Anthropomorphised warlike beings with horned helmets: Bronze Age Scandinavia, Sardinia, and Iberia compared

Abstract

Abstract Horned-helmet imagery continues to raise questions about what is local and what is global in Bronze Age Europe. How similar is the imagery found on Sardinia, in southwestern Iberia and southern Scandinavia in material appearance, medium of representation, and sociocultural setting? Does it occur at the same point in time? Does it spring from or transmit a shared idea? Analysis reveals intriguing patterns of similarity and difference between the three zones of horned-helmet imagery 1000–750 BC. The results point to actors and processes at the local level while also pinpointing interconnections. Across all three contexts, horns signify the potency of the helmet wearer, the quintessential warrior. Horns visualise a defined group of bellicose beings whose significance stems from commemorative and mortuary rites, sites, and beliefs – in conjunction with political processes. We suggest that the eye-catching imagery of very particular males wearing horned insignia relates on the one hand to local control of metals and on the other to the transfer of novel beliefs and cults involving embodied gigantisation. It is characteristic that the horned figure is adapted into some settings, but only sparingly or not at all in others. This imagery has a complex history, with Levantine roots in the LBA Mediterranean. The Scandinavian addendum to the network coincides with the metal-led Phoenician expansion and consolidation in the west from c. 1000 BC. A Mediterranean–Atlantic sea route is suggested, independent of the otherwise flourishing transalpine trading route.