A drop in the river level revealed a beautifully preserved Bronze Age sword

A short bronze sword from the 16th century BC was accidentally discovered in the Váh riverbed near the town of Hlohovec in southwestern Slovakia at a lowered water level. According to conservationists, it could be an interesting intermediate stage in the development of bronze swords from long daggers in the Middle Bronze Age.

The short sword was discovered by a local resident last summer when the river level dropped sharply. He first took the interestingly shaped object home. When he later discovered that it might be an archaeological find, he contacted a nearby museum, where an archaeologist confirmed the age of the object and then reported the discovery to the Trnava Regional Heritage Office.

The blade of the bronze sword is 26 cm long and weighs 150 grams. Originally, the hilt was made of organic material (probably wood), but unlike the rivets, which are still in their original place, it has not been preserved.

Variants of short-bladed swords or long-bladed daggers are typical of the Middle Bronze Age culture in the Danube basin. They are usually found in tombs, mass depots, rivers or other bodies of water where they were deliberately deposited ritually.

"Towards the end of the Older Bronze Age, the first metal swords began to appear in Central Europe, most likely evolving from long bronze daggers. The sword from the Váh could serve as a very interesting evolutionary link between these two types of weapons," explained Matúš Sládok from the Trnava Heritage Office. According to Sladok, the sword could have been thrown into the Váh as a sacrifice, but it could also have been a lost object.

"Similar short swords are found roughly in the Danube basin, from southern Germany to Serbian Vojvodina. They are characteristic of the incipient mound cultures of the Middle Bronze Age, around the 16th century BC. A similar sword was found in Slovakia in Včelince, where it was part of a mass find of bronze objects," the conservationists said.

In the 20 years since the Slovak Monuments Office was established, four Bronze Age blades have been found in the Váh River, which were reported and handed over to the office in Trnava.

Roman Němec

Sources: thehistoryblog.cz, sme.sk