Iron Age sword - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Sword
Sword
A sword is a bladed weapon used primarily for cutting or thrusting. The precise definition of the term varies with the historical epoch or the geographical region under consideration...

s made of iron
Iron
Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...

(as opposed to bronze

Bronze Age sword

Bronze Age swords appear from around the 17th century BC, in the Black Sea region and the Aegean, evolving out of the dagger. They are replaced by the Iron Age sword during the early part of the 1st millennium BC....

) appear from the Early Iron Age (c. 12th century BC), but do not become widespread before the 8th century BC.

Early iron swords were not comparable to later steel blades. The iron was not quench hardened although often containing sufficient carbon, but work-hardened just like bronze by hammering. This made them comparable or only slightly better in terms of strength and hardness to bronze swords. So they could still bend during use, rather than spring back into shape. But the easier production, and the better availability of the raw material allowed for larger scale production.

Eventually smith

Smith (metalwork)

A metalsmith, often shortened to smith, is a person involved in making metal objects. In contemporary use a metalsmith is a person who uses metal as a material, uses traditional metalsmithing techniques , whose work thematically relates to the practice or history of the practice, or who engages in...

s learned that by adding an amount of carbon

Carbon

Carbon is the chemical element with symbol C and atomic number 6. As a member of group 14 on the periodic table, it is nonmetallic and tetravalent—making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds...

(added during smelting

Smelting

Smelting is a form of extractive metallurgy; its main use is to produce a metal from its ore. This includes iron extraction from iron ore, and copper extraction and other base metals from their ores...

in the form of charcoal

Charcoal

Charcoal is the dark grey residue consisting of carbon, and any remaining ash, obtained by removing water and other volatile constituents from animal and vegetation substances. Charcoal is usually produced by slow pyrolysis, the heating of wood or other substances in the absence of oxygen...

) in the iron, they could produce an improved alloy (now known as steel

Steel

Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...

). By quenching and tempering, (quenching makes the steel hard and brittle, tempering removes the brittleness), swords could be made that would suffer much less damage, and would spring back into shape if bent. It took a long time however until this was done consistently, and even until the end of the early medieval period, many swords were still unhardened iron. Several different methods of swordmaking existed in ancient times, including, most famously, pattern welding

Pattern welding

Pattern welding is the practice in sword and knife making of forming a blade of several metal pieces of differing composition that are forge-welded together and twisted and manipulated to form a pattern. Often called Damascus steel, blades forged in this manner often display bands of slightly...

. Over time, different methods developed all over the world.

History

The Proto-Celtic Hallstatt culture

Hallstatt culture

The Hallstatt culture was the predominant Central European culture from the 8th to 6th centuries BC , developing out of the Urnfield culture of the 12th century BC and followed in much of Central Europe by the La Tène culture.By the 6th century BC, the Hallstatt culture extended for some...

(8th century BC) figured among the early users of iron swords. During the Hallstatt period, the same swords were made both in bronze and in iron. At the end of the Hallstatt period, around 600-500BC, swords were replaced with short daggers. The La Tene culture

La Tène culture

The La Tène culture was a European Iron Age culture named after the archaeological site of La Tène on the north side of Lake Neuchâtel in Switzerland, where a rich cache of artifacts was discovered by Hansli Kopp in 1857....

reintroduced the sword, which then very different from the traditional shape and construction from the Bronze Age and early Iron Age, and much more like the later swords that developed from them.

