Celtiberian swords

[Jesper D]

Hello all,
New to these forums I'm afraid, so pls be patient with me :mrgreen:

Got a lot of questions that I hope that someone can answer.
1. Was celtiberian/iberian cultures not at all influenced by the la tene culture? Was this due to the iberian(urnfield?hellenistic?) and vascones(non-celtic?) physically stopping the spread to the central and western celts(urnfield, halstatt)?

2.Apart from good iron and workmanship what set the celtiberian leaf-shaped short sword apart from say a standard xiphos? Width and different leaf-shapes yes? Better thrusting characteristics? Can't really understand why a roman would be impressed by the celtiberian sword unless it was purely a workmanship, metal quality issue they commented on not the blade-shape itself.

3. Why would not the earlier iron age eastern cultures, "anatolians", greeks, phoenicians have access to at least as good smiths and iron etc as the celtiberians?

I would be very interested in any photos of celtiberian sword hilts from 600BC-200BC! The pommel with the two short "bulbs"(well antennae..) seem to have persisted throughout this period. Any references to differing pommels would be very interesting.

[Antonius Lupus]

Text is in Spanish, but it has many pics.

http://gladius.revistas.csic.es/index.p ... e/view/2/2

I hope Thersites joins this thread.

P.S. The Vascones were not Celts.

[Jesper D]

Hey,
Thanks for replying
My Basque friends would never let me believe that the vascones were celtic hock:
They were surrounded by celts(well urnfield and halstatt cultures) I seem to remember and the origin of the basque ppl seem to be quite controversial to say the least(lets not go there...). That is why I added a question mark after (non-celtic?). Also there is the question of ethnicity vs culture transmission. What would you call a basque living in a halstatt dominated culture?

Adobe says the pdf-file you linked to is corrupt and beyond repair. I do understand a little spanish so I would like to have a look at the file...

Cheers,
Jesper

[Antonius Lupus]

The link works fine in my PC. Let us try Plan B:

http://gladius.revistas.csic.es/index.p ... sue/view/1

2nd article, Las primeras producciones de antenas de la meseta. Patrones de influencia y desarrollo morfológico de las espadas de tipo Echauri/Quesada II, by Gustavo García Jiménez.


You can find more information, in English, here:

http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/celtic/ekeltoi/ ... io_6_2.pdf


About La Tene culture coming into Navarre, this may be of interest:

http://membres.lycos.fr/jolle/INDICE1.HTM

Go to the La cultura de La Tene link.

[Mythos_Ruler]

I remember reading something about the possibility that the techniques used by the Iberians for their swords (Toledo Steel?) unbeknownst to them laced the steel with carbon nanotubes, which we all know are extremely strong. I know this is the case with Syrian steel and the Japanese katana blade. Perhaps I may be wrong about this.

[Jesper D]

What version of acrobat reader have you got? I have tried to open that article before with the same result.

Yes I have read that article in e-keltoi. It mentions bell beaker culture and urnfield culture, but not a word regarding halstatt or la tene, except a grave find of 42 la tene swords. I'm left wondering whether la tene culture actually penetrated into the iberian peninsula or whether swords like these are imports.

Arrrgh, why can't we all just write in one language mrgreen:

If you can open that gladius article, would you mind sending it to me? :oops:

I do not know whether steel production was actually a bullet proof process around 200bc, I have heard that the quality of the steel was very dependent on the iron ore and that only a few mines could produce the ore quality needed for good steel. It seems to me that the ore accessible to the celtiberians might have been of that quality. But other mines would have been accessible, steel from the noricum mines for example. So romans should have met celts wielding excellent steel swords previous to the second punic war, no?

Cheers,
Jesper

[Antonius Lupus]

My translation of "choice" paragraphs:

Unos nuevos pueblos indoeuropeos, los llamados galos, penetraron en la Península hacia el 500 a.C. Aunque la cultura Hallstattica perduró, los galos dejan abundantes rastros de su penetración. La toponimia nos muestra su paso por Aragón con nombres como el río Gallegos y el río Arva, ciudades como Mallén, Gallur, Mogallón, Munebrega, Gallocanta, Forum Gallorum, Galicum, Gorum, Arcobriga etc... y otros numerosos topónimos menos conocidos. Con los galos penetro la cultura de la Tène.

No parece que la penetración de los galos afectara demasiado a la zona Navarra. Quedó bastante circunscrita a la zona aragonesa y al Valle del Ebro Central. Su incidencia en Navarra no impidió que la cultura de Hallstatt (en una fase que llamaremos Post-Hallstattica) pudiera mantenerse aun algún tiempo.

