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The Antiquity of the One-edged Bronze Knife in the Aegean

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2014

N. K. Sandars
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Extract

In the west we are accustomed to walking on bog, we therefore learn to tread light, seeing around us, but just out of reach, the contours of a more solid landscape. We have sequence and relative chronology, but if we tread too heavily, feeling for the subsoil of absolute dates and historical nomenclature, we are apt to flounder, if not to sink. Nevertheless in some places the bog has shrunk exposing solid, rock-like dates, dates that belong to a subsoil of history in a continent already mapped. As such we are concerned with the discovery of those false stepping-stones that lie deceptively on the surface of the bog. In the disclosure of the true rocks and exposure of the false, Gordon Childe has led us for long.

One may preach on almost any subject from a text in The Dawn of European Civilization: I am however more concerned at present with the paper written in 1948 for these Proceedings in which Childe reviewed the beginnings of the Late Bronze Age north of the Alps, and the nature of the connexions between temperate Europe and the Near East at that particular moment, and especially as shown by a number of bronze ornaments, implements and weapons. More interesting still was the suggestion of a possible link between the exploitation of metal in the eastern Alps and the last phase of prosperity of the Minoan-Mycenaean world just before its collapse with the repercussions of that collapse.

Type
Bronze Age
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 21 , July 1956 , pp. 174 - 197
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1956

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References

page 174 note 1 ‘Die Dorische Wanderung im Lichte der Vorgeschichtlichen Funde’, Arch. Anz., 1948, 12–36Google Scholar. (For abbreviations see list, p. 196).

page 174 note 2 I have just seen another article by Dr Milojčić which has appeared recently, and unfortunately too late for proper discussion here: ‘Einige “Mitteleuropäische” Fremdlinge auf Kreta’. (J. R.-G.Z.M., 1955, 153)Google Scholar. The thesis is essentially the same as that propounded in 1948 but now expounded with more material evidence in the form of drawings, as in the earlier article they are without labels, or provenance, except for a few referred to in the text, see below.

page 175 note 1 Troy, vol. I, pl. 358, 34.450 and p. 336Google Scholar. Copper with ivory handle. Thermi, pl. XXV, XLVII, 30.9, p. 171; for other knives from Troy see Schliemann, , Ilios, p. 507Google Scholar, no. 965.

page 175 note 2 Eutresis, fig. 287, 7; p. 216, ‘copper’. V.T.M., pl. LVI, 1950, p. 109Google Scholar, Platanos ‘copper’.

page 175 note 3 Schliemann, , Ilios, p. 250Google Scholar, nos. 118, 119, ‘copper’, p. 505, nos. 954, 956. Asine, fig. 182, 3, p. 258.

page 175 note 4 Dimini, pl. 4, 13 and 14; Nat. Mus. 5902, 5903.

page 175 note 5 Jerusalem Arch. Mus., 491.

page 175 note 6 Troy, vol. III, pl. 297, 36.107, p. 352Google Scholar; A.J.A., VI, 1890Google Scholar, pl. XV, no. XVIII.

page 176 note 1 All references are given in the lists on p. 188. Asiatic knives not included.

page 177 note 1 .27.44 318 in the Jerusalem Museum. The inscription runs ‘(belonging to ) … Ba'al from (the town of) Pillaz Ba'al’ or ‘(Dedicated ) to … Ba'al by Pillaz Ba'al’.

page 177 note 2 Now in Beirut Museum.

page 175 note 3 Chaeronea Museum labelled ‘Vranesi’, and British School excavations at Gypsades, Knossos, 1955.

page 179 note 1 Nat. Mus. No. 3132.

page 179 note 2 But see remarks above on the difficulty of distinguishing flanges in publications where only photographs or small-scale drawings are given; this applies particularly to Asiatic material.

