Swords in northern Italy
The militarizing of northern Italy—the land between the Apennines and the Alps—seems to have proceeded from western Hungary, and to have occurred at about the same time as the militarizing of southern Scandinavia: in the middle of the second millennium bc. Perhaps northern Italy was attractive because of the fertility of its soil, but a more compelling attraction would have been the metalwork done there. In addition, northeastern Italy was important for the amber trade. The routes through central Europe by which amber was brought down from the Baltic and the Kattegat sea to the Mediterranean are not very clear, but by the end of the fifteenth century bc much of the amber seems to have been coming overland through the eastern Alps to the top of the Adriatic, where it was transferred to ships and then carried to various ports in the eastern Mediterranean. Anthony Harding and Helen Hughes-Brock, in their study of amber in the Mycenaean world, saw the transfer of amber from the overland route to ships as occurring along the northwestern shores of the Adriatic, and that “it is here that middlemen must have come into their own.”120
The militarizing of northern Italy was approximately contemporary with the beginning of the Terremare culture in the central Po valley, but it is not yet clear which came first. In his review of northern Italy, for the Oxford Handbook of the European Bronze Age, Franco Nicolis employs the following chronology—based on carbon dates—for the Bronze Age of that region:121
EBA 2300/2200—1650 cal bc MBA 1650-1350/1300 cal bc LBA 1350/1300-1200 cal bc Final BA 1200-900 cal bc
On the historical chronology used in this book, the Middle Bronze Age in northern Italy would be lowered to ca. 1550-1300 bc. It was early in this Middle Bronze Age that the Terremare culture began, mostly in the Emilia-Romagna region. The Po valley had a small population in the EBA, but in the MBA I period the population soared. The terramaricoli built villages, surrounding each with a ditch and an earthen rampart, and at the same time began systematically to turn the surrounding forests into fields. The changes apparently happened quickly. According to Andrea cardarelli, “Already in the initial phases of the MB2, the settlement evidence confirms that the Po Plain was completely colonised, establishing a widespread network of hundreds of villages which do not seem to extend beyond two hectares in size.”122 The Terremare culture, which depended both on the fertility of the soil and on the production of bronze artifacts, continued through the Middle and the Late Bronze Age of northern Italy, but then came abruptly to an end. In Cardarelli’s summary, “after over four centuries of life, the world of the Terramare collapsed within an apparently brief space of time, leaving the territory uninhabited for at least three or four centuries.”123 Although it is clear that in the Middle and Late Bronze Age a military class lived in the villages, alongside the “producers” (to use Dumezil’s term), we cannot say whether the military class presided over the creation of the villages or whether it asserted itself over villages that had already been established.
As is the case elsewhere, the militarizing of north Italy is most evident from the swords found there. In 1970 Vera Bianco Peroni published a catalogue of 395 bronze swords (and several accompanying sheathes) from Italy.124 Subsequent discoveries have added considerably to that number. All of the Italian swords date from after Italy’s Early Bronze Age, so let us say after 1550 bc. Bianco Peroni’s Tafel 67 shows the find-spots for all of the Italian swords known to her. If we divide Italy approximately in half, with the dividing line drawn from Satricum on the Tyrrhenian coast (the sword found there is Nr. 255 in Bianco Peroni’s catalogue) to Sulmona (Nr. 138) on the Adriatic, we find that only fifteen of the bronze swords come from south of that line while 380, or 96 percent, come from north of it. Although central Italy has furnished a modest number of bronze swords, almost all of the early swords come from the far north. They come, that is, from the Po valley and also from Italy’s far northeast: the Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia regions, where Venetic was once spoken.
