The existence of archery in Early Bronze Age southern Levant warfare: a note

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Early Bronze Age was a time of major changes in southern Levantine regions. The spread of urbanisation in the course of the third millennium BC was accompanied by various socio-political transformations, tensions and also violent encounters, even if the evidence for the latter is hard to detect in the archaeological record. The almost complete absence of arrowheads from settlements and tombs in the southern Levant from this period has led to the assumption that combat archery was not employed during the Early Bronze Age. This paper challenges this orthodoxy using evidence from the southern Levant and beyond, and it concludes that archery was employed in combat activities during the Early Bronze Age, albeit on a small scale that was determined by military considerations.