Stone Age · c. 5635–5230 BC · La Marmotta, Anguillara Sabazia, Lazio, Italy
Neolithic bows from sunken village in Italy's Lake Bracciano were made without yew
Wood analysis of 19 bows from La Marmotta, near Rome, shows its early farmers used six local tree species, most often hornbeam, in an area where yew did not grow.
Peer-reviewed paper
La Marmotta, Anguillara Sabazia, Italy Early farmers living by Lake Bracciano, north-west of Rome, made their hunting bows from at least six different kinds of local wood. None of the bows is made of yew, the wood that dominates finds of Neolithic bows elsewhere in Europe.
The result comes from an anatomical study of 19 bows from La Marmotta. The village was occupied between about 5635 and 5230 BC and now lies under the lake.
L. Caruso Fermé of CONICET in Argentina led the study, with researchers from Italy, Spain and Portugal. It is published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
The team concludes that the villagers took wood for bows in the same way they took it for houses, boats and tools. They chose from whatever the surrounding mixed forest offered.
A village preserved under 11 metres of water
La Marmotta lies at a depth of 11 metres, about 300 metres from the modern shore of the lake, near Anguillara Sabazia. Its inhabitants lived in wooden houses on the lakeshore. They grew cereals and kept sheep and goats.
The settlement was later abandoned and submerged. A cover of sediment and the lack of oxygen on the lake bed then preserved wood that would normally have rotted within a few years.
Underwater excavations between 1993 and 2005 recovered at least 35 bows. They also recovered paddles, dugout canoes, house stakes and farming tools. Some of the bows are more than two metres long.
The bows were conserved in baths of polyethylene glycol, which consolidates waterlogged wood. They are now kept at the Museo delle Civiltà in Rome. The treatment still allowed the researchers to take tiny samples and examine them under the microscope.
The researchers viewed each sample in three planes. To identify the tree, they compared the pattern of pores, rays and fibres with reference collections.
Nine bows were made of hornbeam and six of wayfaring tree (Viburnum lantana). The remaining four were each made of a different wood: alder, dogwood, ash and an evergreen oak such as holm oak.
No yew grew near the lake
Yew is almost the only wood found in bows at Neolithic sites in Switzerland, France, Slovenia and Spain. It resists compression on the inner face of the bow while staying flexible on the outer face. So it stores and releases a lot of energy when shot.
Pollen records from the Bracciano area show that yew did not grow near the lake at the time. The villagers had no local supply.
The authors tested whether the La Marmotta bows could have worked as weapons. They compared the mechanical properties of each species, including stiffness and resistance to breaking. None matches yew. All fall within a range the team considers acceptable for a bow.
They also cite experiments published by Bergman and colleagues in 1988. These found that woods not usually chosen for bows can still shoot projectiles.
The same woods turn up across the settlement. Ash, alder and holm oak used for bows were also used for the dugout canoes. Oak and laurel were the main woods for houses, and sickles were mostly of oak.
The authors write that this variety does not point to strict selection of particular trees for particular jobs. Instead, they write, it suggests a broad use of the timber available around the village.
Other finds from the site point to what the bows were used for. Animal bones include deer, roe deer, wild boar and fox. There are also birds such as grebes and coots.
Excavators also found 546 small geometric pieces of flint and obsidian. These triangles and trapezes were set into arrow shafts.
A preliminary study looked at 85 of them. Of these, 36 showed the fractures typical of being shot from a bow. Some still carry traces of the resin or bitumen that held them in place.
Sources
- 19 intact Neolithic bows found in a submerged settlement in Lake Bracciano reveal that the first farmers did not forget their connection to the forest and hunting (La Brújula Verde)
- La Marmotta’s 7,500-Year-Old Bows in Italy Show Early Farmers Engineered Weapons from Mediterranean Mixed Forests (Arkeonews)
Paper: Caruso Fermé L., Monteiro P., Brizzi V., Mineo M., Remolins G., Mazzucco N., Morell B., Gibaja J.F. Archery technology in the Neolithic: Management of the Mediterranean mixed forest and woodworking activities at La Marmotta (Italy). Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 70 (2026), 105609. doi:10.1016/j.jasrep.2026.105609
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