Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

[Galloglaich]

Music has been used for signalling (from horn blasts to attack/retreat/etc to drums to help the column keep in step), identification (if you're hearing The British Grenadiers, that group of soldiers that you can't see through the mist/gunsmoke isn't friendly if you're Continental Army) and morale (to bolster morale to help you stay shoulder to shoulder with your comrades as the enemy charge and to demoralise the enemy; bagpipes were famed for this, from the Scottish using them against the English in the 18th Century Jacobite rising, to bagpipes wailing as the soldiers landed at Sword Beach on D-Day).

Medieval European battlefield musicians didn't really come into vogue until after the Crusades where they revived the concept after the Saracens used it against them to great effect. Bartholomeus Anglicus recorded that the returning Crusaders adapted the anafil (a straight, valveless trumpet), the tabor, (a small drum, sometimes snared) and the thenaker (a small, round kettledrum, usually deployed in pairs) from Saracen instruments.

Music became even more important for signalling as gunpowder weapons became more prevalent due to the increased noise on the battlefield, but that's a little past your time in question.

Don't forget the "mehter", the infamous Ottoman war song full of brass bands. Sounds a bit like John Phillip Sousa but apparently back in the day it was considered terrifying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZr1ibaFE_4

The Czech hussites with their war wagons also had notoriously terrifying music. This is a 20th Century (I think 1930s) rendition of a medieval Hussite War Song called Ktož jsú boží bojovníci. I cannot pronounce that. But it's quite a moving portrayal. It's a nice song, doesn't sound harsh like heavy metal or punk or gangster rap. But you can certainly feel the power in it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiYzysQKqGI

One of the larger Crusading armies broke and ran upon hearing the hussites singing this back in the 1420s leading to a catastrophic defeat for the Crusaders.

G

[Mr Beer]

Modern military uses battlefield music to this day e.g. IIRC Marines blasting gangster rap and heavy metal while clearing houses in Fallujah while the enemy responded with amplified chanting.

[VoxRationis]

Don't forget the "mehter", the infamous Ottoman war song full of brass bands. Sounds a bit like John Phillip Sousa but apparently back in the day it was considered terrifying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZr1ibaFE_4

In my current game, we're fighting a vaguely Perso-Turkish enemy, and my DM plays that song when they're about to attack. In context, it does indeed inspire dread. The following recording is a tad more intimidating, though. In-character, I make quips about them playing their own funeral marches, but it's sort of whistling in the dark.

[Kiero]

In my current game, we're fighting a vaguely Perso-Turkish enemy, and my DM plays that song when they're about to attack. In context, it does indeed inspire dread. The following recording is a tad more intimidating, though. In-character, I make quips about them playing their own funeral marches, but it's sort of whistling in the dark.

Was all that stuff about Ptolemaic marines useful?

[snowblizz]

Today, I was thinking about a battle scene that I'm writing that takes place in a pseudo-medieval world (oh yes, I am the most original person in the world by far). The setting is roughly early thirteenth century and naturally involves some heavy cavalry equivalent to knights being used. I've noticed that many popular wargames like having people blowing horns and all that mixed in with the knights, but I've not been able to find anything about that. Was this really done? Or is it more of a game construct to have musicians between the knights?

"Game constructs" tend to be informed by real history, though some bleeding of concepts exists because often those constructing games are not historians.
Especially heavy cavalry tends to exploit the psychological angle (ostentious or "scary" dress eg) as much as they can.

Instruments as organised battlefield command is probably just a slightly later phenomena. You sort of need more permanently featuring formations for it to really work.

What am saying is that's (usually*) it's not going to be wildly inaccurate but they may push trumpeters into a cavalry unit a bit earlier than they should, if used as formation/communication tool (liek ti fotne is, say bonuses on receiving orders or changing formation).


(*) there's always a Pulp/Punk game out there breaking all the rules.

Music became even more important for signalling as gunpowder weapons became more prevalent due to the increased noise on the battlefield, but that's a little past your time in question.

I'd probably say it coincides with armies becoming so large coordination at the speed of foot/horse gets problematic (that also coincides with the development of gunpowder). I wouldn't necessarily says it due to the noise just more being able to extend command and control in general.

Samurai armies used conch shells (and flags) to augment signalling. Not sure how far back it goes.

And of course once you invent military music it doesn't go away even though army sizes might shrink.

