A Strange Archaeological Artefact

Hi fellow fans of swords & archaeology!

A few years ago, my friend and fellow swordsman Ingo Petri who is an archaeologist, as well as an archaeo metallurgist, handed me an archaeological artefact, asking if I could make sense of its peculiar design. The piece he gave me was, in fact, an original Luristan Iron Mask Sword. It had been made at least 3000 years ago! The handle shape was indeed remarkable, to say the least. Sure, it was beautifully made – but was that really a functional and ergonomic weapon design?

Read about my insights in today’s newsletter. I hope you will enjoy it.

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Iron Swords in the Age of Bronze

As Ingo and his fellow researchers found out (here is their paper), these distinct bladed weapons were produced between 1650 BC and 800 BC in the region of Luristan in present day Iran. This was a time when elsewhere swords were still made of bronze, and continued to be made from this raw material for centuries to come. In fact, the earliest iron swords were by no means superior to bronze ones. Their blades were actually relatively soft, and smelting and forging techniques quite primitive.

More than 2.000 years would have to pass before the riddle of steel was solved for good. It is a little known fact that control of carbon content (carbon is what turns iron into steel), and the complex heat treatment of normalising, annealing, quenching and tempering that produces a flexible, resilient and hard enough blade, only became common practice in the course of the High Middle Ages.

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A Long Way

While heat treated steel blades do occur even earlier, the majority of e.g. Migration Era and Viking Age blades were not subject to advanced heat treatment. Instead, smiths used refined forging techniques that married the qualities of tough but soft iron (or rather low carbon steel) with hard but brittle high carbon steel. Archaeo metallurgists like Ingo can tell, because each step of heat treatment changes the crystalline structure of the steel, and thus experts can read the respective processes from a blade’s microstructure. And, as Ingo told me, control of carbon content and hardening by heat treatment did not become a standard before the 11th century. (If you want to learn more, I recommend this paper of his.)

It is also remarkable that early and high medieval sword blades were generally much softer than those of modern reproductions. Never-the-less, they were obviously fit for the job – but that is a topic for another newsletter.

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Why Iron?

So if the earliest iron swords were often inferior to bronze ones, why did the smiths of Luristan and their successors bother to make them in the first place?

The earliest iron objects – which were beads, not blades – were made from meteoritic iron, a rare raw material that literally came from the sky, and must have evoked all sorts of mystical associations. However, once smelting technologies had been developed, the abundance of iron ore on our planet could be made use of. Bronze is rare, iron is not. So suddenly, some armies consisted of many more warriors bearing metal weapons, which made a difference on the battlefield. (If you would like to read more on the history and pre-history of the sword, I recommend ‘The Perfect Sword’ which I reviewed in a previous newsletter.)

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Grasp it!

However, the awkward hilt design of Luristan swords raised the question if they actually made suitable weapons. The grip seems too short, and in contrast to later swords, the hilt is at right angles to the blade when seen from above. The protruding fittings are masterly crafted but do not look like they would allow for conveniently holding the sword. So many researchers believe Luristan swords were used in ritual, not in combat. But then again, most researchers lack practice in swordsmanship.

So, coming back to the start of this newsletter, I took the sword in my hand, closed my eyes, and played around with it. And – Eureka! What a fully functional and ingenious design this hilt turned out to be. It allows for easily and conveniently applying variations of all the grips that are familiar from medieval swordplay.

There is a reason why, in the English language, ‘to grasp’ is a synonym of ‘to understand’ (same in German, by the way, where we have ‘begreifen’ and ‘verstehen’).

I have created illustrations of all the various grips I found for the Luristan sword. Find them in my respective post.

See sword grips

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Thank you for your time and your interest.

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please recommend it to your friends. They can sign up here. This would be a great support for my work, thank you.

Yours,

Roland

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