Textual evidence is a very useful archaeological tool, but as ever comes with a few notable qualifiers. Primarily, an automatic bias towards 'social advancement' can appear in the archaeologist's mind when comparing a literate society against an illiterate one, even in the context of battle, but mainly because the archaeologist is lulled into a sense of security that evidence is more 'substantial' for the textually-based society. Equally, textual evidence may be heavily biased, especially concerning warfare, as the victor will glorify any victory whilst the losing side will seek to cover it up, evident for instance in the textual descriptions of the Battle of Kadesh, which was glorified as a resounding victory on the walls of Abu Simbel Temple by its constructor Rameses II, but which there is little evidence for in the Hittite records.

The earlier the textual evidence, often the less distinguishable it is from art and iconography, as with the Egyptian hieroglyphs intermingled with glorious single-handed chariot-fighting Pharaohs, which bears its own limitations as an archaeological tool to discover warfare, but which is also nonetheless useful. Iconography often bears symbolism that relates battles to a religious context and the symbolism is often therefore locked as a product of the culture that created it, which only further deeper understanding of the society in a broader area than just warfare can reveal. One striking counter-example to this however is the famous Chinese terracotta army at Xian of the Qin dynasty (from around 2500 years ago), which, whilst being deeply religiously and socially symbolic as associated with the burial of a ruler, actually provided a very accurate account of the nature of the Chinese army at the time, more so than the Egyptian shabti figures for the same purpose. The Bayeaux Tapestry in France, Trajan's Column in Rome, the Bonam Pak murals in South Mexico, Caesar's accounts of the equivalent of Iron Age Ireland, and the Codex Mendoza tribute book of Teotihuac'n have all been invaluable to archaeologists in understanding warfare in their respective periods and societies, but not without first taking into account their limitations as textual and iconographic sources.