The iron versions of the Scythian/Persian Acinaces

Acinaces

The acinaces, also spelled akinakes or akinaka is a type of dagger or short sword used mainly in the first millennium BC in the eastern Mediterranean region, especially by the Medes, Scythians and Persians, then by the Greeks.The acinaces is of Scythian origin, but was made famous by the...

appears from ca. the 6th century BC. In Classical Antiquity

Classical antiquity

Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...

and the Parthian and Sassanid Empires in Iran, iron swords were common. The Greek xiphos and the Roman gladius

Gladius

Gladius was the Latin word for sword, and is used to represent the primary sword of Ancient Roman soldiers. Early ancient Roman swords were similar to those used by the Greeks. From the 3rd century BC, the Romans adopted swords similar to those used by the Celtiberians and others during the early...

are typical examples of the type, measuring some 60 to 70 cm. The late Roman Empire

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

introduced the longer spatha

Spatha

The spatha was a type of straight sword, measuring between , in use throughout first millennium AD Europe, and in the territory of the Roman Empire until about 600 AD. Later swords from 600 AD to 1000 AD are recognizable derivatives, though they are not spathae.The spatha was used in gladiatorial...

(the term for its wielder, spatharius

Spatharius

The spatharii or spatharioi were a class of Late Roman imperial bodyguards in the court in Constantinople in the 5th-6th centuries, later becoming a purely honorary dignity in the Byzantine Empire...

, became a court rank in Constantinople).

Chinese steel swords make their appearance from the 3rd century BC Qin Dynasty

Qin Dynasty

The Qin Dynasty was the first imperial dynasty of China, lasting from 221 to 207 BC. The Qin state derived its name from its heartland of Qin, in modern-day Shaanxi. The strength of the Qin state was greatly increased by the legalist reforms of Shang Yang in the 4th century BC, during the Warring...

, although earlier iron swords are also known from the Zhou dynasty

Zhou Dynasty

The Zhou Dynasty was a Chinese dynasty that followed the Shang Dynasty and preceded the Qin Dynasty. Although the Zhou Dynasty lasted longer than any other dynasty in Chinese history, the actual political and military control of China by the Ji family lasted only until 771 BC, a period known as...

. The Chinese Dao

Dao (sword)

Daois a category of single-edge Chinese swords primarily used for slashing and chopping , often called a broadsword in English translation because some varieties have wide blades. In China, the dao is known as one of the four major weapons, along with the gun , qiang , and the jian , and referred...

(刀 pinyin

Pinyin

Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...

dāo) is single-edged, sometimes translated as sabre

Sabre

The sabre or saber is a kind of backsword that usually has a curved, single-edged blade and a rather large hand guard, covering the knuckles of the hand as well as the thumb and forefinger...

or broadsword

Broadsword

Broadsword may refer to:*Broadsword , a military sword used by heavy cavalry during the 17th to early 19th centuriesIn more modern times, it has also been used to refer to:...

, and the Jian

Jian

The jian is a double-edged straight sword used during the last 2,500 years in China. The first Chinese sources that mention the jian date to the 7th century BCE during the Spring and Autumn Period; one of the earliest specimens being the Sword of Goujian.Historical one-handed versions have blades...

(劍 pinyin

Pinyin

jiàn) double edged.

Greek swords

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

terms for swords include:

xiphos ξίφος
makhaira
Makhaira
Makhaira is a term used by modern scholars to describe a type of ancient bladed weapon, generally a large knife with a slight backwards curve...

μάχαιρα
rhomphaia
Rhomphaia
The Rhomphaia was a close combat bladed weapon used by the Thracians as early as 400 BC. Most rhomphaias were polearms, featuring a straight or slightly curved single-edged blade attached to a pole that was considerably shorter than the blade. Some rhomphaias had short handles that extended to...

ῥομφαία: broadsword used by the Thracians
Thracians
The ancient Thracians were a group of Indo-European tribes inhabiting areas including Thrace in Southeastern Europe. They spoke the Thracian language – a scarcely attested branch of the Indo-European language family...
kopis
Kopis
The kopis was a sword with a forward-curving blade, primarily used as a tool for cutting meat, for slaughter and animal sacrifice, but also as a weapon....

κοπίς
aor ἄορ (Homeric Greek
Homeric Greek
Homeric Greek is the form of the Greek language that was used by Homer in the Iliad and Odyssey. It is an archaic version of Ionic Greek, with admixtures from certain other dialects, such as Aeolic Greek. It later served as the basis of Epic Greek, the language of epic poetry, typically in...

