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Bronze Swords in Northern Europe: a reconsideration of Sprockhoff's Griffzungenschwerter
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 May 2014
Extract
It is just over twenty years since Professor Ernst Sprockhoff published his classic study of bronze swords in Northern Europe, and a review of the situation as it presents itself today, surveyed from a point well outside the limits of the Nordic area, may not be out of place.
The ground covered in this fine work had already in part been traversed by Sophus Müller and Gustav Kossinna; but in the process it had become a field of battle where the bitterest partisan spirit had all too recently been displayed, and might all too easily have been re-aroused. It is not the least part of our debt to Sprockhoff that he refused to treat his material on controversial lines, and confined himself to a presentation so objective that it immediately became possible, for the first time for many years, once more to discuss the subject in a sane and cool manner. Thus, adding much that was new and solely his own, he set down in plain, precise terms the whole of the evidence relating to the history, development, and chronology of the flange-hilted bronze swords of the North.
Of this structure the main fabric, without any doubt, stands firm. The central theme, based on a large number of closed finds, and supported by an intimate knowledge of the material, need fear no criticism. Yet some aspects at least of the relations between the Nordic world and other parts of Europe call for re-examination, and the work of the past two decades enables some adjustments to be made. In fairness to Sprockhoff it should be stated quite clearly, at the outset, that the most important of these adjustments have been either made possible, or actually anticipated, by his own work in related fields since 1931.
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- Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1952
References
page 129 note 1 Die Germanischen Griffzungenschwerter, Römisch-Germanische Forschungen, Bd. V: Walter de Gruyter and Co., Berlin and Leipzig, 1931Google Scholar.
page 130 note 1 Sprockhoff was not, however, the first to make this suggestion. Schrànil had already done so in 1928 (Vorgeschichte Böhmens und Mährens); and there may well have been others. Furthermore, in a note supplementing the work now under discussion, Reinecke took the opportunity of propounding Hungary as the area of origin of flange-hilted swords in general. Though neither issue is yet finally settled, the view then advanced by Reinecke is still current, and is that adopted by the majority of students as the most generally acceptable working hypothesis. Germania XV (1931), 217–9Google Scholar.
page 131 note 1 GZS, pp. 6–7, especially the footnotes. Nine if we include the northernmost example, from Testerburg a. Lippe; p. 64, no. 29.
page 131 note 2 Ibid., pp. 65–6.
page 131 note 3 Bröthen, Hzgtm. Lauenburg.
page 132 note 1 GZS, pp. 11, notes 1 and 2; and 71, nos. 1 and 2. The two Austrian examples (Mus. Klagenfurt), noted on p. 11, note 4, appear, from each of two sets of drawings most generously supplied to me by Dr H. Müller-Karpe and Dr K. Willvonseder, to be of type Ia.
page 132 note 2 It is an interesting speculation, but one into which we cannot further enter here, whether the ‘early’ swords of class I may not perhaps themselves constitute one of those foreshadowings of Urnfield influence— anterior to any movements of the Urnfield people themselves—to the possible existence of which in the North Sprockhoff has recently drawn attention in a penetrating passage. Reinecke Festschrift (1950), p. 149Google Scholar.
page 132 note 3 Taf. 28.
page 132 note 4 PPS, 1951, 195–213.
page 133 note 1 Germania 30 (1952), 381–3, figs. 1–3Google Scholar.
page 133 note 2 GZS, p. 25, note 1; Taf. 25, 8.
page 133 note 3 Ibid., pp. 40–2; schedules pp. 108–9.
page 133 note 4 Latdorf, in Anhalt—Taf. 20.
page 133 note 5 Sönder Lyngby, and Fünen—Taf. 17, 1 and 21.
page 133 note 6 As Briest, and Herdecke—Taf. 19, 2 and 6.
page 133 note 7 Taf. 18, 1 and 4; and 25, 15.
page 133 note 8 Table on p. iv.
page 134 note 1 Pp. 133–49.
page 134 note 2 PPS, 1951. pp. 207–9.
page 134 note 3 PPS, loc. cit., pp. 195–209. Two Belgian swords, from Dickelvenne and Ertvelde, mentioned elsewhere in the schedules to GZS, are also of the Hemigkofen type. Sprockhoff classified them (p. 95) under type IIa— ‘the common type’ —but surely incorrectly as both have leaf-shaped blades. They are included on the map, showing the distribution of the Hemigkofen type generally, published in PPS, ibid., p. 197, and as they fall outside the Nordic area strictly so called, they are not further considered here.
page 134 note 4 Taf. 18, 3.
page 134 note 5 Fundb. aus Schwaben, N.F. 4 (1926–1928), 150–3Google Scholar; Taf. XXII.
page 135 note 1 Gross, Protohelvètes, Pl. XI, 4 and XII, 2.
page 135 note 2 See, however, his notes on the Catlenburg sword, pp. 32–3; and on the Badegow sword, p. 38.
page 135 note 3 In GZS Sprockhoff was not seeking to group together Western swords; for this reason those he does mention in his text and schedules appear scattered under a wide variety of Nordic types—IIa, IIIa, IIIc.I, Va, and in VGS—in the first three cases, however, with a warning that the pieces in question are not typical, and have been excluded from the relevant maps.
