes about conflict and the participants have differed. These differences have been dependent upon the goals; the status accorded the enemy, the degree of provocation, and the norms for conflict. In some regions and during some periods of history, there has been greater adherence to the formal contemporary limits on the conduct of war than at present. Nevertheless, the overall human record is one of vast destruction of both noncombatants and combatants. The toll for both categories in the 20th century was perhaps as high as 200 million with the majority having been noncombatants. Such destruction can only be accounted for by the realization that large portions of humanity, civilian and military, have been considered expendable, either by their own state or by others.
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