, poetic)
phasganon φάσγανον (Homeric Greek
Homeric Greek
Homeric Greek is the form of the Greek language that was used by Homer in the Iliad and Odyssey. It is an archaic version of Ionic Greek, with admixtures from certain other dialects, such as Aeolic Greek. It later served as the basis of Epic Greek, the language of epic poetry, typically in...

, poetic)
spathē σπάθη: the term for a sword blade, which was loaned into Latin as spatha
Spatha
The spatha was a type of straight sword, measuring between , in use throughout first millennium AD Europe, and in the territory of the Roman Empire until about 600 AD. Later swords from 600 AD to 1000 AD are recognizable derivatives, though they are not spathae.The spatha was used in gladiatorial...
engkhos ἔγχος: properly "lance
Lance
A Lance is a pole weapon or spear designed to be used by a mounted warrior. The lance is longer, stout and heavier than an infantry spear, and unsuited for throwing, or for rapid thrusting. Lances did not have tips designed to intentionally break off or bend, unlike many throwing weapons of the...

", but also "weapon" generically, and sometimes "sword" specifically (e.g. in Pindar
Pindar
Pindar , was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian described him as "by far the greatest of the nine lyric poets, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich...

)

Terms attested in Mycenaean Greek, thus establishing continuity from the Bronze Age sword

Bronze Age sword

, are xiphos (Mycenaean qsiphos, attested as qi-si-pe-e) and phasganon (Mycenaean phasgana, attested as pa-ka-na).

Celtic swords

With the spread of the La Tene culture

La Tène culture

at the 5th century BC, iron swords had completely replaced bronze all over Europe. These swords eventually evolved into, among others, the Roman

Roman Republic

The Roman Republic was the period of the ancient Roman civilization where the government operated as a republic. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, traditionally dated around 508 BC, and its replacement by a government headed by two consuls, elected annually by the citizens and...

gladius

Gladius

and spatha

Spatha

, and the Greek xiphos and the Germanic sword of the Roman Iron Age

Roman Iron Age

The Roman Iron Age is the name that Swedish archaeologist Oscar Montelius gave to a part of the Iron Age in Scandinavia, Northern Germany and the Netherlands....

, which evolves into the Viking sword

Viking sword

The Viking sword is a form of spatha, evolving out of the Migration Period sword in the 8th century, and evolving into the classical knightly sword in the 11th century with the emergence of larger crossguards...

in the 8th century.

There are two kinds of Celtic sword. The most common is the "long" sword, which usually has a stylised 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 generally made from two plates of iron, and suspended from a belt made of iron links. Some scabbards had front plates of bronze rather than iron. This was more common on Insular examples than elsewhere; only a very few Continental examples are known.

Steppe cultures

Swords with ring-shaped pommels were popular among the Sarmatians

Sarmatians

The Iron Age Sarmatians were an Iranian people in Classical Antiquity, flourishing from about the 5th century BC to the 4th century AD....

from the 2nd century BC to the 2nd century AD. They were about 50–60 cm in length, with a rarer "long" type in excess of 70 cm, in exceptional cases as long as 130 cm. A semi-precious stone was sometimes set in the pommel ring. These swords are found in great quantities in the Black Sea region and the Hungarian plain. They are similar to the akinakes used by the Persians and other Iranian peoples. The pommel ring probably evolves by closing the earlier arc-shaped pommel hilt which evolves out of the antenna type around the 4th century BC.

Stability

Polybius

Polybius , Greek ) was a Greek historian of the Hellenistic Period noted for his work, The Histories, which covered the period of 220–146 BC in detail. The work describes in part the rise of the Roman Republic and its gradual domination over Greece...

