women were at different times buried in Grave IV, and there is no telling how
many swords were deposited with the burial of each chief, but Harrell is certainly
justified in speaking of “the fetishization of the sword that developed through the
Shaft Grave period.”^96 Harrell suggested that by the end of the LH I period the
funeral of a leader may have been an occasion for his important followers to “give
back” to the deceased the ornate swords that the deceased had once bestowed upon
them.
The Type A rapier was evidently the most admired sword that could be given
or received. Noting that the Type A have intricate decorations and their successors
do not, Colin Macdonald suggested that the Type A were mostly imported from
the superb workshop at the Knossos palace, while later swords were made in the
Argolid by craftsmen who had limited experience in engraving or chasing bronze.^97
Although the Type A had a long history, going back to the MM II period in the
Aegean and to the end of the third millennium BCin south Caucasia, soon after
1600 BCthe military men in Greece devised a more reliable sword. The evolution
of the sword from Type A to Type B in Greece was just as rapid as its parallel
evolution in the Carpathian basin, where the Type A gave rise both to the Boiu
Griffzung and to the Apa Vollgriff, probably over the course of two generations.
The remarkable evolution of Aegean swords over the Late Bronze Age has been
shown in detail by Molloy (see Figure 6.1).^98
The first Type B rapiers were made early in the LH I period, and many were
deposited in the Shaft Graves. These rapiers, all of them shorter and some much
shorter than the Type A, had a tang extending through most of the haft and in
some specimens all the way to the pommel. By the beginning of LH II, ca. 1450
BC, swordsmiths in mainland Greece had made still more improvements and were
producing what Sandars classified as Type C swords. The Type C had “horned”
shoulders and a flanged tang, and was therefore a Griffzungenschwert. In the LM
II period (ca.1450–1400 BC) many of the Type C were buried with the warriors
in the warrior graves near the Knossos palace. Like their Type B predecessors the
Type C were certainly designed for combat.
Spears
The Shaft Graves show that along with swords, late in the MH period, came spears.
As noted in Chapter Three, prior to the Shaft Grave era the Greek mainland has
yielded only two metal spearheads: one from EH Lerna, and the other from MH
Sesklo.^99 The Lerna head was tanged, and the Sesklo head was “shoed.” In
contrast, Robert Avila catalogued almost 200 spearheads certainly from the
Mycenaean period. Almost all of these were socketed, a significant improvement
over the “shoed” (in Avila’s classification the shoed heads are Type I and the
socketed Type II). Some of the Type II spearheads were merely large. Avila’s
no. 11, from grave Alpha in Grave Circle B, was 37 cm long, and no. 16, from
Shaft Grave VI in Circle A, was 32 cm long. Other Type II spears, all from the
Grave Circles, were spectacular, resembling a pike or a sarissa.^100 With bronze
heads of 51 cm (no. 8), 53 cm (no. 9) and even 58 cm (no. 12), these spears were
196 Militarism in Greece