almost all of the early swords come from the far north. They come, that is, from
the Po valley and also from Italy’s far northeast: the Veneto and Friuli-Venezia
Giulia regions, where Venetic was once spoken.
Most of the bronze swords found since Bianco Peroni’s publication again come
from the north. Forty-three have recently come from a Bronze Age cemetery at
Olmo di Nogara, near Verona, and at least ten more from the nearby votive deposit
in the Tartaro river, at Pila del Brancon.^125 The deposit is dated ca. 1200 BC,
but the forty-three swords from the cemetery—most of them were placed along
the thigh or across the breast of the deceased—are much earlier than the Pila del
Brancon deposit. Luciano Salzani and his colleagues identified three phases in the
Olmo di Nogara necropolis, the first two phases belonging to the Middle and
the third belonging to the Late Bronze Age. Salzani equates the first phase with
the Bz B2 and Bz C1 periods in central Europe. In graves of this phase, which
should be dated ca. 1450–1350 BCon our chronology, the excavators found many
swords of the Sauerbrunn and Boiu type.^126 Salzani’s summary statement about
the graves of all three phases at Olmo di Nogara is worth noting: “The figure of
the warrior is that which emerges most clearly from an analysis of the male grave
goods, and his role is exalted by the deposition of a sword.”^127 The swords come
from inhumation graves of adult males, several of whom were old.^128
Almost half of the bronze swords from Italy (nos. 85–271 in Bianco Peroni)
are sturdy Griffzungenschwerter. Many of these date from the Late Bronze Age
and the Final Bronze Age, and many of them come from the Terremare region.
Some of the Griffzungen swords, however, and most of the Griffplatten and
Griffdorn swords date from the Middle Bronze Age. Of special interest are those
swords that date early in the MBA, and they come not from the Po valley but
from the Venetic northeast. In Bianco Peroni’s catalogue, the earliest swords in
Italy are seven Sauerbrunn rapiers. These are poorly hilted Griffplattenschwerter,
in which the blade—beautified with elaborate incisions—is topped by a flat grip
plate for insertion into a slot in the organic hilt. The hilt, which very likely was
also elaborately decorated, was then attached to the plate by four or six rivets.
The result was a hilting hardly superior to that of the Type A rapier (the Type A
had a short tang, and the Sauerbrunn had no tang at all), and far below the hilting
of a Griffzung sword. Peter Schauer found it “amazing” how unsatisfactory
was the hilting of the Sauerbrunn and he pointed out the many grip plates on
which the rivet holes were torn through, a clear sign that the blade had come
loose from the organic hilt.^129 Because of the torn rivet holes, one must suppose
that although these rapiers were clearly status symbols they must also have been
used, whether in combat or in swordplay.
Although Sauerbrunn swords have now been found in the Olmo di Nogara
cemetery, all of the Italian Sauerbrunns known to Bianco Peroni came from the
Treviso province, so not far from the pass that leads through the eastern Alps from
Austria. Related closely to swords in the Carpathian basin, they may have come
along the route now traversed by Austria’s Süd Autobahn (A2), which runs from
Graz and Klagenfurt to Italy’s province of Udine. The Italian Sauerbrunns were
dated by Bianco Peroni to the beginning of the Bz B period, or soon after 1500 BC
Militarism in temperate Europe 163