Celtic sword
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The sword of the Iron Age Celts evolved directly out of the Bronze Age sword, via early types of the Hallstatt culture from the 8th century BC, reaching their classical shape in the La Tene culture (5th to 1st centuries BC). With the Celtic expansion of the 5th century BC, iron swords became common all over Europe, evolving into regional types including the Roman gladius and spatha, and the Greek xiphos and eventually into the Roman Iron Age Germanic sword.
There are two kinds of Celtic sword. The most common is the "long" sword, which usually has an abstract anthropomorphic hilt made from organic material, such as wood, bone, or horn. These swords also usually had an iron plate in front of the guard that was shaped to match the scabbard mouth. The second type is a "short" sword with either an abstract or a true anthropomorphic hilt of copper alloy.
Scabbards were made from two plates of iron, and suspended from a belt made of iron links.
Polybius (2.33) reports that the Gauls at the Battle of Telamon (224 BC) had inferior iron swords which bent at the first stroke and had to be straightened with the foot against the ground (a practice also known from the Eyrbyggja saga). Plutarch (Camillus) likewise reports on the inferiority of Gaulish iron. These reports have puzzled historians, since by that time the Celts had a centuries long tradition of iron workmanship.
[edit] Literature
- C. R. Cartwright, Janet Lang, British Iron Age Swords And Scabbards, British Museum Press (2006), ISBN 0714123234.
- Andrew Lang, Celtic Sword Blades, in Man, Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (1907).
- J. M. de Navarro, The Finds from the Site of La Tène: Volume I: Scabbards and the Swords Found in Them, London: The British Academy, Oxford University Press (1972).
- Radomir Pleiner, The Celtic Sword, Oxford: Clarendon Press (1993).
- Graham Webster, A Late Celtic Sword-Belt with a Ring and Button Found at Coleford, Gloucestershire, Britannia, Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies (1990).
