Origins And Cultural Contacts 345
by János Győző Szabó who regarded them as weapons, though he rejected any
relationship to seaxes.294
Erik Szameit studied seaxes from Avar-age burials in his paper on Carolingian
weapons from Austria. He described their main distribution as in the Vienna
Basin and dated them to the second half of the 7th and the 8th century. He
regarded some of them as Avar copies of Frankish products.295 Seaxes are
treated as Carolingian imports in more recent Austrian research.296
Béla Miklós Szőke observed the popularity of the seaxes in the Late Avar
period (8th–9th century), and argued that they were not unknown to the
Avars, despite some being western imports which suggests that such weapons
were suitable for the fighting techniques of the Avars.297
3.4 Chronological Problems of Seaxes and the Difficulties
of Chronological Synchronisation
The chronology of Avar seaxes is significant not only for weapon research but
for the whole periodisation of the Avar Age. The chronology of these weapons
will be elaborated on in relation to south Germany as a basis for wider align-
ments, as their dating in this region is of great importance.
The chronological schemes of both the Late Merovingian and Early
Carolingian periods are largely similar in describing the typological develop-
ment of seax blades, with only minor differences, and it is generally agreed that
the chronological boundary between broad and long seaxes was at the end of
the 7th and beginning of the 8th century,298 around 680. However, the long
294 Szabó 1966, 50; Szabó 1968, 40.
295 Szameit 1987, 164.
296 Falko Daim (1998, 108–109) treated seaxes as imports and used them to determine chrono-
logical alignments.
297 In spite of the popularity of seaxes in Avar cemeteries, double-edged swords were mainly
used in Moravia, the Eastern Alps, Slavonia and Dalmatia (Szőke 1992a, 95; Szőke 1999,
85). Szőke first linked the appearance of seaxes to events at the end of the 8th century
(Carolingian wars) (Szőke – Vándor 1982–83, 73–74) but later noted that these weapons
were already in use during the 7th century in the Zala valley (Szőke 2002; Szőke 2007, 141).
298 Kurt Böhner (1958, 22, 31. 33) dated narrow seaxes to his II–IIIrd phase, the broad seaxes
to the IVth phase (7th century) and long seaxes to the Vth phase (first half of the 8th
century). Ursula Koch (1977, 107) dated the appearence of light broad seaxes to the 4th
phase of the Schretzheim cemetery (590/600–620/30), while she dated the heavy vari-
ants to the 5th phase (620/630–650/60) (Koch 1977, 29. 107). The first appearence of long
seaxes was dated by the belt-sets of honeycomb ornament to the years 670/80s. These
seaxes remained in used until the beginning of the 9th century (Koch 1995, 190–194).
Frauke Stein (1967, 110) distinguished three groups based on weapon combinations. She