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Battle-axes in the Aegean
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 May 2014
Extract
Tracking the elusive Indo-European has been a favourite sport of archaeologists and philologists ever since the days of the brothers Grimm, and surely some share of their power of telling fascinating fairy stories must have descended on their philological and archaeological successors.
Some authorities have tried to associate the spread of Indo-European languages with that of cremation burials or with the diffusion of a particular physical type. The German school of Penka and Kossinna regarded these languages as the product of the Nordic race, and connected this diffusion with a group of cultures characterized by double axes or hammer-axes of stone, by axe-adzes of copper, and by certain varieties of pottery such as corded ware, globular amphorae, etc.
I am not here concerned with the origin of these weapons. The axe-hammers may indeed ultimately be derived from stag-horn types of the mesolithic age. The copper axe-adzes are more restricted in their chronological and geographical setting. Still more restricted in their distribution and more definitely associated with Indo-European speaking peoples are two groups of metal battle-axes found especially in Persia and associated by M. Godard with the Kassites, the halberd-axe and the spiked-butt battle-axe. The first group, derived apparently from the ‘axe with double perforation’ does not really concern us since it seems almost to be confined to Persia, though its parent the ‘Hache à double évident’ occurs first in a double form in the Royal Cemetery at Ur, becomes acclimatized in Syria, and is found so far afield as Vapheio near Sparta, and Mycenae.
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References
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I am indebted to Professor Stuart Piggott for the references, to Mr J. H. Iliffe, Curator of the Palestine Museum, for supplying me with the photographs of these weapons and for permission to publish them, and for various details to Dr T. Ben Dor.
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