Male symbols or warrior identities? The ‘archery burials’ of the Danish Bell Beaker Culture

The starting point of this paper is an analysis of 66 Danish burials, which contain flint daggers and archery equipment. The paper examines whether this tradition should be seen as an indication of the presence of organised warriors in the Danish early Late Neolithic, or if it rather reflects some kind of general warrior status related to maleness. In a Danish perspective the archery burials are closely connected to the Bell Beaker Culture of northern Jutland, and the custom seems to originate in the European Bell Beaker Culture, where ranked societies and warrior institutions have been argued to exist.