Hacia el 400 a.C. se llevo a cabo la iberización del Valle del Ebro. La extensión de los iberos, cultural sobre todo al principio, parece haber derivado después en una sociedad militar que, formando grupos confederados, pretende extender sus territorios (en las pinturas de los iberos solo aparecen guerreros) y alcanzan la zona de Navarra como veremos en el próximo capitulo.

New Indoeuropean peoples, called Gauls, made it into the (Iberian) Peninsula circa 500 BC. Although Hallstatt culture remained, the Gauls left many traces of their inroad. Place-names show us their trail thru Aragon with names like the rivers Gallegos and Arva, towns like Mallén, Gallur, Mogallón, Munebrega, Gallocanta, Forum Gallorum, Galicum, Gorum, Arcobriga, etc... and other less well-known toponyms. With the Gauls came La Tene culture.

It does not seem that the Gaulish inroad made much impact in Navarre. It only affected Aragon and the Central Ebro Valley. Its incidence in Navarra did not prevent Hallstatt culture (in a stage we will call post-Hallstatt) to remain for sometime yet.

Towards 400 BC the Ebro Valley was Iberisized. The expanse of the Iberians, mainly cultural at first, looks like it later became a militarized society that, making confoedarate groups, tries to widen their lands (in the graphics of the Iberians only warriors show up) and reach Navarre as we will see in the new chapter.




Was this Iberian expansion what stopped La Tene culture from going further into the rest of Iberia?

[Jesper D]

Hey, thank you very much for that translation! exactly what I was looking for. The website didn't mention the source of this information did it?

I didnt know that the gauls came as far as the ebro valley, I have read that the iberians blocked the la tene cultures transmission. I wish I could remember the source of that. I'm just wondering about the western border... I didnt think the iberians ever dominated the whole northern front(just northeast and central), so I wonder who or what stopped the gauls(and the iberians) along the northwest border. Vascones? :mrgreen: (my own version of sea peoples hehe)

I also seem to remember that the iberians was under the influence of some kind of hellenistic urnfield culture, influenced by the greek colonies along the coast. Can you correct me on this one, it seems rather unlikely that late, but what do I know...

Thanks again,
Jesper

[Antonius Lupus]

Another link about swords by Fernando Quesada.

More information in the links on the left. Two of the articles are in English.

http://www.ffil.uam.es/equus/warmas/index.htm

[Jesper D]

Hey,
Thanks for that link, it was really helpful. I'm going to download and have a look at those articles tomorrow.

What I'm specifically looking for is the intemediaries between the roman gladius hispaniensis and the spanish antropomorpic shortsword(or dagger). I presume that these were originally celtiberian intepretations of the gallic la tene swords with 50-60cm leaf-shaped blades and with some kind of mixture of the gallic hilt designs and the celtiberian ones. I'd like to have these swords confirmed, do they exist and what does the hilts look like?

All the longer celtiberian swords I have seen have parallell edges and not leaf-shaped blades...

I want to have a historical correct replica made of these intemediary swords, assuming I can get my hands on a photo or a drawing.

Cheers,
Jesper

[Trojan_horse]

Well, the Ebro valley is a large place. To the north of the valley were the Vascones who were there before the first Hallstatt Celts arrived in the 9th century BC and are still there today as the Basque people. To the south of them are the Iberian tribes such as Ilercavones and south through Edetanos, Contestanos and as far as Bastetanos to modern Almunecar, east of Malaga. The Le Tene Celts didn’t make any cultural impact to note in these regions.
The Gauls did settle and influence their predecessors, Hallstatt Celts, to the east of the Ebro valley.

In response to your question ‘I didn’t think the Iberians ever dominated the whole northern front(just northeast and central), so I wonder who or what stopped the gauls(and the Iberians) along the northwest border. Vascones?’
The Vascones were to the north east on the eastern side of the Ebro valley and the Iberians only settled in the east and south east of the peninsula.
The Lusitanos and Vettones to the west were indo-European. The Lusitanos, who would go on to dominate the western region, had to fight for their independence from Celtic tribes.
In the North west region, tribes such as the Calaicos, who spilled out from the Lusitanos, did mix with the Celtic people.
The Iberians on the other hand were said to have been strongly influenced by both Phoenician and Greeks and shared their origins with North Africans so there would have been a culture and language barrier with the inland people.

‘I also seem to remember that the iberians was under the influence of some kind of hellenistic urnfield culture, influenced by the greek colonies along the coast. Can you correct me on this one, it seems rather unlikely that late, but what do I know...’

As far as i know the Greek influence in the Iberian peninsula was to bury the dead, where as the Urn field culture was a bronze age ritual with origins from the Celts to the west, Slavs to the north, Itallic’s to the south and Illyrians to the south east. The cremation continued for quite a while after the Punic wars. Most, if not all of Spain would cremate their dead.
Oddly enough the Phoenicians too, buried their dead, so in retrospect their must of been a mixture of burials and cremations along the south, south east and south west coast.

