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Post by mountainsylph on Feb 15, 2022 17:00:58 GMT
Were they even usable as swords? I've seen people say that rapier or rapier-like designs for bronze are a bad idea but the Mycenaean type Cis and Ciis seem to be the exception. How do you think they would have worked in reality or been like to use? So as you can see, the Rhodes excavation was 101cm long and Albania one being 84cm. Pictures:  Source: www.salimbeti.com/micenei/weapons1.htm |
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Post by naue on Feb 17, 2022 2:08:25 GMT
My understanding of these was that the spines are quite thick and robust precisely to reduce the risk of the blade bending on a thrust. This being the case they could probably withstand quite a bit of punishment but they obviously won't cut as well as a thinner but wider leaf-blade type.
Interestingly, the source you cite says:
"A common misinterpretation of these swords is that they are suitable only for thrusting.Functional test conducted with replicas of the C and D type swords have instead demonstrate that these sword were designed and were effective to make lethal thrusts as well as cuts."
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Post by nerdthenord on Feb 17, 2022 2:13:29 GMT
I did not even know these existed but they look super cool. The Mycenaeans were neat.
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Post by mountainsylph on Feb 17, 2022 7:53:21 GMT
My understanding of these was that the spines are quite thick and robust precisely to reduce the risk of the blade bending on a thrust. This being the case they could probably withstand quite a bit of punishment but they obviously won't cut as well as a thinner but wider leaf-blade type. Interestingly, the source you cite says: "A common misinterpretation of these swords is that they are suitable only for thrusting.Functional test conducted with replicas of the C and D type swords have instead demonstrate that these sword were designed and were effective to make lethal thrusts as well as cuts." It would be interesting to think what it would be like if somebody could make them out of Aluminum Bronze or the specific variant of it known as C95500 then. Would they be even better? Possibly on par with some historical steel rapiers? Perhaps a nickname for the Ci and Ciis could be 'Mycenaean Bronze Rapiers'? |
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Post by naue on Feb 17, 2022 15:43:21 GMT
My understanding of these was that the spines are quite thick and robust precisely to reduce the risk of the blade bending on a thrust. This being the case they could probably withstand quite a bit of punishment but they obviously won't cut as well as a thinner but wider leaf-blade type. Interestingly, the source you cite says: "A common misinterpretation of these swords is that they are suitable only for thrusting.Functional test conducted with replicas of the C and D type swords have instead demonstrate that these sword were designed and were effective to make lethal thrusts as well as cuts." It would be interesting to think what it would be like if somebody could make them out of Aluminum Bronze or the specific variant of it known as C95500 then. Would they be even better? Possibly on par with some historical steel rapiers? Perhaps a nickname for the Ci and Ciis could be 'Mycenaean Bronze Rapiers'? I would love to see an experiment with aluminum bronzes.I highly doubt they'll be the strength of historical steel rapiers, but without an actual experiment I won't jump to a conclusion!
As for the nicknames, I don't really like how in academia the term for bronze "rapiers" is applied, especially when the label is used for entirely non-rapier swords like this one:
I feel the term "rapier" is entirely anachronistic for the bronze age, so I prefer just using the type designations like Ci, Naue Type II, Sanders Type D I, etc or just using descriptive terms like "thrust-centric" or "leaf-blade".
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Things have changed!