Archaeologists can indeed be a bit blind to the obvious, sometimes. I remember in A-level at school pointing out that a particular pile of Bronze Age burnt rubble was most likely the remains of a sweat lodge. On another occasion we were discussing some passage grave somewhere that carbon dating reckoned had been in use for about a thousand years, and it had the remains of about 40 bodies inside. I made what I thought was a completely obvious point that 1000 divided by 40 is 25, the average length of a generation, and that therefore this burial site probably represented a dynasty, and polity, of some sort, and a pretty long-lived one at that. There was no mention of any DNA tests having been carried out, though.Constantine wrote: ↑Mon Jul 10, 2023 11:40 am Europe certainly was behind on the construction of stone fortified settlements, but certainly had forts. I've been going over forts in Wales and Southern England for a while, while systemmatic warfare fortifications designed to repulse a siege appears quite late in the bronze age, the settlements with enclosures do not. Often back to 4000 BC, when they were still exhaustic the soil through poor agricultural practices. Basically they had to stay low population and migrate from site to site often, so the settled societies will outnumber the actual sedentary societies at any given time. This likewise is going to hamper monolithic building programs. What it won't hamper is wooden fort buildings like we see occasionally pop up in a bog in Europe, but you have to be extremely lucky to find those. England is overrepresented in late bronze age hill forts due to the ease of finding them but under in everything else likely due to rich agricultural swampsor other areas with lots of food and productivity in the era having been continuously exploited to this day, and now have something called council houses built over them.
The reflective acoustics is a known phenomena two continents wide. Best site is in Malta, the best acoustics in the ancient world, and they have monolithic building going back to 10,000 BC. Nothing in particular stands out as a matriarchy at any of these sites until the time of written records, when we get a glimpse of what current practices were, and only some were focused in female gods or priesthoods. It's like trying to ascribe a roof to a matriarchy.... too common of a attribute, and coincidental if they have it.
Under the ground primate theory I noted agriculture sped up human aggression as men turned sedentary and stayed in one place, having to guard their lands. It wasn't till Mesopotamia you saw armies of over 1,000. Prior it was just clan battles, a few dozen to a few hundred on either side. Primary concerns is survival of families, followed by food, followed by settlements. It would of been easy to rebuild something thatched (and equally hard to see it on the archeological record). It took a long time to solve simple stuff such as how to preserve grain from humidity and rats.... I recently solved a Aegean bronze age mystery of a mysterious ceramic pan with intricate designs that was made for cooking but never used as lack of evidence of burning flame. I had to explain they were viewing it upside down.... was a lid for a grain pot. I know because greek and turkish women to this day are obsessed on social media with showing off their multi grain inventories in glass and plastic bottles in their kitchen, and I followed a few because they were archeologists and should of known their ancestors would of been equally impressed with their kitchen grain, but rats were a bigger issue then. Plus the fancy designs were on the underside of the pan.... which made no sense. Clearly a lid. Often described as a big archeological mystery.... dumbasses.
It took time to turn assets like buildings into useful fortifications. 10,000 bc (call that the start of agriculture, precise dates can be debated) to around 5000 BC, when fortified long term settlements turn up, where we realize walls do more than support roofs, and you can actually use them to fend off costly raids and have more babies. Using bows and arrows with walls.... oh fuck. Myceneans were stumped on how to fight Troy in the Illiad for 10 years.
The wooden bog forts do provide this function for a small population. Just hell to find. But they existed in some places. England always was a backwater.
I agree that warfare certainly occurred during the Bronze Age. It would be astonishing if it had not, given human nature. But the scale of it, as you say, was small and local, and I don't think this argues against the existence of priestesses with spiritual authority. Even the bronze weapons that we find, it's thought, wouldn't have been much use in battle, and were most likely used for ceremonial purposes, or even as a form of currency. This all changed with the Iron Age, when warfare comes of age, in earnest, and society becomes more stratified, with the formation of warrior elites, who were always male, of course. The late Bronze Age, therefore, is probably best regarded as a time of transition, and it's around this time that the last vestiges of the European megalithic culture die out, though it was already long past its heyday.
