Conflicting evidence? Weapons and skeletons in the Bronze Age of south-east Iberia Gonzalo Aranda-Jim´ enez 1* , Sandra Mont´ on-Sub´ ıas 2* & Silvia Jim´ enez-Brobeil 3 With its forts, swords, halberds and daggers the Argaric people of south-east Spain has long been seen as a warrior society. The authors dismantle this model, showing that defences around settlements and weapons and knives in tombs have quite different social roles. An analysis of skeletons showed that while these Bronze Age people might have been periodically clubbing each other on the head, they were not doing a lot of lethal stabbing. Keywords: Iberia, Bronze Age, warfare, violence, halberds, swords Introduction According to an important body of social theory, the emergence and institutionalisation of violence and warfare are inherent to processes of increasing social complexity. Prehistoric Europe – and most specifically its Bronze Age – has provided a suitable scenario to fuel this belief. The warrior as a new social character appears during this period, progressively expanding across the different landscapes of the European continent. The Argaric societies in south-east Iberia (corresponding to the Bronze Age in south- eastern Spain and spanning from c . 2250 to 1450 cal BC) have traditionally been interpreted as conforming to this general principle. Specialised weaponry such as halberds and swords have been correlated with evidence of the existence of warriors and – more or less implicitly – warfare. But, in common with similar examples throughout Europe, the emergence of warriors and warfare has been pronounced rather than explained. Despite the leading role accorded to the warrior as a new figure, it seems to us that the necessary connections between the rise of warriors and their social practice and context have remained largely unexplored. In recent years, several archaeological works have concentrated on this remarkable phenomenon (Carman 1997; Martin & Frayer 1997; Carman & Harding 1999; Parker & Thorpe 2005; Arkush & Allen 2006) putting forward different causes for 1* Departamento de Prehistoria y Arqueolog´ ıa, Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, Universidad de Granada, Campus Cartuja s/n, 18071 Granada, Spain (Email: garanda@ugr.es) 2* ICREA Departament d’Humanitats, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Ramon Trias-Fargas 25-27, 080010 Barcelona, Spain (Email: sandra.monton@upf.edu) 3 Laboratorio de Antropolog´ ıa F´ ısica, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Granada, Av. de Madrid, 11, 18071 Granada, Spain (Email: jbrobeil@ugr.es) * These authors have contributed equally to the present manuscript and both should be considered as first authors. Received: 21 November 2008; Accepted: 30 January 2009; Revised: 10 February 2009 ANTIQUITY 83 (2009): 1038–1051 1038