Mediterranean Mercenaries of the Bronze Age

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For thousands of years, mercenaries routinely fought in the armies of competing powers and kingdoms across the ancient Mediterranean world. Even the biblical David sold his sword to the Philistines before becoming king of Israel. Explore the Shardanu, some of the best-known warriors of the Bronze Age, and what archaeology reveals about the critical role such mercenaries played in shaping the fates of civilizations.

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Footnotes

1. See Robert H. Tykot, “Villages of Stone: Sardinia’s Bronze Age Nuraghi,” Archaeology Odyssey, March/April 2003; Adam Zertal, “Philistine Kin Found in Early Israel,” BAR, May/June 2002.

2. Avner Raban and Robert R. Stieglitz, “The Sea Peoples and Their Contributions to Civilization,” BAR, November/December 1991.

Endnotes

1. Ralph Araque Gonzalez, “Sardinian Bronze Figurines in their Mediterranean Setting,” Praehistorische Zeitschrift 87.1 (2012), pp. 83–109.

2. Sariel Shalev, Swords and Daggers in Late Bronze Age Canaan (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2004), pp. 62–63.

3. Maria G. Gradoli et al., “Cyprus and Sardinia in the Late Bronze Age: Nuragic Table Ware at Hala Sultan Tekke,” Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 33 (2020), doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2020.102479.

4. Shelley Wachsmann, ed., Late Bronze-Age Metal Artifacts off Hahotrim, Israel (College Station, TX: Texas A&M Univ. Press, 2024); Fulvia Lo Schiavo, “Oxhide Ingots in Nuragic Sardinia,” in Fulvia Lo Schiavo et al., eds., Oxhide Ingots in the Central Mediterranean (Rome: Leventis Foundation, 2009), pp. 229–390.

5. Assaf Yasur-Landau, The Philistines and Aegean Migration at the End of the Late Bronze Age (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010).