Edged Weapons 227
1.4.1.4 Long Seax (‘Langsax’: EIV.D)
The term long seax is not strandardized in the literature, since various met-
ric boundaries have been used by different authors. The blade of long seaxes
are usually longer than 50–60 cm and narrower than 4–5 cm.222 According to
the definition used here, long seaxes have a blade length of more than 50 cm,
while their blade width is narrower than 4 cm (map 39, fig. 84). The tip of the
blade is in the midline of the blade or on the line of the edge. The scabbard
of these long seaxes can be decorated with small buttons stamped of copper
alloy sheets, as in the case of the seax from grave No. 144 at Zalakomár–Lesvári
dűlő.223 This is the only example with decorated scabbard in the Carpathian
Basin, though this type of decoration is well known from Merovingian and
early Carolingian cemeteries.224
The long seaxes appeared at the end of the 7th century in the late Merovingian
cemeteries of Germany. The internal typo-chronology of long seaxes is based
on metric data,225 and later the grooves on the blade were also suggested as
a chronological attribute.226 The blade form was also laterly used as a basis
for making chronological distinctions: symmetric blades being regarded as
being earlier than assymmetric ones.227 An alternative method of dating the
222 Joachim Werner (1955, 9) defined long seaxes by their length, which included the length
of the hilt, defining every single-edged blades over the length of 60 cm as a long seax.
Kurt Böhner (1958, 144) distinguished these weapons based on the form of the blade: only
weapons with their tip on the line of the edge were identified as long seaxes. Hermann
Ament (1976, 80) emphasised the narrower blade, while according to the definiton of
Frauke Stein (1967, 182), long seaxes were edged weapons with a length between 66 and
88 cm and a curved back. Wolfgang Hübener (1989, 75) even distinguished a type called
‘langsaxähnliche Waffen’ (weapons similar to long seaxes), the blade length of which is
shorter than 50 cm, while Jo Wernard (1998, 771) used a metric border of 48 cm.
223 Szőke 1982–83, 70–72, 1. kép; Szőke 2000, 494, Taf. 12.
224 Dannheimer 1974, 131–140; Buchta-Hohm 1996, 41.
225 According to the view of Wolfgang Hübener (1989, 75) the blade length of long seaxes was
rising constantly, while their width decreased.
226 Frauke Stein (1967, 12) dated the seax blade with one groove to an earlier period than that
of those with double-grooves.
227 Jörg Kleemann (2002, 107–109) dated symmetric blades (his 1st type) to the Saxonian I–
IInd phase, and asymmetric blades with curved back to the II–IVth phase. This system
was improved upon by Ralph Pöllath (2002, 169), who distinguished four based-variants of
long seaxes: LS 1 symmetric blade, LS 2 symmetric blade, longer than 60 cm, LS 3 assym-
metric blade, and the tip closer to the blade, LS 4 the edge is a straight line, while the back
is curved. These minute distinctions, however, have not been verified by further research,
since the change in blade form was more protracted and complex, incorporating several
transitional forms.