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Jeroen Zuiderwijk
Industry Professional
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 Posted: Fri 02 Feb, 2007 11:35 am Post subject: |
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| Gene Davis wrote: | | The features that distinguish the earliest Type-A swords are as follows: The cast bronze blade is of unprecedented length, in some examples exceeding one meter, but none more than 1.55 meters. |
1.55 meters?? Do you have pictures of such a sword? That would be very interesting to see, if alone for the remarkable skill of the caster to make such a long blade!
| Quote: | | What is reasonably certain is that the Type A first appeared on Crete, and abruptly. The question is: To what purpose? As a weapon? Possibly, but if so, one of specialized, non-martial application given its inherent weakness of hilt attachment. As already noted, the riveted handle/blade juncture and truncated tang presented a tenuous solution for wielding a weapon of such weight and length (Peatfield, 1999: 69). |
I'm not convinced by this. The connection is not a weak one certainly not on the metal side. Even more so, the longer the blade gets, the less crucial the hilt connection gets! If you grab a very long sword at the tip and bend it, it's the blade that's going to give long before the hilt connection. The connection the hilt is more likely going to give when you hold it very near the hilt, and then bend it. The reason to extend tang further into the hilt is much more likely due to potential play. If you have a 1 meter blade, with rivets 4cm apart, a 0.1mm play in the holes will result in 2.5 cm play at the tip. That can be solved by a glue between the hilt and sword, but it's a better solution to prevent it in the first place, by using more rivets (reducing the chance of play), and at a greater distance from one another, by extending the hilt length.
| Quote: | | Bronze swords of similar construction found throughout Southern and Western Europe display the results of using such swords in combat: broken tangs and rivet holes ripped through the edges of the blades’ shoulders. |
The british/irish rapiers are often called as a prime example of this, yet by looking at them through the eyes of a mechanical engineer, I've concluded that this isn't the case at all. Few of the damaged rivet holes are actually damaged (rather then drilling to close to the edge, not completely casting around the hole notches in the mould etc.), and even fewer in a way that would make shearing out of the rivets physically possible. The very few examples left are more likely due to corrosion damage, due to the metal being the thinnest around the rivet holes. As a matter of fact, the later rapiers were made with open holes to start with, just having notches in the sides of the hilt plates to receive the rivets. It's also physically nearly impossible to shear out the holes, considering the strength of such rivet holes. If that was really a problem, moving the holes a bit further from the edge would have been more then sufficient.
| Quote: | | The natural inclination when using a sword in a combative engagement, especially in the midst of multiple enemies, is to swing it at the opponent in an attempt to cut or otherwise wound them with the edge. Thrusting, for which the Type-A sword was clearly designed, is a skill requiring flawless precision and timing (Oakeshott: 1960, 1996: 26). |
As do spears, or other long thrusting swords from later times. And whether a cut or a thrust is the more likely method of engagement, all depends on the situation.
Last comment on the type A rapiers, as I understand it, these are what lead to the B and following swords, which are not disputed to be functional swords? It's very unlikely that a sword designed as ceremonial piece would become an actual weapon. That would be the equivalent of fantasy toyguns developing into real military hardware. I can believe that the found examples may have been given ritual roles, and deposited as such, and that the rest of the examples simply weren't deposited as it wasn't the custom to do so. As should always be kept in mind, the archeological record only shows what the people decided on putting in the ground (or water or whatever). In my country f.e., you almost never find weapons in graves or in settlements. So archeologists never did find any. Only amateur archeologists kept coming with the fanciest swords from rivers. If the bronze age people hadn't felt like throwing a lot of them in the rivers, and people wouldn't have been looking for them during river dredgings, the conclusion would have been that the bronze age people in my country would pretty much have had no weapons at all. There are still archeologists here who believe that the bronze age people were peaceful farmers, who never did anyone harm.
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This is a standard topic
