Indo-European Warfare

Abstract

The Indo-European languages comprise the largest language family in the world and by the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age occupied a broad expanse of Eurasia from Ireland to western China and India. The inherited vocabulary of the Indo-European languages provided with an image of the prehistoric language(s) that was spoken at least from the late Neolithic onwards and sheds light on the actual names of weapons, types of defensive architecture, terms for aggressive behaviour, trauma, institutions and poetic diction associated with warfare. This chapter investigates the inherited vocabulary by first examining the items that may be directly expressed as material culture (weapons, defensive architecture) and then examines the more conceptual semantic fields related to hostility, combat, trauma, the social institutions involved with warfare and poetic diction. The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European vocabulary relating to weapons is neither particularly extensive nor is the reconstructed meaning always transparent. Keywords: Eurasia; India; Indo-European languages; Ireland; Iron age; Late Bronze age; warfare; western China