[Brother Oni]

I do know that in earlier times (Hellenistic) it wasn't really done. At most, there would be flutists behind the lines, but that's about it. But still games like to include them for some reason. What do you all think?

I was going to add this as an edit, but the thread's moved on. Just be aware that medieval times had some funny ideas about music - don't mistake a flautist for a flatulist.

Modern military uses battlefield music to this day e.g. IIRC Marines blasting gangster rap and heavy metal while clearing houses in Fallujah while the enemy responded with amplified chanting.

I was aware of AFV crews having a 'war tunes playlist' to get themselves mentally prepared as they went into combat, but I wasn't aware that the infantry were using them while actively engaging the enemy.

There's also heavy music played for psychological effect on both prisoners and people holed up inside buildings and on a larger scale, the constant propaganda that the PRC and ROC are blasting out at each other across the sea between the mainland and the Kinmen islands, but we're straying away from the battlefield here.

[VoxRationis]

Was all that stuff about Ptolemaic marines useful?

Oh, yes, it was. Thank you. I'm sorry I didn't reply earlier.

[Storm Bringer]

"Game constructs" tend to be informed by real history, though some bleeding of concepts exists because often those constructing games are not historians.
Especially heavy cavalry tends to exploit the psychological angle (ostentious or "scary" dress eg) as much as they can.

Instruments as organised battlefield command is probably just a slightly later phenomena. You sort of need more permanently featuring formations for it to really work.

What am saying is that's (usually*) it's not going to be wildly inaccurate but they may push trumpeters into a cavalry unit a bit earlier than they should, if used as formation/communication tool (liek ti fotne is, say bonuses on receiving orders or changing formation).


(*) there's always a Pulp/Punk game out there breaking all the rules.

I'd probably say it coincides with armies becoming so large coordination at the speed of foot/horse gets problematic (that also coincides with the development of gunpowder). I wouldn't necessarily says it due to the noise just more being able to extend command and control in general.

Samurai armies used conch shells (and flags) to augment signalling. Not sure how far back it goes.

And of course once you invent military music it doesn't go away even though army sizes might shrink.

I'd point out that the Chinese armies of Sun Tzu's day (about 500-450BC, or about the same time period as the greeks were fighting the Persians at Marathon & Thermopylae) were described as being commanded by drums and such, so it was a known thing at least that early.

23. The Book of Army Management says: On the field of battle, the spoken word does not carry far enough: hence the institution of gongs and drums. Nor can ordinary objects be seen clearly enough: hence the institution of banners and flags.

24. Gongs and drums, banners and flags, are means whereby the ears and eyes of the host may be focused on one particular point.

25. The host thus forming a single united body, is it impossible either for the brave to advance alone, or for the cowardly to retreat alone. This is the art of handling large masses of men.

[Beleriphon]

I was going to add this as an edit, but the thread's moved on. Just be aware that medieval times had some funny ideas about music - don't mistake a flautist for a flatulist.

What amuses me most about that is the fact that fart jokes have been funny since there have been people. I mean, it takes a special kind of fart to get 30 acres of land from a king.

I was aware of AFV crews having a 'war tunes playlist' to get themselves mentally prepared as they went into combat, but I wasn't aware that the infantry were using them while actively engaging the enemy.

Tends to screw up local communication if you aren't using closed radio channels. When the enemy is trying to communicate by voice, and it sounds like a jet is taking off outside anybody using radio comms is going to have an advantage.

[Vinyadan]

Has nobody said paean yet? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paean it was a kind of hymn frequently sung by the Greeks before battle.

[DerKommissar]

I'm a bit late to the party, but I'm catching up with the thread as I finally find the time again and I wanted to add something to the discussion of colors. In particular to the color blue:

If you understand German the following podcast was could be interesting:

https://www.br.de/radio/bayern2/send...farbe-100.html

The summary of it:

William Gladstone was a Homer enthusiast. One thing he discovered was, that there are hardly any colors mentioned in the Illiad/Odysee and when they are, they are used in weird ways (e.g. green honey). The color blue is not mentioned at all (e.g. whine dark sea). He thought that the Greek were completely colorblind. This turned out to be wrong, but linguists suspect, that the ancient Greek had indeed no word for blue (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studie...he_Homeric_Age).

