The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

88 THE BRONZE AGE AND THE CELTIC WORLD
with the horizontal radii considerably longer than the vertical. The upper part of
the blade, too, is of the same form, and the parallel incised hnes are survivals of the
grooves already described. These show that the prototype was of ogival shape. In
two points only does it differ from the ancestral form : the blade has been lengthened
considerably, till its form is of rather an unnatural shape, while at the other end a
tang, shaped to fit the hand, and with flanged edges, has been cast in one piece with the
blade. Here we have a leaf-shaped sword, it is true, but with the greatest breadth
relatively near to the butt, and the tang flanged and with rivet holes to enable the
wooden or horn sides to be attached to form the hilt. The section is somewhat
rhomboidal.
Now it has long been realised that swords of these types had been evolved
somewhere in the Danube basin, and it has been suggested that this had taken place
in the south Danubian region." It becomes important, therefore, to determine
whereabouts in the Celtic cradle these types originated. Details of the distribution
of this and of other types will be discussed in the next chapter ;
here it will be sufficient
to summarise. As far as I have been able to ascertain, six specimens only of this type
are known, and one of these is so unlike the others that we must look upon it as a later
variant. Of the five, one was found in the Friuh, at the head of the Adriatic, one
in a tomb in Schleswig-Holstein, while the other three were found somewhere in Hungary.
Of these the exact sites at which two were found are unknown, but the third is said to
have been dredged out of the Danube near Buda-Pest."
We may, I think, conclude from this that it was in the
plain of Hungary, where the Nordic steppe-folk were hving in cu
relative purity, still leading, perhaps, a nomadic hfe, that
these swords were developed. The origin seems to have been
in the plain rather than in the mountain zone, though subse quent
types have been found frequently in the latter. It is the fig. 14.
Hungarian plain, then, we must consider as the centre of « a section not unlike
THAT OF A SPEAR-HEAD.
dispersal, and, as far as possible, Hungarian rather than other 0. A RHOMBOID SECTION WITH
examples will be taken as the true types, of which others will concave sides.
be considered as variants.
" Peet (1909) 348. » For details see next chapter.