Think about the organisation that an army involving hundreds of people must have meant:
You have to gather them. There is no written means of communication yet in that part of Europe. There are not many roads yet. They live on farms spread out over vast territories. The article says there were 5 people per square km. Most are probably kids and half are women, so to find 1 able bodied man of fighting age you might need 20 people, which would require 4 square km. Now, if like in later ages the soldiers were the second and third oldest sons, you might find 1 soldier per 10 square km. To gather an army of 500 men, you would need a territory of roughly 100*50 km.
You have to feed them for days, weeks, or maybe even months before or between battles. Crazy expensive at a time where just feeding yourself is not easy.
They have to sleep somewhere, even if just in tents.
You have to provide some weapons and equipment, even if merely wooden clubs and spears.
Unless they are slaves, which some might have been, you may have to pay them or they need to be convinced they fight for their own sake, for example because a foreign people is invading their land.
The most obvious way to organize all that is to imagine a strong regional rulers, a class of local nobles, taxes, some sort of manorialism. Structures that are known later in history (or much further south in the bronze age). But maybe Northern Europe was also organized like that already in the bronze age.
You have to gather them. There is no written means of communication yet in that part of Europe. There are not many roads yet. They live on farms spread out over vast territories. The article says there were 5 people per square km. Most are probably kids and half are women, so to find 1 able bodied man of fighting age you might need 20 people, which would require 4 square km. Now, if like in later ages the soldiers were the second and third oldest sons, you might find 1 soldier per 10 square km. To gather an army of 500 men, you would need a territory of roughly 100*50 km.
You have to feed them for days, weeks, or maybe even months before or between battles. Crazy expensive at a time where just feeding yourself is not easy.
They have to sleep somewhere, even if just in tents.
You have to provide some weapons and equipment, even if merely wooden clubs and spears.
Unless they are slaves, which some might have been, you may have to pay them or they need to be convinced they fight for their own sake, for example because a foreign people is invading their land.
The most obvious way to organize all that is to imagine a strong regional rulers, a class of local nobles, taxes, some sort of manorialism. Structures that are known later in history (or much further south in the bronze age). But maybe Northern Europe was also organized like that already in the bronze age.