Later a guy named Lazarus Geiger took up the idea. He was kind of a language genius and could read basically all (at that time) known languages and undertook it to read other ancient texts according to colors. He found out, that neither the Bibel/Old Testimony, the Quran, islandic sagas, Vedas Hymns, nor old chinese writings used a lot of words for colors in general (an when, then again in a rather weird, from todays perspective, unintuitive way). Again there was no mentioning of the word blue which is kinda surprising, as e.g. the sky is one of the most cited topics in most of those myths. It rather seemed that light and dark colors were grouped together. So things we would call light blue would be light green, dark blue would be dark red (as e.g. the whine dark sea).

It seems, that they were definately able to see blue, but they had no word for it, as it was simply not relevant, as blue is very rare in nature (as someone else stated already upthread). So with the ability to artifically make colors, they developed words for it. Notably the egypts who had the ability to artifically make blue pigments were the only ones having the word blue.


Another small tangent as the “Gods in Color” Exhibition was mentioned (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gods_in_Color): My Girlfriend is working as a restorer at the museum that originated them and she says, that the colored statues should be taken with a grain of salt. We mostly know which part of the statues had roughly which color, but we don’t know much about the colors themselves, e.g. how ‘covering’ the colors were. She says, that it was partly a marketing decision to make the colors as bright and gaudy as you see them on the pictures, to make it more of a sensation and attract people. So not surprisingly it’s more a “they could have looked like that” than a “this is how it looked”.

[Max_Killjoy]

I can't recall where I read it or I'd give more detail, but "wine dark sea" isn't really a statement that the sea is the literally the same color as wine, it's a sort of poetic shorthand.

[DerKommissar]

I can't recall where I read it or I'd give more detail, but "wine dark sea" isn't really a statement that the sea is the literally the same color as wine, it's a sort of poetic shorthand.

Yes you are right, its about the state the sea is in, not so much about the color per se. I think the emphasis is on the dark, i.e. deep sea that was crossed. But also the Green faces he talks about e.g. are not so much meant literally green faces, but as a description of an emotional state (as today some colors are connected with emotions). Or green in connection with plants, as fresh or fertile (like today in green wood).

Still I guess most people would not intuitively compare the sea to whine today...

[Vinyadan]

About the ancient world and colours.

First of all, keep in mind that Homer's language was in no way normal or usually spoken. Ancient Greek was divided among dialects; Homer's Greek is made up mostly by the Ionic dialect, but with infiltrations and stratifications from many different dialects. It was an artfully made language, that had to respect certain metrics. But you also need to think that it was a formulaic language: the composer used many fixed formulae, which he learnt by heart, as did the others aiodoi. Since much of the job of the aiodos was live performance and improvisation, these fixed formulae could be used to quickly build up verses. This is where, for example, epithets come from. If you need to fill up a verse like

His throat Achilles cut |

you can always add

| fleet-footed.

and get the right number and combination of syllables for the verse. Homer in particular wrote in hexametres, which are made up of (long + short + short syllable)x5 + (long + short or long)x1. There is some room for metrical expedients, so, for example, any of the first five "feet" can be made up of (long + long) instead of (long+short+short).

Anyway, this brings us to a highly specialised language, with many oddities. It also shows extremely archaic traits, because of the long tradition whence it comes. The result is that the Greeks themselves weren't exactly sure of what certain words by Homer meant.

Since the Veda have been named earlier: there actually is a science (Proto-Indo-European poetry) that studies common elements in such ancient texts that can be expected to derive not from cultural exchange, but from the separation of multiple poetry traditions from an originally unified one. There is a book called "How to Kill a Dragon" that is considered very good and talks about this.

What this means is that it's fully possible that there was a drift in the meaning of words that were anyway still used in their original meaning by the aoidoi. Concerning the "wine-faced sea" ("wine dark sea" is just a traditional translation that isn't literal), consider that we have an ancient lexicon explaining a similar adjective (="wine-looking") as "dark, black". In certain regions, people still call red wine "black" (I'm looking at you, Friuli). It could also refer to the boiling wine, be it because of perlage, or because they actually warmed it up to the point of boiling, and this can be compared to the foam of the sea; the problem with this last interpretation is that it also is used for oxen.