page 135 note 4 P. 94 and Taf. 55.
page 135 note 5 Detailed references for individual swords will be found in Appendix B.
page 136 note 1 VGS 94, and Taf. 12, 9.
page 136 note 2 Bodenaltertümer Westfalens, VII (1950), p. 70Google Scholar. I have not seen this sword, which was preserved in the Rathaus at Vlotho, but is stated now to be lost.
page 136 note 3 Niedersachsens Bedeutung, 94, quoting Ebert, Reallexicon 5, Taf. 103B, p, as from ‘Grebbe.’ It should however, be noted that in Ebert the titles to this sword and an adjoining Hallstatt one in the same collection have been transposed. The sword now in question is in fact from ‘Nord Brabant’, while it is the Hallstatt sword that comes from ‘Grebbe.’ Another sword at Leiden of this phase, but not of this type—being an early variant of the V-type—also from Nord Brabant, is illustrated by Sprockhoff in GZS, Taf. 7, 7, and referred to on p. 13 under his type Ha, where, being a leaf-shaped sword, it is misplaced.
page 136 note 4 I examined it myself at Minden before the war.
page 137 note 1 As Sprockhoff himself has noted, Niedersachsens Bedeutung, p. 94.
page 137 note 2 Another very similar piece is preserved at St. Germain, No. 65443, ex Collection Courtot, but with no recorded history. The sword from Crémieu (Isère), in more than one respect a unique variant of the Hallstatt form, and well known from Chantre's illustration (Bronze, Album, Pl. XVI, 3), also has a projection of this kind on the pommel-end of the tang.
page 137 note 3 Brøndsted, , Danmarks Oldtid, II (1939), p. 212Google Scholar, and figs. 198d, 199c; Broholm, , Danmarks Bronzealder, II (1946), 222 and fig.Google Scholar; id., Danmarks Oldsager, IV (1953), fig. 129.
page 137 note 4 See especially Savory in PPS, 1948, 155–66Google Scholar, correcting Evans, Estyn (Antiquity, 1930, 157–72Google Scholar), whose view that the carp's-tongue type was evolved in the West Alpine culture-area has passed into a wide literature.
page 138 note 1 Sprockhoff, , Jungbronzezeitliche Hortfunde Norddeutschlands (1937), 57, Abb. 19Google Scholar.
page 138 note 2 Id., Niedersachsens Bedeutung (1942), 78–82, Abb. 64–6 and 69, 1–3.
page 138 note 3 Arch. Aeliana, 4, X (1933), pp. 199–205Google Scholar.
page 139 note 1 Loc. cit., pp. 203–4.
page 139 note 2 It contains also one positive misstatement of fact, which cannot pass unnoticed. Relying on an old illustration in Rygh (Norske Oldsager, fig. 103; reproduced in GZS as Taf. 24, 8) Sprockhoff has described the sword from Vaag in Norway (p. 44, top) as having a blade richly decorated down each side with opposed groups of semi-circles terminated at the upper end by stylized snakes' heads. That would be striking decoration indeed for any Hallstatt sword. In fact the ornament is executed not in the metal of the blade, but on the leather covering of the sheath, which is still preserved adhering to the blade. This is immediately apparent on inspection, but can readily be seen from photographs also.
page 139 note 3 Iron swords fall outside the scope of this study, and nothing further will therefore be said about them here.
page 139 note 4 Minden, Beenz, and Kirkesöby—in Appendix B. From the Low Countries, which are not included in the above figures, the Gentbrugge sword also goes the same way.
page 139 note 5 Kimmig, , UFK Baden (1940), pp. 103–4Google Scholar.
page 140 note 1 AuhV. v, Taf. 69, 1278. The large and distinctive conical bronze pommel shown on this particular piece is, however, only occasionally present.
page 140 note 2 An associated group (of uncertain nature) from Horst, near Hamburg, might also date from period V, but would, according to Sprockhoff, have been equally at home in VI; the evidence in that case was not therefore conclusive.
page 141 note 1 It will be noticed that I have already rejected the Kirkesöby sword as a ‘Hallstatt’ sword properly so called, and claimed it as British. That it has been directly influenced by the Hallstatt type, however, I regard as certain (supra p. 137); and it is therefore evidence that the Hallstatt sword had already appeared in the British Isles. At the same time it seems hardly likely that, leaving in South Germany a starting-point equidistant from both areas, the type should have arrived appreciably later in the North than in Britain.
page 141 note 2 It is only recently that Vogt has again questioned whether any significant part of Hallstatt C can be said to overlap with Montelius V—JSGU, XL (1950), 229Google Scholar. In view of the above, and of conclusions reached by Broholm on the Late Bronze Age in Denmark (Danmarks Bronzealder, III and IV (1946–9); and Danmarks Oldsager, IV (1953)), the onus of proof seems now to lie on those who share Vogt's scepticism.
page 141 note 3 GZS, p. 114, footnote.
page 141 note 4 Die Grundlagen der Hallstattperiode in Böhmen—with full German summary, pp. 246–80.
page 142 note 1 It is clearly not Ia; see Základy, fig. 3. In his list Sprockhoff does not distinguish between the two sub-types, but this example is marked on his map of la swords; it should appear, but does not, on the succeeding map of Ib swords.