(2.33) reports that the Gauls

Gauls

The Gauls were a Celtic people living in Gaul, the region roughly corresponding to what is now France, Belgium, Switzerland and Northern Italy, from the Iron Age through the Roman period. They mostly spoke the Continental Celtic language called Gaulish....

at the Battle of Telamon

Battle of Telamon

The Battle of Telamon was fought between the Roman Republic and an alliance of Gauls in 225 BC. The Romans, led by the consuls Gaius Atilius Regulus and Lucius Aemilius Papus, defeated the Gauls, thus extending their influence over northern Italy....

(224 BC) had inferior iron swords which bent at the first stroke and had to be straightened with the foot against the ground. Plutarch

Plutarch

Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...

, in his life of Marcus Furius Camillus

Marcus Furius Camillus

Marcus Furius Camillus was a Roman soldier and statesman of patrician descent. According to Livy and Plutarch, Camillus triumphed four times, was five times dictator, and was honoured with the title of Second Founder of Rome....

, likewise reports on the inferiority of Gaulish iron, making the same claim that their swords bent easily. These reports have puzzled some historians, since by that time the Celts had a centuries long tradition of iron workmanship. In 1906 a scholar suggested that the Greek observers misunderstood ritual acts of sword-bending, which may have served to "decommission" the weapon. Such bent swords have been found among deposits of objects presumably dedicated for sacred purposes. The speculation has been repeated since. Radomir Pleiner, however, argues that "the metallographic evidence shows that Polybius was right up to a point. To judge from the swords examined in this survey, only one third could be described as conforming to the quality which he ascribed generally to Celtic swords. Even so, it is quite possible that even some of the better quality swords would have failed in battle." Nevertheless he argues that the classical sources are exaggerated. Plutarch's claim that Celtic swords would bend completely back is implausible, as only a slight bending would be likely. Pleiner also notes that metallurgical analysis performed on Celtic swords suggests that they were only work hardened and only very few were quench

Quench

In materials science, quenching is the rapid cooling of a workpiece to obtain certain material properties. It prevents low-temperature processes, such as phase transformations, from occurring by only providing a narrow window of time in which the reaction is both thermodynamically favorable and...

hardened, even though they frequently contain enough carbon to be hardened (in particular the swords made from Noric steel

Noric steel

Noric steel was a famously high quality steel from Noricum during the time of the Roman Empire.The proverbial hardness of Noric steel is expressed by Ovid: "...durior [...] ferro quod noricus excoquit ignis..." and it was largely used for the weapons of the Roman military.The iron ore was...

). Quench hardening takes the full advantage of the potential hardness of the steel, but leaves it brittle, prone to breaking. Quite probably this is because tempering

Tempering

Tempering is a heat treatment technique for metals, alloys and glass. In steels, tempering is done to "toughen" the metal by transforming brittle martensite or bainite into a combination of ferrite and cementite or sometimes Tempered martensite...

wasn't known. Tempering is heating the steel after quenching at a lower temperature to remove the brittleness, while keeping most of the hardness.

There is other evidence of long-bladed swords bending during battle from later periods. The Icelandic Eyrbyggja saga
Eyrbyggja saga
Eyrbyggja saga is one of the Icelanders' sagas. The name means the saga of the inhabitants of Eyrr, which is a farm on Snæfellsnes on Iceland. The name is slightly misleading as it deals also with the clans of Þórsnes and Alptafjörðr. The most central character is Snorri Þorgrímsson or Snorri goði...

, describes a warrior straightening his twisted sword underfoot in a manner similar to Polybius's account: "whenever he struck a shield, his ornamented sword would bend, and he had to put his foot on it to straighten it out". Peirce and Oakeshott in Swords of the Viking Age note that the potential for bending may have been built in to avoid shattering, writing that "a bending failure offers a better chance of survival for the sword's wielder than the breaking of the blade...there was a need to build a fail-safe into the construction of a sword to favor bending over breaking".

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).

External links

http://www.berkshirehistory.com/archaeology/iron_age_swords.html

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