Helle Vandkilde

Aarhus University | AU · Archaeology

This article presents the results of a comprehensive investigation of Fårdrup and Valsømagle-type shafthole axes from Denmark and southern Sweden. The combination of artefact style and typology with trace element and lead isotope data in the analysis has provided new insights into the chronological relationship between these two axe types. This way...

This study examines the role of the Nuragic metal trade in the Mediterranean setting, seeking to advance the debate on this subject. Published metal-related data are considered alongside current interpretations. Although Sardinia is geologically rich in metals, including copper and lead (silver), scholars have nonetheless disagreed about the role o...

Lead isotope and trace element analysis have over the last decades proved to be important tools for provenancing metals, and in the process have begun to reveal the diversity and complexity of connections between Bronze Age societies. Almost from the beginning of lead isotope analysis, Bronze and Early Iron Age Sardinia received special attention....

In Nuragic Sardinia, warrior ideals were woven into the production of iconic bronze statuettes and related warrior panoplies, all presented at central sanctuaries as ceremonial offerings. To unveil the syntax of Nuragic warrior imagery of the Final Bronze Age and Early Iron Age, this study employs network analysis and develops a dual anthropologica...

Horned-helmet imagery continues to raise questions about what is local and what is global in Bronze Age Europe. How similar is the imagery found on Sardinia, in southwestern Iberia and southern Scandinavia in material appearance, medium of representation, and sociocultural setting? Does it occur at the same point in time? Does it spring from or tra...

Based on 550 metal analyses, this study sheds decisive light on how the Nordic Bronze Age was founded on metal imports from shifting ore sources associated with altered trade routes. On-and-off presence of copper characterised the Neolithic. At 2100–2000 BC, a continuous rise in the flow of metals to southern Scandinavia begins. First to arrive via...

In this article, we identify and discuss Nordic Bronze Age interspecies relationships through a relational approach that is open to ontologies that differ from our own. Drawing on bronze objects, faunal remains and rock art recovered from a multitude of Nordic Bronze Age sites (1700–500 BC), we outline the complex evolution and interactions of sign...

The Matzanni Project tracks the role of the large mountain sanctuary of Matzanni-Vallermosa (southwestern Sardinia) in a scalar network from the local to, potentially, the Bronze Age global. Exploitation of metals in the mountainous setting of the sanctuary constitutes a major research focus together with understanding how metal extraction and r...

This paper provides a discussion of the increasing amount of mobility data from the Early Nordic Bronze Age (Early NBA), c. 1600-1100 BCE with particular focus on NBA II and III (c. 1500-1100 BCE). As a male-oriented study, the intent is to develop current perspectives on gender roles in the Early NBA in relation to mobility. In order to achieve ou...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0219574.].

This article tracks the formation of the rich and socially complex Nordic Bronze Age (NBA), c. 2000–1500 bc , by applying a scalar methodology and using the entrepôt and early metalworking site of Pile in Scania as its point of departure. By regarding the Bronze Age as an ancient example of globalisation, Island Melanesia at the outskirts of contem...

The rich and long-lasting Nordic Bronze Age was dependent throughout on incoming flows of copper and tin. The crucial turning point for the development of the NBA can be pinpointed as the second phase of the Late Neolithic (LN II, c. 2000-1700 BC) precisely because the availability and use of metal increased markedly at this time. But the precise p...

John Simonsen. Daily life at the turn of the Neolithic. A comparative study of longhouses with sunken floors at Resengaard and nine other settlements in the Limfjord region, South Scandinavia. 2017. Aarhus. Jutland Archaeological Society, Museum Salling and Aarhus University Press; 978-87-93423-14-5 475kr. - Volume 92 Issue 366 - Helle Vandkilde

During the Nordic Bronze Age (NBA), hybrid beasts contributed to cosmological and mythical narratives on the main media of metal and rock. These hybrids are composed of body parts from particular animals – including bull, bird, snake, horse and human – which entangle with particular objects or images. On metalwork, they appear especially on bronze...

Bronze is the defining metal of the European Bronze Age and has been at the center of archaeological and science-based research for well over a century. Archaeometallurgical studies have largely focused on determining the geological origin of the constituent metals, copper and tin, and their movement from producer to consumer sites. More recently,...

Warfare in Bronze Age Society takes a fresh look at warfare and its role in reshaping Bronze Age society. The Bronze Age represents the global emergence of a militarized society with a martial culture, materialized in a package of new efficient weapons that remained in use for millennia to come. Warfare became institutionalized and professionalized...

Warfare in Bronze Age Society takes a fresh look at warfare and its role in reshaping Bronze Age society. The Bronze Age represents the global emergence of a militarized society with a martial culture, materialized in a package of new efficient weapons that remained in use for millennia to come. Warfare became institutionalized and professionalized...

Over the (slightly more than) two decades that the European Journal of Archaeology (formerly the Journal of European Archaeology ) has been in print, we have published a number of excellent and high profile articles. Among these, Paul Treherne's seminal meditation on Bronze Age male identity and warriorhood stands out as both the highest cited and...

Zusammenfassung Ist es möglich, die Bronzezeit im Sinne der soziologisch definierten Begrifflichkeit “Globalisierung” zu fassen? Der Beitrag folgt dieser Fragestellung auf analytischem Wege, aber auch in der Diskussion ihrer Merkmale auf Basis moderner und zeitgenössischer Geschichtsschreibung. Sichtbar wird, dass die Bronzezeit als einzigartiges B...

The archaeology of war is a late ‘discovery’ of the mid-1990s, but since then advances have been made in understanding the scale and roles of warfare in the early history of mankind. Warfare understood as violent encounter with the other probably occurred from the earliest hominids and has accompanied human societies ever since. There is ample evid...

The breakthrough of the Nordic Bronze Age (NBA) c. 1600 BC as a koine within Bronze Age Europe can be historically linked to the Carpathian Basin. Nordic distinctiveness entailed an entanglement of cosmology and warriorhood, albeit represented through different media in the hotspot zone (bronze) and in the northern zone (rock). In a Carpathian cros...

This paper first reviews the archaeological discourse on prehistoric warfare in Europe and particularly Scandinavia. Two opposing and bloodless tales of the prehistoric Other have long been prevalent-either noble warriors in contradictionfilled and changing societies or peaceful peasants in harmonious and static societies. It was only after 1995 th...

MISSING IN ACTION, OR WHERE ARE ALL THE POTTERS GONE? by MARC VANDER LINDEN COMMUNITIES WITH BELL BEAKER TRANSCULTURE by HELLE VANDKILDE THY AND BELL BEAKERS: THE FIRST BRONZE AGE OR BRONZE AGE-LIKE SOCIETIES IN DENMARK? by PRZEMYSLAW MAKAROWICZ ON BEING RIGOROUSLY CONSISTENT: COMMENTS ON A PAPER BY M. PILAR PRIETO-MARTINEZ by JANUSZ CZEBRESZUK THE...

The focus of this study is the early part of the Late Neolithic Period in Denmark with particular emphasis on impact from the European Bell Beaker culture in the fi nal centuries of the third millennium BC. The history of research is briefl y reviewed and the published evidence of domestic and ritual practices and of material expressions are discus...

Academic archaeology of the twentieth century has strangely ignored warfare and violence as relevant aspects of past human activity despite sufficient evidence of war-related traumata, weaponry, warrior burials, and war-celebrative iconographies. Instead - and relatively independently of paradigmatic shifts - two commemorative tales about warriors...