The study is focused on the assessment of the production and occurrence of bronze knives in the territory of the present-day Slovakia and their typological-chronological classification. The set of the 99 whole, though more often fragmentarily preserved, analysed exemplars is a significant part of the material content of the central Danubian and Carpathian culture, and especially of the Urnfield cultures. A detailed analysis showed, however, an almost unexpectedly non-proportional representation of the analysed kind of products of bronze industry within the relics of Lusatian, central Danubian, south-eastern cultures of urnfields, with surprisingly lower occurrence in such a rich area of developed metallurgy as it existed especially in the Piliny, Kyjatice and Gáva cultures. The scale of finds clearly documents the representation of knives of all basic central European typological groups, made up by exemplars with full, frame, tongue, plate and thorn handle. In the study they are classified into twenty-five types and further variants. A part of Slovak finds displays certain formal differences which, with few exceptions (proposed types Smolenice, Čaka and Horná Seč), and also as a consequence of the finds´ frequent fragmentariness and the absence of a more significant closed whole, did not lead to the creation of new independent types. From the very beginning of the occurrence of bronze knives there were close contacts with south-eastern, and especially with western, part of central Europe. On the contrary, uniqueness can be determined only to a certain extent with the finds typical for a broader central-eastern part of central Europe, or, the Carpathian Basin – so unique in many other products of bronze metallurgy. Due to a favourable situation in the processing of bronze knives in central Europe, Slovak finds could also be classified and compared with knives from other geographical areas nowadays belonging to the territory of Bohemia, Moravia, Germany, Poland, and Austria. The assessed finds inventory is significant also for the occurrence of ten casting moulds documenting local production of knives, especially in the territory of the Slovak branch of Lusatian culture. Of extraordinary importance are especially the moulds from the burial ground in Vyšný Kubín, laid over the urns with assumed graves of specialised metal founders.
The paper deals with the problem of the knives from the middle, younger and late Bronze Age. It includes all the published as well as unpublished bronze knives, including their fragments, as well as the features incorrectly interpreted in the past as finds of knives, or knives without a more detailed description and visual documentation. During their typological classification, several basic framework groups, marked according to characteristic forms of the handles, were determined: 1 – the early knives with flat full handle, 2 – the early knives with short flat handle, 3 – the knives with tongue handle, 4 – the knives with oval frame handle, 5 – the knives with full handle of circular or oval section, 6 – the older knives with thorn handle, 7 – the younger knives with short flat handle, 8 – the younger knives with thorn handle, 9 – the knives with quiver-shaped handle. In Slovakia there are also a small number of knives with ornitomorphous ending of the handle, as well as secondary artefacts – tools re-forged from the fragments of sickle into the form of a small knife. In addition to knives, the paper discusses also casting forms (moulds) for the production of knives. The excavated feature proves that a Lusatian-culture settlement was situated in the close vicinity of the burial ground. The preserved construction details helped creating the dwelling space reconstruction.
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