Early Bronze Age Warfare

[Jona Lendering]

Here's a fascinating article about the capture of a city, 2500 BC.

[Robert Vermaat]

Fascinating.

What is disappointing is the lack of imagination by the researchers, or perhaps a lack of logic.
The present 3 possibilities for the end of the 'uruk Colony':

One possibility is that the soldiers were not aware that they were attacking their own people, a sort of “shoot first ask second” action.
Another possibility is that that the Uruk colonists tried to stay out of the conflict but were regarded as “traitors” by the invading army. “Maybe they did stay out – maybe the attacking army said, well, look at those traitors – those bastards – let’s get even with them,” said Reichel.
A third possibility, and the most tantalizing, is that the people of the colony sided with Hamoukar against the intruders – a dicey situation if indeed the invading army came from Uruk.

The first seems idiotic, I have to say. You don't kill a few hundred of your own people by mistake with sling bullets. Any shouting would have ended the confusion.
The second solution is extremely strained. If you have colonists, and they are not soldiers, why would you want them to join in anyway?
The third is already proving the first as well as the second wrong, because there was resistance - killing by mistake as well as killing inactive citizens is different from the evidence - there was resistance.

My own solution would be that there was a colony from Uruk next to Hamoukar, designed to control this city. Not a colony of 'unrelated citizens' as the researchers want to see, which seems odd: you want Uruk to control Hamoukar, but a colony next to the city is then 'unrelated'? They applied pressure from 700 km to the south? More likely, this was the Uruk pressure group, designed to ensure the continued flow of goods from Hamoukar to Uruk.
Then the colony is destroyed - when? During the attack on Hamoukar, before or after that? Is it not MUCH moe likely that Hamoukar tried to shake off the Uruk pressure, and attacked the colony first, killing the Uruk colonists? After which the Uruk army came North to avenge this act, destroying Hamoukar and taking over the business?

To me, that makes a lot more sense than 'fratricide' or 'killing by mistake'. Where DO these scholars come from? Sigh.

[Dan Howard]

I agree with Robert's assessment.

What is interesting about a lot of these early battle sites is that there are few spears and arrows. We know that some had copper weapons during this period and the rest made use of stone arrowheads and spears but, whenever there is large scale fighting, most of the damage seems to be done with slings and stone maces.