ABSTRACT
A comprehensive series of radiocarbon dates on human skeletal material was conducted to differentiate Bronze Age human remains from earlier or later river finds. The distribution of bronze finds in the Tollense Valley is even more extensive than that of Bronze Age skeletal remains. The Tollense Valley is situated in northeastern Germany, in the federal state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, c. 120 km north of Berlin, c. 60 km south of the Baltic coast and c. 70 km west of the German-Polish border. The distribution of socketed arrowheads gets sparser from south to north in Germany and Europe; apart from the finds from the Tollense Valley, there are only 28 examples from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and further to the north and northwest they are extremely rare. The starting point of research in the Tollense Valley was the hypothesis that the find layer with skeletal remains might result from a violent conflict.
