What roles did violence play in Iron Age Europe, and how do we know?

Topic

What roles did violence play in Iron Age Europe, and how do we know?

Instructions 

Write an essay that explains the roles that violence played in the Iron Age Europe and where the knowledge of that comes from.

Answer Preview 

One of the apparent roles of violence in Age Europe was defense. Communities used warfare to organize themselves against potential attacks. They could build military-styled hillforts in defense of enemy invaders (Harding, 2012). When an attack occurred, violence was the only known method of fighting back and defending themselves. In the Iron Age Europe, violent attacks and fights were common as they were the only tool of conquest and control of land and other resources. In such a way, for communities to protect themselves, violence played a vital role (James, 2018). Early and even more recent descriptions and analyses of archeological evidence seems to underscore this fact, providing evidence that indeed violence existed as a tool of self-defense. For example, according to Armit et al. (2006), human aggression has been widely described in archeological studies based on analyses of dead bodies, weapons and other iron tools unearthed by anthropologists, among other piece of pre-historic artifacts. This coupled with published archaeological research work gives some level of augmentation to the claim that violence played a vital role as a means of communities to defend themselves from external aggression (Harding, 2012).

Word Count: 2100