page 181 note 1 A T-handled knife in the Ashmolean mentioned by Benton, Miss (P.P.S., 1952, 152)Google Scholar, seems to have been much tampered with, probably in ancient times; it has not the asymmetric section of one-edged knives although it has been given an asymmetric outline.

page 181 note 2 Annuario, VI–VII, fig. 101, p. 92Google Scholar, no. 26 (3579).

page 181 note 3 Mycenae, p. 75, no. 122.

page 181 note 4 J.R.-G.Z.M., 1955, p. 153Google Scholar. fig. 1, 8.

page 181 note 5 B.S.A., VI, 111Google Scholar, Her. Mus. no. 440.

page 181 note 6 Schachtgräber, pl. XCVII, 443, 445, etc.

page 183 note 1 Depending on the dating of the Messará ‘tholoi’ which is still a matter of discussion.

page 183 note 2 We must await the publication of the important cemeteries of Cos, and the restoration of the museum on Rhodes before we can date their arrival there.

page 184 note 1 Arch. Anz., 1948, pp. 16, 26Google Scholar; J.R.-G.Z.M., 1955, pp. 158, 169Google Scholar.

page 184 note 2 N.U., pl. 37, 14, 20, Wilten, ‘Zeitgruppe I’; Arch. Aust., 7, 1950Google Scholar, fig. 9, 2, 7, Wels, , Lower Austria; Bad. Fund., 1948–1950, pl. 17, 4, ErzingenGoogle Scholar.

page 184 note 3 N.U., pl. 27, 30; pl. 30, 27; pl. 31, 22, Wilten.

page 184 note 4 H.S., pl. 31, 2, Feketót, Hungary; pl. 46; 47, 50, 52, Uioara de Sus, Romania; pl. 11, 8, Bingula-Dinos and pl. 18; 34–36 Veche Moldova, all Yugoslavia.

page 184 note 5 Bad. Fund., 1941–7, pl. 47, 2, 7; pl. 55, 2, 3 all from Alsace.

page 184 note 6 Distribution map, P.Z., 1940, 413, fig. 1.

page 184 note 7 Bad. Fund., 1941–1947, pl. 47, 2, AlsaceGoogle Scholar; P.Z., 1950, 313, fig. 6, 3-4.

page 184 note 8 N.U., 26, ‘Messer mit umlappter Griffzung’.

page 184 note 9 P.Z., 1950, 313–25.

page 185 note 1 Mycenae, 75, no. 122; J.R.-G.Z.M., 1955, 153Google Scholar, fig. 1, 7.

page 185 note 2 M.P., fig. 40, I am grateful to Miss Sylvia Benton for pointing out to me this similarity.

page 185 note 3 B.S.A., XLVII, 243Google Scholar, fig. 15; butterfly and spirals of L.M. II.

page 185 note 4 Arch. Anz., 1948, 12Google Scholar, fig. 1, 1–4; the first two called ‘Griffzungenmesser’ and 3–4 ‘Urnenfeldermesser’, no. 2 described as from Zapher Papoura I have not been able to trace, unless it is the two-edged knife P.T.K., fig. 113, 98a (not from Tomb 98); which is in two pieces, wrongly photographed; the correct symmetrical placing is shown in Ant. Crét., III, pl. XXXV. All knives with this type of haft appear to be two-edged, see also J.R.-G.Z.M., 1955, 156Google Scholar, fig. 1, 4.

page 185 note 5 H.S., pl. 46, 48.

page 185 note 6 H.S., pl. 5, 25; pl. 46, 44-45, 49, pl. 8, 9; pl. 2, 1, 3, 5, from Yugoslavia.

page 185 note 7 Grave-group in the National Museum.

page 187 note 1 M.A., IX, 116, pl. VII; B.P.I., 1, 31/32, 1905–1906Google Scholar, 55 fig. 149; the ring-handles of fig. 31, p. 127, from Molino della Badia have a counterpart in the Tyrol not the Aegean, N.U., pl. 26, 18.