The study of warfare in ancient societies can bring to the fore an understanding of what happen in those societies. By studying warfare, we must pay attention and disconnect the subject from any previous ideas we can have about warfare social functions. The focus on studying different societies has led to categorize them as Barbarians or Civilized regarding their degree of warlike predisposition. According to T. Hobbes (1642), War is a mark of barbarian peoples in comparison with civilized ones in which the State prevents conflict. Similarly, J.-J. Rousseau (1762) has stated that War was born in complex societies. However, the importance of warfare is far more complex than this binary perspective on the degree of civilization. Warfare has been a major part of several societies for the survival of the group, for the cohesion of the society, the claim of hierarchy or the creation of alliance among groups. It plays a crucial role in the same way as economy does, including their connection. Therefore, we must study warfare in ancient societies alongside other themes.

Investigating warfare in ancient societies requires mixing data and methods in an interdisciplinary approach: textual sources, iconographic representations and archaeological remains. Written sources were made by someone at a moment to someone, which means there are several distortions. The written sources need to be approached within their contexts: identifying who wrote the document and to which purpose are two necessary questions to get a broader view of the social context that will help to understand the text and its aims. In the same vein, the iconographic representation is connected to specific moments and people, to highlight and to fulfill a political goal. The archaeological data we can excavate nowadays are related to a past event, but the archaeological sites continue to evolve, to change. The work of archaeologists is to understand the changes and to explain the different events of the site as they were appearing during the timeline of its constitution.

The archaeological data related to warfare need to be approached through their inferred purpose in past societies: most of the times, the remains were deposited in a way to highlight specific actions and people. For example, the battlefield appears usually as a “perfect” case to understand the movement of soldiers and the organization of combats fights. This idea appeared efficient regarding the modern battlefield of Little Big Horn (USA, during the Black Hills War in 1876), where the fight using firearms ammos and bullets seemed to be approached through the location of each artefact. The battlefield was quickly abandoned by the winner to retreat in a safer place. Understanding precisely a battle from the remains can be appliable for a low-density occupation site where the soldiers leave it soon after the events; but in most of the cases, the battlefield continues to be occupied afterward, that can be related to the warriors themselves or a commemoration of the battle with trophies like in the Kalkriese excavations (Germany, Ist c. B.C. war between Rome and the Germans, see Rost & Wilbers-Rost, 2014). Archaeological data are neither neutral nor the reflection of a lifetime, but they are the construction of a memory from the ancient societies to themselves which is altered until our days.

We address three main topics to give an overall approach of the specificities to work on warfare in ancient societies. We focus on Weaponry, Logistics, and the art of war.

References

• Hobbes, T., 1642: De Cive. traduit par S. Sorbière en 1649.
• Rost, A. & Wilberts-Rost, S., 2014: The battlefield of Kalkriese : archaeological evidence for a total roman defeat, in: Cadiou, F. & Navarro Caballero, M. (ed.), La guerre et ses traces, Conflits et sociétés en Hispanie à l’époque de la conquête romaine (III^e-I^er s. a.C.), Ausonius éditions, Mémoires 37, Bordeaux, p. 499-506.
• Rousseau, J.-J., 1762: Lettres à Christophe de Beaumont,La Pléiade.