quite like those of the rapiers: it has a high midrib and is hilted with a single rivet
hole in the tang. It was discovered in 1971, by the Kakheti Archaeological
Expedition, in Kurgan 2 on the Saduga plain. Elgudzha Gogadze, who excavated
the kurgan and wrote a book on the periodization and genesis of the many Trialeti
kurgans, dated Kurgan 2 on the Saduga plain to Phase I of the Trialeti Middle
Bronze Culture: 2000–1800 BC, on his chronology, but now dated considerably
earlier by specialists.^184
In fact, the absolute dates of all phases of the Trialeti Middle Bronze Age are
now placed much higher than they once were. Karen Rubinson, in her 1977 study
of the chronology of the Middle Bronze Age kurgans at Trialeti, set the region’s
MB II period at 1850–1700 BC. On the basis of calibrated carbon dates Christopher
Edens argued for a much earlier date than either Gogadze or Rubinson proposed:
the entire MB sequence in the south Caucasus began in the middle rather than at
the end of the third millennium BC.^185 In his 2001 publication Abramishvili
placed the Trialeti MB II period in the nineteenth century BC.^186 Now he has raised
that chronology considerably, placing most of the MB II period before 2000 BC.^187
As seen by the Project ArAGATS collaborators, “[c]omparison of radiocarbon
determinations from the Trialeti-Vanadzor complexes... suggest that the Middle
Bronze II phase spanned the period from the twenty-second to eighteenth centuries
B.C.”^188 Even more radically, Viktor Trifonov would put all phases of the Trialeti
culture before 2000 BC.^189
Yet another tin bronze rapier in southern Caucasia has recently been reported
and this one may be still earlier than the seven described by Abramishvili. In 2010
Simonyan reported finding at Nerkin Naver a rapier in a grave that he dates to
the last quarter of the third millennium BC. It is also reported that isotopic analysis
shows that the rapier’s copper came from mines near Alaverdi, in the Lori
province along Armenia’s border with Georgia.^190
In the lands south of the Caucasus the owners of rapiers were not kings, but
neither were they commoners. According to Abramishvili, the seven rapiers he
published came “exclusively from medium-size kurgan graves that apparently
belonged to a certain level of the elite; contrarily the ordinary ‘soldiers,’ as shown
on the Karashamb goblet, were equipped with daggers, spears and shields.”^191 For
whatever else they were intended, the rapiers were obviously meant for display:
during their lifetime the men buried in the Talysh and Trialeti kurgans were proud
to go about girded with a long bronze rapier. In a kurgan in the Mravaltskali valley
the excavators found bits of gold at the tang of the rapier, indicating that the organic
hilt had been sheathed with gold leaf.^192 Although serving to display the owner’s
status, the rapiers may not have been entirely dress or ceremonial pieces. Several
of the blades are nicked on the blade or bent at the tip, and at least three of the
tangs are broken, suggesting that the rapiers had been damaged either in combat
or in swordplay.
Although absolute dates for the south Caucasian rapiers are a matter for special -
ists to debate and decide, as more carbon dates for associated organic material
become available, to a generalist it is becoming clear enough that the south Cau -
ca sian rapiers predate those from the Aegean. The argument from typology also
Warfare in Western Eurasia 95