This is the first book to explore prehistoric warfare and violence by integrating qualitative research methods with quantitative, scientific techniques of analysis such as paleopathology, morphometry, wear analysis, and experimental archaeology. It investigates early warfare and violence from the standpoint of four broad, interdisciplinary themes: skeletal markers of interpersonal violence; conflict in prehistoric rock-art; the material evidence of Bronze Age warfare and violence; and the birth of armies in the Iron Age and beyond. The scope of the book has a wide-ranging chronological and geographic coverage, from early Neolithic to Late Iron Age and from Western Europe to East Asia. It includes world-renowned sites and artefact collections such as the Tollense Valley Bronze Age battlefield (Germany), the UNESCO World Heritage Site at Tanum (Sweden), and the British Museum collection of bronze weaponry from the late Shang period (China). Additionally original case studies are presented in each section by a diverse international authorship.

Introduction.- Chapter 1. Interdisciplinary approaches to prehistoric warfare and violence: Past, present, and future.- Chapter 2. Patterns of Collective Violence in the Early Neolithic of Central Europe.- Chapter 3. Perimortem lesions on human bones from the Bronze Age battlefield in the Tollense Valley: An interdisciplinary approach.- Chapter 4. Martial practices and warrior burials: Humeral asymmetry and grave goods in Iron Age male inhumations from central Italy.- Chapter 5. War and peace in Iberian prehistory: the chronology and interpretation of the depictions of violence in Levantine rock art.- Chapter 6. Fast like a war canoe: Pragmamorphism in Scandinavian rock art.- Chapter 7. "In the beginning there was the spear": Digital documentation sheds new light on Early Bronze Age spear carvings from Sweden.- Chapter 8. Rock art, secret societies, long-distance exchange, and warfare in Bronze Age Scandinavia.- Chapter 9. Body armour in the European Bronze Age.- Chapter 10. Conflict at Europe's crossroads: Analysing the social life of metal weaponry in the Bronze Age Balkans.- Chapter 11. Ritual or lethal? Bronze weapons in late Shang China.- Chapter 12. Standardised manufacture of Iron Age weaponry from Southern Scandinavia: Constructing and provenancing the Havor lance.- Chapter 13. An experimental approach to prehistoric violence and warfare?- Chapter 14. Value, craftsmanship and use in Late Bronze Age cuirasses.- Chapter 15. Untangling Bronze Age warfare: The case of Argaric society.- Chapter 16.The science of conflict.