Anyway, I am completely opposed to the idea that lack of knowledge of a word to mean a hue means colour blindness. That theory is so absurd, I am surprised that anyone actually cares about it. This is especially ridiculous if you examine the small amount of Greek paintings that have reached us. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitsa_panels Hey, look, that's blue!

It is definitely true that the Greeks used words for colours in a different way than we do. So there was a word for yellow-to-green, found in a famous poem by Sappho. Blue and black were described with one word, kyanos, in Homer. Melainos was used for black in a more precise way, and also described personifications of death. White was leukos, which has something to do with light (compare Latin LUX = light). Erythros, "red", could have meant something about movement; but this would have been a late development, since it comes from the same word from which "red" and "RUFUS" come.
Words were picked up from other languages, too. So argyros (=silver) is originally Greek, and also connected to a different word for "light", but chrysos "gold" was imported from the East. The Inhospitable Sea "axenos pontos" (now the Black sea) was called that way because of an adaptation of a Persian adjective that actually meant "blue sea".

Blue wasn't seen as its own colour for a long time, no doubt about it. It was seen as a shade of something else. English "blue" is related to German "Blei", which means "lead (the metal)", and comes from a word originally meaning "light colour" (think white lead). Blue can be seen as a shade of green, or gray. I do think that the ability to create the colour has some influence in choosing the name of the colour (so you have "ocre" and stuff like "Sienna"). But it doesn't have to be that way, since the paintings clearly show that the Greeks could produce blue painting, and yet didn't have a clear name for this colour; and they could do it for a very long time, since Myceneans already had blue on their walls.

About the statues and their reconstructions, personally I find them either not going far enough, or going way too far. The statues on the Wikipedia page are pretty old, and I don't think that we have frescoes from those times (maybe tombs in Italy?); but there are frescoes from Hellenistic times and from the tomb of Phillip II. In general, I think that simply there aren't people skilled enough today, to paint what they must have looked like. These people were absurd perfectionists and made it a point to make their idealised statues as realistic as possible. If you are willing to have statues made out of ivory and gold, then you also are willing to have marble statues whose colours resemble life. Something that surprises me is how light the archer looks. Ok, he isn't Greek, so that might be the reason; but Greek art tends to use very dark colours for male figures, and this was very evident in the theatre, where white lead was used to paint female masks, but male masks used a dark red colour from remains of pressed wine grapes. There also is the famous tomb fresco with the diver. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_the_Diver

[DerKommissar]

This thread never stops to amaze me :D I wonder if there‘ll ever be a topic where there wont be well informed answer from one of you guys!

[Tobtor]

On colours

I agree that there is not any form of extreme colour blindness in historic times. BUT what things are which colours in different languages do differ quite a bit from language to lkanguage. As I understand the language literature (through my wife who is a language/literature person), it is that most languages have a "dark" and "light" seperation as the basic one (or black/white), then red is often the first "next" colour. Then other colours are added. It does not entails that they did not see the colours or did not distinguish them. "pink" for example is much more of a colour in English than the Danish version lyserød which is just "light red", that does not mean we cannot see the colour or describe it. But if you ask Danish children to list colours they might not be as prone as English children to include it. Today we see red-blu-yellow as the main colours (light seperation), but in parts of printing etc it is cyan, magenta and yelleow (CMYK). Very few children will mention cyan if asked to make a list of colours they know. It does not mean they cannot see the deffirence between cyan and lets say a "royal blue".

It is actually sort of wrong to say that the sagas didn't have a word for blue, the the thing is that the word for blue is the same as the word for black (blau, which today means blue, so if anything its the word for black that is missing). So in old icelandic both a black horse and the sky is blue (and blau-men is people from northern Africa - not because they saw them as "blue" but because in this case blue means black/dark), and people did see the different, but found it to be within the same "spektrum" or colour, just as light red (pink) and red.

On battle music
We have bronze age "lurs"

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It is of course difficult to prove it was used in military contexts. Others have mentioned the carynx, and it most likely was used in battle. It is at least seen as such on the Gundestrup cauldron (and I thin written texts, but cannot find the place at the moment).
Soldiers and hornblowers:


Also in the weapon sacrifices (yes I continue to call them that), we have remains of a long straight horn included at Nydam, and appears in Roamn imagery:



So it also seem that it was used at this time.

The Viking mythology have the Gjallerhorn which will be blown at Ragnarok to herald to war. We also have sources indicating horns were used during the Viking age. So it indeed seem like "war horns" were used in the early medieval as well.

