Investigates the visibility of different short- and long-term consequences of armed conflicts in the archaeological record from prehistory to the medieval period. Examines which individuals and groups benefit the most and which suffer the most in the aftermath of war.
The archaeology of war has often focused on combatants and weaponry, prioritising the conflicts themselves over their aftermath. Yet in today’s world, with ongoing and emerging wars, archaeology must also address the precarity and long-term consequences of armed conflict for all parties involved.
This edited volume examines how the short- and long-term impacts of warfare appear in the archaeological record from prehistory to the medieval period. For the defeated, consequences may include poor diet, ill-health, physical trauma, and higher mortality – visible in bioarchaeological evidence. Victorious communities, conversely, may benefit from plundered resources, leading to wealth and improved living conditions for some. Conflicts can also trigger migrations, whether through forced displacement or deportation, well-documented in historical texts but harder to trace in periods without written records. Finally, warfare can leave settlements and landscapes destroyed, rendering them less hospitable.
Understanding the trauma of war requires examining its corporeal and material dimensions. The chapters in this volume explore who gains and who suffers in the wake of conflict, through case studies from prehistoric Iberia, ancient Egypt and Nubia, Roman Britain, the eastern Roman provinces, the Late Antique Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean, medieval Anatolia, Viking Scandinavia, and medieval India.
Preface
Uro Mati and Vladimir Mihajlovi
1. Aftermath of War in Ancient Societies: Towards a Relational Approach
Uro Mati and Vladimir D. Mihajlovi
2. Timing, nature and societal impacts of Late Neolithic warfare in
north-central Iberia
Teresa Fernández-Crespo, Javier Ordoño and Rick J. Schulting
3. Encountering an expanding predatory state: Nubia during and after the
first wars with Egypt (c. 3600-3000 BC)
Henriette Hafsaas
4. Outsourcing Precarity in the Aftermath of War: Import and Integration of
Foreign Labour in Late Bronze Age Egypt
Christian Langer
5. The Elderly in the Aftermath of War: Old Age, Precarity, and Ancient
Egyptian Warfare
Uro Mati
6. Balancing the narratives of Julius Caesar in Kent
Anton Ye Baryshnikov and Jake Weeks
7. What actually happened to Segestiani after the Roman conquest?
Ivan Radman-Livaja and Ivan Drni
8. Roman-Germanic Confrontations in the Middle Danube region: a multiproxy
approach towards the war consequences and aftermath
Vlach Marek and Balázs Komoróczy
9. Fear and Looting in the Late Roman Remesiana: Disturbing the Dead after
the Gothic War?
Vladimir Mihajlovi, Marko Jankovi, Dimitrije Markovi and Aleksandar
Bandovi
10. Not on the Destruction Layer Alone! The Misconception, Misinterpretation
and Misidentification of the Effects of War in the 6th and 7th Centuries
Eastern Mediterranean
Haggai Olshanetsky and Lev Cosijns
11. Kenneling the dogs of war. The aftermath of war in Viking Age
North-Western Europe
Bo Jensen
12. Preliminary Bioarchaeological Results of the First Archaeological Study
Conducted on the Battle of Manzikert 1071
Erge Bütün, Serpil Erolu, Adnan Çevik Mustafa Alican, A. Ouzhan Karaçetin,
Evren Sertalp, Mehmet Sait Sütcü, Tevfik Orkun Develi, Ali Akbaba, Muhammed
Dolmu, Ali Metin Büyükkarakaya
Uro Mati is a lecturer at the Institute for Classics, University of Graz, Austria and a senior research fellow of the College for Social Sciences and Humanities of the University Alliance Ruhr in Essen, Germany. His main expertise is in war and violence in ancient Egypt, ancient Egyptian interrelations, settlement archaeology, and gender studies in archaeology. Vladimir Mihajlovi is a professor of archaeology at the Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. His main expertise is in Balkan Roman provincial archaeology, in particular funerary archaeology, social structure, ethnicity and identity studies.
