The Passage of Arms: An Archaeological Analysis of Prehistoric Hoard and Votive Deposits

Richard Bradley's The Passage of Arms, An Archaeological Analysis of Prehistoric Hoard and Votive Deposits, published by Cambridge University Press in 1990, is a scholarly archaeological study analyzing the deliberate deposit of weapons and other valuable objects in rivers, bogs and other watery or liminal places across prehistoric Europe, arguing these hoards represent intentional ritual offering rather than accidental loss or simple hidden storage. Bradley is an archaeologist working from the excavated material record itself, comparing deposit patterns across many sites. Its strength is that comparative, pattern based method, using the consistency of where and how objects were deposited across many separate finds to argue for ritual intent rather than resting the case on any single dramatic example. Its limit is that interpreting intent from material remains alone is inherently inferential, no depositor left a written explanation, so the ritual reading, while well argued, remains an archaeological interpretation rather than a directly attested fact.