[DerKommissar]

But how would you differentiate (more or less complex) signals and actual music? Or was it always both (e.g. demoralizing the enemy AND signals)?

I can see the advantage that a horn is louder than a voice and the signals are understandable by your own troops, but not by the enemy, but i would not necessarily qualify it as ‚music‘. I would be hard pressed to give a definition of music nowadays and moreso how people long ago saw it. But I think that ‚music‘ emphasizes a quality outside of signaling, as in to bolster moral before fights or to simply entertain and keep the spirit up and organized while marching. Im not sure if mixing this with signaling would work as then people would need to pay a lot of attention to it and the music itself would break down as it has to constantly react to what is happening at the moment...

[Mr Beer]

I was aware of AFV crews having a 'war tunes playlist' to get themselves mentally prepared as they went into combat, but I wasn't aware that the infantry were using them while actively engaging the enemy.

I could be mistaken, it's a while since I read about it and my memory is not particularly precise.

I definitely remember Drowning Pool's Let The Bodies Hit The Floor was a popular choice.

[Max_Killjoy]

I could be mistaken, it's a while since I read about it and my memory is not particularly precise.

I definitely remember Drowning Pool's Let The Bodies Hit The Floor was a popular choice.

A friend of mine who was a tanker in 1-1 Cav during 2nd Gulf once told me that AC DC's Thunderstruck was popular among tankers.

[Brother Oni]

But how would you differentiate (more or less complex) signals and actual music? Or was it always both (e.g. demoralizing the enemy AND signals)?

I can see the advantage that a horn is louder than a voice and the signals are understandable by your own troops, but not by the enemy, but i would not necessarily qualify it as ‚music‘. I would be hard pressed to give a definition of music nowadays and moreso how people long ago saw it. But I think that ‚music‘ emphasizes a quality outside of signaling, as in to bolster moral before fights or to simply entertain and keep the spirit up and organized while marching. Im not sure if mixing this with signaling would work as then people would need to pay a lot of attention to it and the music itself would break down as it has to constantly react to what is happening at the moment...

I suspect it depended on the situation. During battle, signalling for changes of command would most likely be quick and simple, similar to morse code (three short blasts, pause then repeat for example, or a repeated drumbeat), while morale boosting/intimidation would happen in the pre-battle 'warm up' (often set piece battles started with the two sides lining up at opposite ends of the field and getting themselves worked up as going into battle is a terrifying prospect) or for simple but daunting tasks (advancing to engage the enemy).

As an example of music being used to help command, here's a representation of a skirmish from during the 18th Century Seven Years War from the film Barry Lyndon: link. In this case, the soldiers are marching to the beat of the drum to keep unit cohesion, with the rest of the tune being used for morale.
The depiction of British Army doctrine at the time is accurate - advance to 50 paces and fire off a volley, then give a loud 'huzzah' and charge, so I think that anything that either helps your morale when advancing under fire or anything that unnerves the enemy so that their shooting is impaired is a good thing; for example, The British Grenadiers playing as that line of red approaches at 0:48 is rather intimidating.

Something that's not captured well over video is how loud those drums actually are - you feel them just as much as you hear them. It's much like listening to gunfire on a movie compared to actually hearing a gun fired - you can't replicate that supersonic crack easily.

[Storm Bringer]

A friend of mine who was a tanker in 1-1 Cav during 2nd Gulf once told me that AC DC's Thunderstruck was popular among tankers.

The Scots Dragoon Guards rolled over the border into Iraq in 2003 to Money for Nothing by Dire Straits, having timed it more or less perfect as the first tank started rolling as the guitar riff dropped.

[DerKommissar]

I‘m getting into playing drum rudiments and it seems that quite a few of the 40 international drum rudiments originate from switzerland/germany and some of those i guess date back to the 30 years war. Wikipedia states that the first written one we have are from switzerland around 1618.
Do you have more information on the origins of western military drum rudiments and how they spread over Europe? Or where they developed parallel?

I‘m really curious, as I think the military rudiments are an important basis for modern music, especially when they fused with western african rythmn. Not much i could find on the topic so far, but my gut feeling tells me, that symphonic, classical percussion is not the basis, but rudiments. An interesting video about how to apply rudiments to modern music:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G9QiJ0r2KM8

[Carl]

A friend of mine who was a tanker in 1-1 Cav during 2nd Gulf once told me that AC DC's Thunderstruck was popular among tankers.

