on our chronology.^130 The Sauerbrunn type originated in central Europe (the
eponymous sword was found in 1895 at Sauerbrunn, near Wiener Neustadt in
eastern Austria) and was especially to be found in Hungary. In Kemenczei’s
catalogue of Hungary’s Bronze Age swords and daggers the first sixty-three
entries are all Griffplatten weapons.^131 Many of the daggers date from the Early
Bronze Age and even the Chalcolithic period,^132 and it appears that at the end of
the Bz A2 or the beginning of the Bz B period central European founders simply
applied to rapiers the hilting technique that they had long been accustomed to use
for daggers. Pressed by the military class to produce rapiers, that is, metalworkers
began casting Sauerbrunns.
With an improvement in hilting the Sauerbrunn soon was replaced by the Boiu-
Keszthely rapier. Early examples of this type (the Boiu 1b) had a short and flat
tang that extended two or three cm into the hilt. The later examples had a lon -
ger tang, extending all the way to the pommel, and the tang was flanged, so that
organic plates could be inserted into the flanges.^133 The Boiu-Keszthely swords
are named for Boiu, the village in Transylvania where the type was first found,
and for Keszthely in western Hungary, where soon thereafter a very similar sword
was found in a tumulus burial. Although Boiu is in Transylvania, the type prob -
ably did not originate there. Judging by the find-spots, we would agree with J. D.
Cowen that the original center for the type was further to the west, in Hungary.^134
The Boiu had a secondary center, however, in northern Italy.^135 Stephan Foltiny,
who studied the evolution from the rapier to the slashing sword, counted twenty-
one early Boiu-Keszthely rapiers, coming from nineteen sites.^136 Eight of the
nineteen sites known to Foltiny are in northeast Italy, all in the Udine and Treviso
provinces (again, the recent finds at Olmo di Nogara have extended the Boiu
zone into the northern reaches of the Terremare culture). The early Boiu rapiers
date to the Bz B period, and Foltiny placed them more precisely near the
transition from the Bz B 1 to the Bronze B 2 period.^137 We are safe in assuming
that they were to be seen in northeast Italy in the first half of the fifteenth century
BC. The later Boiu-Keszthely rapiers, in both northern Italy and Hungary, are
Griffzungenschwerter, and can be dated to the fourteenth century BC.^138
Of Foltiny’s eight find-spots for the well-developed Boiu-Keszthely, three are
in Italy (two of the spots, Melma and Quinto, are near Treviso). The sword’s
improvement continued in northern Italy as it did in Hungary, the Boiu rapier
evolving into the Sprockhoff Ia slashing sword during the Bz C period. Six of the
Sprockhoff Ia swords have been found in northern Italy.^139 The redoubtable Naue
II, with a cutting blade “leaf-shaped” in order to increase its weight toward the
tip, may even have originated in northern Italy.^140
Spears in northern Italy
The votive deposit made ca. 1200 BCin the Tartaro river, at Pila del Brancon near
Verona, contained not only at least ten swords but also at least fifty-one spears,
topped with socketed bronze spearheads. Anna Bietti Sestieri and her colleagues
suggested that the defeated force consisted of at least ten swordsmen, each
164 Militarism in temperate Europe