Abstract
The present paper uses the extensive weapons depositions from Late Bronze Age Britain to examine the ritual embedding of armed conflicts. On the basis of traces of their usage and destruction, as well as in relation to comparable discoveries from other times and spaces, especially the moorland finds from the imperial Roman era in northern Europe, these special types of hoards are identified as sacrifices made after violent conflicts, in which the victors destroyed the armaments captured from the enemy and assigned supernatural significance to important sites. Their deposition marked the end of a specific period of socially sanctioned violence. Even though the weapons were not visibly deposited, the complex ritual performance strengthened the memory of the events and granted an identity to the group of actors.