So basically all tankers ae Tony Stark? The ladies will appreciate it if nothing else.

[gkathellar]

Music (or at least noise) was also employed as a defensive weapon by Scipio Africanus in his showdown with Hannibal at the Battle of Zama. Rightly cautious of Hannibal's elephants, Scipio exploited their sensitive hearing with trumpeters, whose job was to terrify them and even drive them harmlessly between the Roman skirmishing columns.

(If you're thinking, "why haven't they made a movie about that battle?" all I can say is, "Hollywood is dumb and bad.")

[Brother Oni]

(If you're thinking, "why haven't they made a movie about that battle?" all I can say is, "Hollywood is dumb and bad.")

Isn't that the campaign where the Romans discovered that launching greased up flaming pigs from catapults scared elephants away?

It may be a case of reality being too unrealistic - apparently in the film Gladiator, the director Ridley Scott nixed a scene of Maximus Decimus Meridius and his fellow gladiators using their fame to sell stuff like real gladiators did, as he didn't think audiences would believe it.

[rrgg]

So do we get to post landsknecht songs now?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiPLBI2Lm-o

Landsknecht voran!

[HeadlessMermaid]

So do we get to post landsknecht songs now?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiPLBI2Lm-o

Landsknecht voran!

Wait, is that real? Is it an actual Landsknecht song?

I experienced a profound and inexplicable cognitive dissonance while listening to it, until I finally realised why: the tune of the first two verses (not the chorus) of this German mercenary march is remarkably similar - if sped up - to the tune of "In Kamf", which is a Yiddish anarchist hymn. (Here it is from the Klezmatics.) And these two just don't mix, you know? :P

[snowblizz]

Also in the weapon sacrifices (yes I continue to call them that)

On weapon sacrifices. The latest issue (well alst months) of Populär Historia (Swedish popular history magazine) has an article about a bronze age battle at Tollense. As a side article there's short blurb about weapon sacrifices where an archaelogist notes that they put different stuff in different places. So swords and daggers were sacrificed specifically in swamps on land, whereas axes and spears "belonged" to sea inlets. The area and period is 1100 BCE and middle Sweden. Apparnetly there's a book "In the landscape and between worlds", 2015.

Just thought that was interesting.

[Max_Killjoy]

Isn't that the campaign where the Romans discovered that launching greased up flaming pigs from catapults scared elephants away?

It may be a case of reality being too unrealistic - apparently in the film Gladiator, the director Ridley Scott nixed a scene of Maximus Decimus Meridius and his fellow gladiators using their fame to sell stuff like real gladiators did, as he didn't think audiences would believe it.

It's amazing how "modern" some aspects of Rome were.

Personally, I think audiences could use more looks at things they "wouldn't believe" in fiction, challenge their preconceptions and blow up some tropes.

[Tobtor]

On weapon sacrifices. The latest issue (well alst months) of Populär Historia (Swedish popular history magazine) has an article about a bronze age battle at Tollense. As a side article there's short blurb about weapon sacrifices where an archaelogist notes that they put different stuff in different places. So swords and daggers were sacrificed specifically in swamps on land, whereas axes and spears "belonged" to sea inlets. The area and period is 1100 BCE and middle Sweden. Apparnetly there's a book "In the landscape and between worlds", 2015.

Just thought that was interesting.

Well.... First off the depositions in the bronze age is very different from the later iron age ones. The bronze age stuff from Scandinavia at least is mainly single, double or small deposits of bronze things (95% of the finds are two items or less). And mainly weapons and a few prestige objects. Whereas in the iron age we have the whole military "kit" (belts, purses, coins, scrap, surgical tools, gaming pieces, dices, repair tools, strike-a-lights, combs, earspoons etc).

It migh be different in Sweden, but I definitely knows about finds from the same bog/lake with daggers, axes and spears (and swords are rare in the bronze age deposits, though frequent in the graves). So for the bronze age practise I think we can suggest "non"-sacrifice theories (such as taboo about used weapons or similar or symbolic graves etc). The bronze age practise goes back to the Neolithic where we in the late period have "dagger" deposits.


And before that polished flint axes with the edge pointing downwards. All of these deposited in wetlands.

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