[Matthew Amt]

Ave!

Current thought is that the Fronton-style swords shown in your first post were NOT what the Romans copied, since they were out of style by the time the Romans arrived. What the Spanish were using then was a straight-edged sword first imported from Gaul and then a slightly modified Spanish version of that. (La Tene culture really doesn't emerge until after the leaf-shaped sword is gone from the region of Gaul.) So the Roman gladius hispaniensis was over 2 feet long in the blade, about 2" wide, and either straight-edged or slightly waisted, like my repro (based on one of the Smihel swords):

http://www.larp.com/legioxx/Smihel1.jpg

We used to think that the Fronton was the direct ancestor of the Mainz pattern gladius, but the similarity between the two is very superficial when you get a closer look. Not to mention the gap of a century or two.

There is a growing amount of information on these swords, but the best place to start is Volume 8 of Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies.

I hope that helps! Vale,

Matthew

[Jesper D]

Hey both of you and thanks for replying!
I thought the urnfield culture was generally seen as the predecessor to the hallstatt culture.
Interesting info about the various tribes in the area, thanks.

Regarding the swords, I have been reading some of professor Quesada's articles and he seems to have classified the spanish shortswords in type I to type VI.
Does anyone have the paper in which he specifies these classifications and gives physical data regarding the different types. I am especially interested in type VI arcobriga and the blade length of this type. I am also hunting professor Quesada's 1997d article about the origin of the gladius hispaniensis.

I've been looking at the photos of the "El Atance" sword, which seems to be a kind of intermediate of the la tene I swords that were imported and the shorter celtiberian leaf bladed swords(Quesada type V-VI). All the imported la tene I examples from spain that I have seen seem to have had organic hilts while the celtiberian short sword always seem to have metal hilts.
This is one of the reasons why I find the "El Atance" sword interesting, it has a longer blade but what looks like a metal hilt. All the gladius hispaniensis examples I have seen have organic hilts. Are these observations correct or am I mistaken?

I've seen the the use of "fronton type swords" before, how does these relate to the quesada classification? Or is it just a generalized expression for the spanish leaf-bladed short sword? I saw the fronton(I presume it is a region for a find in spain?) type on one picture displayed as a separate form of the celtiberian leaf-bladed short sword. What makes the above drawing a fronton type sword?

I'll be trying to get vol. 8 then

Cheers,
Jesper

[Jesper D]

Found an article on celtiberia.net that answered a lot of questions, http://www.celtiberia.net/articulo.asp?id=1021

Apparantly, the Quesada type VI swords had an average blade length of about 35cm. That is the longest of the celtiberian antenna-pommel leaf-shaped short swords of spain.
As I understand it, the fronton-type swords are not antenna-pommel swords - the one drawing I have seen had a semi-spherical pommel. The above drawing sword is a form of the antenna short sword that professor Quesada classifies in his system.

The "El Atance" sword seems to have an antenna pommel(well late spanish version of antennas...more like two spheres)but seem to be substantially longer, my estimation from a photo is ~50-55 cm blade length.

Cheers,
Jesper

[Untilatie]

Hi Jesper!

Indeed ,That swords are nor "Fronton" type. This is a Fronton type, named that way because the form of its hilt.



The swords of the drawings are generally denominated "Atrophied Antennas" type.
The first one is a Quesada VI type (traditionally named “Arcóbriga type”). The swords of this type are usually so decorated with damascene silver and copper. They’re dated from 4th cent to 2nd cent. BC.
The type VI swords have an average lenght of blade of 34’4 cm. (max. 48 cm, min. 22’5 cm.). The internal lenght of the hilt sizes 7’4 cm. (max. 8’4 cm, min. 6’6 cm.). The average width of the blade is 4’4 cm. (max. 5’4, min. 3’6 cm.)

The second one is also an “Atrophied Antennas” type from La Osera (Avila). This is a Quesada IV type (traditionally named “Alcacer do Sal”), dated to 4th cent. to 3rd cent BC.

As you said, the “Atance” swords (Quesada’s type V), are atrophied antennas sword too. I don’t know which photo you mentioned, but the “Atance” type sword has a average lenght (the complete sword) of 40’6 cm (max. 58, min. 31’5 cm.).

Probably, none of these swords is really linked with “Gladius Hispaniensis” type. According to Prof. Fernando Quesada’s thesis, the “Gladius Hispaniensis” swords come from celtiberian local variants of La Tene I swords, like the Quintanas de Gormaz (Soria) or La Osera swords. As you said correctly, all these swords have organic hilts, but also organic case, not metallic like the original La Tene models.
You can find all the information you can imagine about the iberian and celtiberian weapons here:
http://www.ffil.uam.es/equus/warmas/index.htm