Figs. 226 and 227. Schaeffer concluded that the Lankaran rapiers dated ca. 1500–1450
BC, and were degenerate copies of swords from Mycenae.
178 Sandars 1961, p. 19.
179 Bouzek 1985, p. 35.
180 Hiller 1991, pp. 212–213.
181 Kushnareva 1997, p. 110.
182 Abramishvili 2001, updated in Abramishvili 2010. Six of the rapiers, along with the
Saduga sword, are shown in Taf. 2, p. 8, in Abramishvili 2001. The seventh rapier,
found by Yerevan archaeologists in the excavation of a kurgan near the village of
Maisian in Armenia, is reported on pp. 5–6 but not shown.
183 Abramishvili 2010, p. 172. For a more skeptical view of Aegean-Caucasus connec -
tions see Levan Tchabaschvili 2009. Tchabaschvili argues that a connection between
the Aegean and the southern Caucasus is not indicated by the obvious similarities
between the bronze kettle found in 1938 in Trialeti Kurgan XV and the kettle found
in Shaft Grave IV at Mycenae. The similarities can as easily be explained, Tchabasch -
vili believes, on the assumption that both kettles were inspired by an original from
a third place, such as northern Mesopotamia or the Levant. Such a tertium quid, of
course, has not yet been found.
184 Abramishvili 2001, p. 5; for Abramishvili’s drawing of the Saduga dirk see his
Taf. 2, no. 1.
185 Rubinson 1977; for the earlier dating of MB Transcaucasia see Edens 1995. In personal
correspondence (March 21, 2016) Rubinson tells me that in view of the many carbon
dates she now would raise the dates in her 1977 publication.
186 Abramishvili 2001, p. 3, acknowledges that “it is difficult... to determine termini
ante quos both for the first and second phases,” but suggests that MB I in Trialeti
may have begun toward the end of the 3rd millennium and that MB II should be
placed in the 19th century BC.
187 Abramishvili 2010, p. 172:
Taking into account all of the aforementioned arguments, the richest kurgans
of the second phase of the Trialeti Middle Bronze Age Culture, such as Kurgans
V, XVII, XXIX and of Karashamb, should fall roughly within the two last
centuries of the third millennium BC.188 Badalyan, Avetisyan and Smith 2009, p. 66.
189 See Trifonov’s Abbildung 5, at p. 171 in Fansa and Burmeister 2004.
190 As reported on July 13, 2010, at http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/details/51219/, accessed
January 19, 2017, a website hailing the importance of Armenia in the beginning of
civilization. For a brief mention of the Nerkin Naver rapier see Simonyan and
Manaseryan 2013, p. 183.
191 Abramishvili 2010, pp. 172–173.
192 Abramishvili 2001, p. 5.
193 See Abramishvili 2001, Taf. 1, for drawings of the hilts of seven swords, suggesting
a “chronological sequence of possible development of the earliest rapiers of Trans -
caucasia, Anatolia and the Aegean.”
194 On the stagnation of sword types in south Caucasia after the Type A see Abramishvili
2001, p. 1: “Regarding the Transcaucasian rapier, there is no evidence traced in the
region for further development of this type of weapon.”
108 Warfare in Western Eurasia