Spathae tangs... long vs short

[Medicus matt]

Ah, I see what you're getting at Stephen. It'd be worth doing a comparison between the Illerup blades and the ones from Ejsbøl I, where the deposits are 4th/5th century and the majority of the spatha blades still look like the blades of Roman manufacture of a century before. I don't know if it's been established that the Ejsbøl blades were imported from the fabricae, but they certainly look it when comparted to the known blades from Illerup. Other Roman material has been found in the site. No 'classic' hilt fittings were found at the site, but quite a few of the Behmer type 2s and 5s survive. A quick pass over the find report indicates that the vast majority of tangs are obviously too short to accomodate the spherical/hemi-spherical hilt furniture but I'll have to get a ruler out and measure them (although when I measured one that caught my eye, it turned out to be at least 2cm shorter than the shortest classic Illerup tang). None of them exhibit the small nipple- shaped cap on the top of the pommel that seems to be a feature of most of the Illerup classic pommels.
I'm afraid all my literature focuses on North Western Europe; England, Germany and Scandinavia (with some Crimean) , so any evidence I have to hand is going to be skewed towards them, although given the lack of grave goods in Christian burials, I don't think you're going to find much evidence for the 'Romance' provinces.