The Carnoustie Hoard: The Bronze Age warrior class that Scotland feared 3,000 years ago
Fresh details about the Carnoustie Hoard discovered in Angus have been detailed.
Outside a house in Carnoustie in Angus around 3,000 years ago, an exquisite spearhead socket, decorated with gold, was carefully wrapped in sheepskin and lowered into a pit in the ground.
The blade, wrapped in wool cloth and fastened with a disc-headed pin, was placed next to it. Then, a bronze sword, which had recently been used in battle and held in a wooden scabbard, was set down next to them, not to be seen again until 2016.
Together, the items are changing the way that experts understand the relationship between weapons and people during the Bronze Age – and hint at a ‘warrior elite’ that evolved from the emergence of metal weaponry created to cause human harm.
The Carnoustie Hoard, which has recently been acquired for the nation, will form a key part of a new exhibition to be staged at the National Museum of Scotland (NMS) from next summer.
Scotland’s First Warriors will explore the origins and impact of warfare in Scotland, from the Neolithic era to the Roman period. It is the Bronze Age, however, where a fundamental shift in attitudes to weapons occurs, said Dr Matthew Knight, curator of prehistory and the Bronze Age at NMS.
He said: “The sword is a really important object as it is the first time in human history that we develop an object that has no function other than harm another human.
“Up until that point, bows and arrows are used for hunting, knives and daggers have been used for skinning and slaughtering animals - and then you have the development of blades. And once they start making long blades, they make them longer and longer and more effective and you are left with this object that perseveres throughout time.”
Dr Knight added: “It is not just about having a sword. It is fundamental shift in society during the Bronze Age.
“This is not to say that this is the origins of warfare. There are signs of conflict throughout human history, but something whether it is the development of bronze, competition for land or the rise of a prestigious class, something becomes important enough that means you are going to dedicate your time and resources to an object that has no other function.”
The spearhead found at Carnoustie is one of two discovered in Scotland. The other was found at Pyot Dykes in Angus – around 12 miles away – and was buried in a similar fashion. Here, two swords were also found.
Dr Knight added: “That idea you have the only two examples of these spears found within 20km of each other – a perfectly walkable distance – and they are buried in similar ways, suggests you have got some sort of community or class that is aware of each other and they have certain customs relating to weapons.”
The Carnoustie hoard is changing the narrative on people’s relationship with weapons during the period, given it is the first in Scotland to be found buried so close to a settlement. Previously, hoards would typically be “buried up a hill or placed in a bog” or thrown in a river or loch but at Carnoustie, they were placed near a home – perhaps following the death of the owner or as a peacekeeping gesture.
“It may be something else entirely,” Dr Knight said. “It may be a failed harvest and you need to appease the gods or the deities or whoever you believe in and you give up your prized possessions.”
The care and attention given to the Carnoustie hoard also contrasts with the sometimes “really spectacular” rituals linked to weapons seen throughout Bronze Age Scotland.
Dr Knight described the discovery of three swords found on the Isle of Shuna that were discovered “point down, as if thrust into the bog”. In Ayrshire, six shields were apparently found in a circle.
Meanwhile, at Peel Hill in Lanarkshire, around the same time the sword and spearhead were buried at Carnoustie, a hoard of a single sword and 25 spears was discovered.
Dr Knight said: “All of these weapons were deliberately broken, set on fire or they were bent. It was mass devastation of weaponry and then they were sunk into marshland. One of the theories was that it tells you a little bit about the structure of a Bronze Age raiding party or army. You would have one person wielding a sword and then an array of spears.
“Another suggestion we came up with was that this was perhaps the weapons of the captured enemy that were being destroyed.
“There are times in history – some recorded in Roman writings – where weapons were destroyed and sunk into lakes so the enemy couldn’t use them in the afterlife. There was a belief that the objects went with you into the afterlife. If you destroyed them, they then couldn’t be used.
“Even if it might have benefitted you to have an extra 25 spears in your arsenal, and another sword, it was symbolically and culturally more important to destroy them.”
The discovery at Peel Hill Farm is one of two similar finds made in Scotland. The other was at Duddingston Loch in Edinburgh, where around 50 objects, roughly half of them swords and half of them spears, had been set on fire and broken before being throw into the water.
Dr Knight said: “You start to get a sense of the different ways that people treated weapons. You compare burning 25 or 30 spears to the care and attention given to those at Carnoustie. It is what marks Carnoustie out as exceptional, in that sense.”
Scotland’s First Warriors will open at the National Museum of Scotland from June 27, 2026 and run until May 17, 2027.
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