A Call to Arms: The day war was invented

by Anne Lehoërff

One day, sometime around 1700 BC, a bronzesmith made the first sword. This marked a technological turning point, giving rise to an arms race that has never since ceased. Soon, over a vast area between the Baltic Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, thousands of weapons were manufactured. They were used in combat, then laid to rest, whole or broken, often during complex rituals that are still hard for us to understand.

Through the sword, the Bronze Age brought war into being. The warrior became an important figure. Societies were transformed, and came to revolve politically and economically around warfare. Western Europe developed new social structures, a new kind of civilization involving neither towns, nor writing.

By tackling the subject ‘a call to arms’, Anne Lehoërff investigates war’s long-term development. She focusses on oral societies which have for a long while remained poorly understood, passed over by a historical tradition that saw the world of Classical Antiquity in a different light to that of ‘primitive’ peoples. But our European ancestors have their own history, and this book tells it.

The French edition of A Call to Arms was awarded the Verdun World Peace Center History Prize in 2018.

Table of Contents

Encountering War
How history comes to the historian
Going to war
History, a human science
Archaeology in history
War and European Protohistory revisited

What Wars?
Introductory Once upon a time, a warrior’s weapons…
War words
Theories of war
The philosophical angle
Stateless societies as seen by Europeans
The ‘savage’ beneath our feet
Ever more archaeological evidence
Archaeology and history
The ‘primitive’ in the city
The war of origins
The Celt of our dreams
And there was war…

Research ‘evidence’
Introductory Keeping Arms
An abundance of evidence
After the battle
The Metal Ages in pictures
Scenes of combat
The first battlefields
Sacred sites and cult objects
Skeletons and splinters
The Lessons of Bones

When Metal Speaks
Introductory The World of Metal
Fascinating metal
Metal choices in Europe
Unpicking harlequin’s cloak
Hierarchies that dare not speak their name
Deciphering and understanding
In the laboratory
Starting the investigation at the end
In the bronze smith’s cauldron
Under the metalworker’s hammer

A list of weapons
Narrative The bronze-smith in his workshop
The sword extends the arm
The sword evolves
And a scabbard…
The spear thickens
Arrows of outrageous fortune
The ambiguity of the hafted axe
A shield to protect the body
The metal helmet reinforces the warrior’s head
Metal to embellish the breast

Off to war
Introductory Taking up arms
Violence in the Palaeolithic
Multiple-use technology in the Neolithic
What kind of Neolithic ‘war’?
Declaring war in the Bronze Age
The revolution in fighting in 1700 BC
Multifaceted war in the Iron Age
Violence upon violence
Farewell to arms
Metal hoards

War in all its States
Introductory The 1000 BC warrior on the Normandy coast
goddesses or sinners?
Masculine domination
Rich women without weapons
Transgressing norms
Reasons for war
The State, primitives, the written word. Terms of power.
What sort of society?
Three ages of war?
Words and functions for all
The West in the dynamics of warfare

The human level
Questions of scale
War and peace
A trip to the Bronze Age kitchen

226 pages, Paperback

Published October 27, 2022