Most of the bronze swords found since Bianco Peroni’s publication again come from the north. Forty-three have recently come from a Bronze Age cemetery at Olmo di Nogara, near Verona, and at least ten more from the nearby votive deposit in the Tartaro river, at Pila del Brancon.125 The deposit is dated ca. 1200 bc, but the forty-three swords from the cemetery—most of them were placed along the thigh or across the breast of the deceased—are much earlier than the Pila del Brancon deposit. Luciano Salzani and his colleagues identified three phases in the Olmo di Nogara necropolis, the first two phases belonging to the Middle and the third belonging to the Late Bronze Age. Salzani equates the first phase with the Bz B2 and Bz C1 periods in central Europe. In graves of this phase, which should be dated ca. 1450-1350 bc on our chronology, the excavators found many swords of the Sauerbrunn and Boiu type.126 Salzani’s summary statement about the graves of all three phases at Olmo di Nogara is worth noting: “The figure of the warrior is that which emerges most clearly from an analysis of the male grave goods, and his role is exalted by the deposition of a sword.”127 The swords come from inhumation graves of adult males, several of whom were old.128
Almost half of the bronze swords from Italy (nos. 85-271 in Bianco Peroni) are sturdy Griffzungenschwerter. Many of these date from the Late Bronze Age and the Final Bronze Age, and many of them come from the Terremare region. Some of the Griffzungen swords, however, and most of the Griffplatten and Griffdorn swords date from the Middle Bronze Age. Of special interest are those swords that date early in the MBA, and they come not from the Po valley but from the Venetic northeast. In Bianco Peroni’s catalogue, the earliest swords in Italy are seven Sauerbrunn rapiers. These are poorly hilted Griffplattenschwerter, in which the blade—beautified with elaborate incisions—is topped by a flat grip plate for insertion into a slot in the organic hilt. The hilt, which very likely was also elaborately decorated, was then attached to the plate by four or six rivets. The result was a hilting hardly superior to that of the Type A rapier (the Type A had a short tang, and the Sauerbrunn had no tang at all), and far below the hilting of a Griffzung sword. Peter Schauer found it “amazing” how unsatisfactory was the hilting of the Sauerbrunn and he pointed out the many grip plates on which the rivet holes were torn through, a clear sign that the blade had come loose from the organic hilt.129 Because of the torn rivet holes, one must suppose that although these rapiers were clearly status symbols they must also have been used, whether in combat or in swordplay.
Although Sauerbrunn swords have now been found in the Olmo di Nogara cemetery, all of the Italian Sauerbrunns known to Bianco Peroni came from the Treviso province, so not far from the pass that leads through the eastern Alps from Austria. Related closely to swords in the Carpathian basin, they may have come along the route now traversed by Austria’s Shd Autobahn (A2), which runs from Graz and Klagenfurt to Italy’s province of Udine. The Italian Sauerbrunns were dated by Bianco Peroni to the beginning of the Bz B period, or soon after 1500 bc on our chronology.130 The Sauerbrunn type originated in central Europe (the eponymous sword was found in 1895 at Sauerbrunn, near Wiener Neustadt in eastern Austria) and was especially to be found in Hungary. In Kemenczei’s catalogue of Hungary’s Bronze Age swords and daggers the first sixty-three entries are all Griffplatten weapons.131 Many of the daggers date from the Early Bronze Age and even the Chalcolithic period,132 and it appears that at the end of the Bz A2 or the beginning of the Bz B period central European founders simply applied to rapiers the hilting technique that they had long been accustomed to use for daggers. Pressed by the military class to produce rapiers, that is, metalworkers began casting Sauerbrunns.
With an improvement in hilting the Sauerbrunn soon was replaced by the Boiu- Keszthely rapier. Early examples of this type (the Boiu 1b) had a short and flat tang that extended two or three cm into the hilt. The later examples had a longer tang, extending all the way to the pommel, and the tang was flanged, so that organic plates could be inserted into the flanges.133 The Boiu-Keszthely swords are named for Boiu, the village in Transylvania where the type was first found, and for Keszthely in western Hungary, where soon thereafter a very similar sword was found in a tumulus burial. Although Boiu is in Transylvania, the type probably did not originate there. Judging by the find-spots, we would agree with J. D. Cowen that the original center for the type was further to the west, in Hungary.134
The Boiu had a secondary center, however, in northern Italy.135 Stephan Foltiny, who studied the evolution from the rapier to the slashing sword, counted twenty- one early Boiu-Keszthely rapiers, coming from nineteen sites.136 Eight of the nineteen sites known to Foltiny are in northeast Italy, all in the Udine and Treviso provinces (again, the recent finds at Olmo di Nogara have extended the Boiu zone into the northern reaches of the Terremare culture). The early Boiu rapiers date to the Bz B period, and Foltiny placed them more precisely near the transition from the Bz B 1 to the Bronze B 2 period.137 We are safe in assuming that they were to be seen in northeast Italy in the first half of the fifteenth century BC. The later Boiu-Keszthely rapiers, in both northern Italy and Hungary, are Griffzungenschwerter, and can be dated to the fourteenth century bc.138
Of Foltiny’s eight find-spots for the well-developed Boiu-Keszthely, three are in Italy (two of the spots, Melma and Quinto, are near Treviso). The sword’s improvement continued in northern Italy as it did in Hungary, the Boiu rapier evolving into the Sprockhoff Ia slashing sword during the Bz C period. Six of the Sprockhoff Ia swords have been found in northern Italy.139 The redoubtable Naue II, with a cutting blade “leaf-shaped” in order to increase its weight toward the tip, may even have originated in northern Italy.140
