Posted on 01/25/2023 10:50:41 PM PST by SunkenCiv
In the 1930s, a tarnished bronze sword was pulled from the banks of the Danube River that runs through Budapest.
It was styled like a Hungarian weapon from the Bronze Age, and yet at the time, it was assumed to be a replica, possibly made in the Medieval Era or later.
For nearly a century, the sword has sat on display at the Field Museum in Chicago, labeled as a mere copy. But last year, while the museum was preparing for an upcoming exhibit on ancient European kings, a visiting Hungarian archaeologist (whose name has not been publicized) took one look at the sword and declared it authentic.
"We brought it out, he looked at it, and it was 20 seconds and he said, 'It's not a replica'," William Parkinson, the curator of anthropology at the Field Museum, told a local news station.
But Parkinson wasn't yet convinced. He wanted to use X-rays to see if the sword really had been forged from the right combinations of copper and tin, as is seen in other bronze-age weapons from the region.
And "Bam!" Parkinson recalled, the sword's chemical makeup matched that of other artifacts.
"Usually this story goes the other way round," Parkinson marveled in a recent press release from the museum. "What we think is an original turns out to be a fake."
...The Field Museum's upcoming exhibition, The First Kings of Europe, is set to open in March 2023. [emphasis added]
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencealert.com ...
In the bronze age? Steel was not present.
I think it’s more the case that an iron sword is more likely to be poorly made, particularly at a time when the were both in use.
We are talking about the Medieval Period not the Bronze Age.
The museum people thought the sword was produced in the Medieval Period or later as a reproduction.
My understanding is that Steel was the primary material for edged weapons in the Medieval period and that bronze was totally supplanted by iron/steel.
Oh, absolutely by the medieval period “steel” of pretty variable quality had entirely replaced bronze. And probably most blacksmiths probably knew more or less how to do it. If you were lucky steel was what you got. But if your blacksmith wasn’t very good you might wind up with a sword that was worse than bronze.
And that was definitely the case at the transition between the bronze age and iron age.
Iron swords were horrible. Even with the advent of cruder steels, bronze took a long time to be replaced. It was sharper, less brittle, and could be harder than the available iron, and could be repaired much more easily.
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