sword
- Museum number
- 1989,0302.2
- Description
-
An iron sword, about 957 mm long but lacking the tip. It was bent and twisted, probably at the time of discovery. The blade is flattish lenticular in section, 49 mm wide at the top and now about 800 mm long (and very nearly complete). Little of the original surface of the blade survives, but where it does, the edges (8-10 mm) are highly polished and the intervening surface is covered with punch marks, a crude chagrinage. Near the top of the blade are three impressions of the same stamp: two on the one face, between 55 and 105 mm below the top of the blade; one on the other, between 68 and 85 mm below the top. It depicts an animal, perhaps a pig with a very thin body. The tang is rectangular in section, cracked on one side and burred on top. There are mineral-preserved organics from the handle, with a single straight break 78 mm from the top on one side only (the back). A thin and straight copper-alloy hilt end has been about 55 mm long (one end is now bent) and is 16.5 mm wide in the middle. The shoulders are shaped, convex and then straight. No hint of a scabbard survives.With one bag of wood fragments.
- Dimensions
-
Length: 800 millimetres (blade)
-
Length: 957 millimetres
-
Width: 49 millimetres
- Curator's comments
-
From I. Meadows 'Nene Valley Archaeological Survey: The Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age':
"A substantial deposit of metalwork [was] deposited into one course of the River Nene at Orton Meadows. The metalwork included swords, spearheads and currency bars that had been bent, perhaps ‘ritually killed’ (Stead 1984). These objects were found during gravel extraction in a channel near to a pair of Bronze Age round barrows, perhaps reflecting some continuity of respect for the general location. As a practice the deposition of metalwork in water is also more a Bronze Age trait than Iron Age although significant deposits of both periods are known. The recovered objects comprised two La Tène I swords, a La Tène III sword in a copper alloy scabbard, a spearhead with engraved decoration, seven complete currency bars (additional fragments were also found), a rare ladle perhaps used in wine consumption and a latch lifter of La Tène III style. Whilst the objects span a 400-year period, and although some could have arrived in the water accidentally, the currency bars were deposited in a single event. That many of the pieces showed damage that was probably deliberate would also suggest the conscious separating of them from this world. No other deposits of metalwork have come from the Nene."
Stead, I. 1984. 'Iron Age metalwork from Orton Meadows [Cambridgeshire: currency bars, swords, ladle, etc - dredger finds]' Durobrivae 9, pp.6-7
-
Stead 2006
Found in 1980 during gravel extraction from an old course of the River Nene, as were 3 swords now held in Peterborough Museum, 1981,1202.1-2 and 1989,0302.1 and 3. Stead 1984a and 1984b: 47-9; Lang 1987:70, no. 2; Jope 2000:39 and 244, pl. 52:g.
- Location
- Not on display
- Department
- Britain, Europe and Prehistory
- Registration number
- 1989,0302.2