- Museum number
- ML.2395
- Description
-
Iron sword corroded into the remains of its iron, bronze and wood scabbard. An old restoration, with plaster and wire, has been dismantled and the piece is now in four main parts with some smaller fragments (nine in total). It is 440 mm long, including the chape, but one of the breaks does not join precisely and most of the tang is missing. The blade would have been about 410 mm long and 28 mm wide, but its surface is obscured by the sheath and corrosion products. There is some cross-grain from the hilt end, and a high (8 mm) campanulate shape in the corrosion products. The scabbard is now about 410 mm long (broken below the mouth) and about 32 mm wide. The front plate is of sheet bronze covering wood, and the bronze overlaps an iron back plate. There is no trace of a suspension loop. The cast bronze chape, tubular with an anchor-terminal, is attached to the scabbard by a single bronze rivet just above the anchor. 45 mm long and 32 mm wide at the bottom, it has a groove round the top of the tube and a broad deep groove under the anchor.
- Dimensions
-
Length: 410 millimetres (blade; approx.)
-
Length: 45 millimetres (chape)
-
Length: 525 millimetres (original)
-
Length: 410 millimetres (scabbard; approx.)
-
Length: 440 millimetres
-
Width: 28 millimetres (blade; approx.)
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Width: 32 millimetres (chape)
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Width: 32 millimetres (scabbard; approx.)
- Curator's comments
- Stead and Rigby 1999
Charpy (1995a, 14), using nineteenth-century illustrations, gives the original length as 525 mm.
Findspot: St-Lumier-la-Populeuse 'près du Château de Bussemont' (Marne).
Found in 1896 during the construction of a road called 'Chemin du Gué de la Garenne' (Morel, L., 1897b, communication (St-Lumier-la-Populeuse) RCB, 2nd ser. 9, 462). Now fully published by Charpy (Charpy, J.-J., 1995a, The Late Hallstatt burial at St-Lumier-la-Populuese (Marne) and the problem of Jogassian daggers in Raferty, B., Megaw, V. and Rigby, V., 1995, ‘Sites and Sights of the Iron Age’ Oxford, 13-30) with reference to one of the unpublished plates (p. 21).
The grave contained ML.2395-ML.2400.
Context: Swords and Scabbards; Short swords and their scabbards; Hallstatt D.
Most short swords have blades more than 350 mm long, and those in the Morel Collection have very narrow blades (28-35 mm), though wider pieces also occur in Champagne (cf. Stead, I.M., 1983, La Tène swords and scabbards in Champagne, ‘Germania’ (61), 487-510, fig. 2).
Hallstatt D: The scabbards have tubular chapes with anchor-shaped terminals. The type is found at Les Jogasses (graves 82 and 192), along with tubular chapes with more developed terminals (graves 22 and 28), and is published in detail by Charpy (Charpy, J.-J., 1995a, The Late Hallstatt burial at St-Lumier-la-Populuese (Marne) and the problem of Jogassian daggers in Raferty, B., Megaw, V. and Rigby, V., 1995, ‘Sites and Sights of the Iron Age’ Oxford, 13-30).
- Location
- Not on display
- Department
- Britain, Europe and Prehistory
- Registration number
- ML.2395
