Analysis of lithic arrowheads from the Early Bronze Age cemetery at Hroznová Lhota

Use-wear and ballistic analysis

Abstract

The article offers comprehensive information on chipped stone industry found in graves of the cemetery at Hroznová Lhota – Přední čtvrtky od Žabince, South Moravia (Hodonín distr.). The Early Bronze Age burial ground has been explored from 2012 to 2015; it comprises inhumation graves with characteristic features of Nitra and Únětice cultures. Chipped stone industry can unequivocally be classified as one of the material displays of the Nitra culture. The collection of chipped stone industry found consists by 84 % of lithic projectile points – arrowheads. Morpho-typological and use-wear analyses were carried out and the operational sequence was partly reconstructed. Our results contribute with new data to the knowledge of social dynamics in this turbulent period and show a different picture than the hitherto published analyses of arrowheads from Moravia, whereby they probably attest that archery has played a different role in individual economic – political – social structures of the then societies, whom we identify as the so-called archaeological cultures.