Book Review - Chariot by Arthur Cotterell

If you've read any of my previous book reviews, you'll know I'm something of an history buff. The two periods that most interest me (although I'm easily distracted by other...) are the Napoleonic Wars and the Bronze Age. I've reviewed quite a few Napoleonic books, so here's my first Bronze Age one 😀

This hardback book is focused on the chariot, that most iconic feature of Bronze Age warfare. It also covers post Bronze Age chariotry, as it transitioned into the sport of chariot racing.

There are chapters covering the rise of the charioteer, exploring the origins of chariot warfare, then chapters covering the various parts of the world where the vehicles were used, and finally chapters on the end of chariot warfare, later survivals and modern myths of chariotry.

The author is (or at least was at the time of writing !) the Principal of Kingston College, which is in the nearest thing I have to a home town; the college has subsequently rebranded as a university.

One aspect of the book which I liked were detailed explorations of how horse training and the composite bow evolved. Despite Hollywood depictions, for most of it's time in the ascendant the chariot was a fast, light missile platform. It wasn't a weapon designed for melee or for crashing through blocks of close-ranked infantry. The composite bow was an essential component of this style of warfare, and tended to be reserved for chariot use as it was (for it's time) highly technological and too expensive for mass infantry use.

There is a key failing in the book, which is that I feel it skirts around the actual origins of the chariot. Part of this is also due to it's date; since 2004 there have been considerable additional archaeological finds.

The book limits itself to a couple of pages covering the finds from around 1500BC at Lchaschen in the Caucasus, and really doesn't look at what these early chariots might have evolved from. More importantly it doesn't reconcile this date with the dates of the Hyksos, who are credited with introducing the chariot to Egypt around 1650BC.

Current research suggests that the Yamnaya culture of the southern Ural/northern Black Sea area (those same people who are the Kurgans from the Highlander films) used war carts including light two-wheeled ones, and by the time of the succeeding Sintashta culture around 2200BC these had evolved into true chariots, with a few chariot burials having been found.

The chapters covering Indian and Chinese chariot warfare were interesting, because it's something that until then I had little knowledge of. I do disagree with the assertion made, without any statement of why the author reached that conclusion, that the Dendra Panoply (an amazing suit of bronze armour, like a Bronze Age tank) wasn't likely used by Mycenean Greek chariot warriors.

It is disappointing that the book only gives a brief nod to Celtic chariot warfare, which was a key feature of that culture especially in Britain and proved surprisingly effective against the Romans. Nor does it go into any real detail about the scythed heavy chariots introduced by the later Achaemenid Persians and used by the Alexandrian Successors.

All in all, this is a book that I really wanted to like, but I feel it was spoiled for me by some real flaws and omissions.

The biggest issue for me is, quite simply, the author's writing style. He's a great story-teller, but it's like listening to a rambling elder relative talking in a stream of consciousness, a series of stories, allegories, quotes from literature, but hard to follow and make into a coherent pattern. He frequently wanders off into half a page of unrelated but fascinating exposition that diverts from the main thread of the chapter.

Personally, I prefer a topic like this to be explained in a much more linear technical format. So perhaps it's just a personal preference, not a fault with the author's style ! If it wasn't for the date the book was written, I'd have thought that large sections would have seemed to have been written by ChatGPT !

The other issue is that there are lots of images, but they are rarely directly linked to the text. Getting rights to use images of museum exhibits can be a challenge, but rather than just seeing endless similar friezes and engravings I would prefer to have seen technical drawings showing the various types of chariot covered by the text. There are only a couple of those and they are profoundly unsatisfying as they fail to show enough different aspects to be able to get a true understanding of how the vehicle was constructed.

Linked to this is an issue with the maps in the section on Chinese chariot warfare. There are two of them, showing the various Chinese kingdoms at the two points in time. That's great, but they show a couple of key cities and don't have marked on them any of the (unfamiliar) places mentioned in the text.

I know I am sounding very critical of the book's flaws and shortcomings, but despite this it was still an enjoyable read. It's a topic that is very rarely covered, and this has become an important work in filling in a gap in our knowledge; it is frequently quoted in more recent books. Some of the sections contain detailed and valuable explanations of specific topics (particularly on composite bows, the training of chariot horses and the development of the bronze bit).

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, despite occasional frustrations with the author's rambling diversions.

Published in 2004 by Pimloco Press (part of Random House Ltd). 344 pages with no plates but 289 black and white images liberally scattered through the pages. ISBN 0-7126-66942-6

Photos by me, of my copy of the book