In the last Friday Free For All thread, u/Mictlantecuhtli linked to this sciencemag article on recent excavatations of a massive 1200BC battlefield just north of modern-day Berlin.

Now, reading the article this bit struck me as surprising:

Before the 1990s, “for a long time we didn’t really believe in war in prehistory,” DAI’s Hansen says. The grave goods were explained as prestige objects or symbols of power rather than actual weapons. “Most people thought ancient society was peaceful, and that Bronze Age males were concerned with trading and so on,” says Helle Vandkilde, an archaeologist at Aarhus University in Denmark. “Very few talked about warfare.”

So my questions are:

1] How accurate is Vandkilde's sketch of mainstream views pre-90s? Did archeologists actually make these assumptions? Particularly the one about grave-found weapons being symbols rather than actual tools of war? How has this understanding evolved in more recent decades? Are there conflicting views or schools of thought on the nature of bronze age society in this era, and if so, what are they?

2] How accurate is that article in general? Any misconceptions or misunderstandings bronze-age ignorami such as myself should beware of? Does anybody have additional context or interpretations to add to this?

I'd also be very interested in some context in the form of a general sketch of our understanding of bronze-age warfare and society in this time and place, if anyone feels inclined to give me one, but the historiography is my main interest here.

Thanks in advance!