Original scientific paper
Late La Tene Knives of the Pritoka-Bela Cerkev Type
Dubravka Belen-Latunić
Abstract
The prehistoric section of the Archaeological museum in Zagreb has in its holdings a valuablecollection of Celtic - La Tene archaeological material, especially weapons, among which four late LaTene long single-edged knives. Their mutual characteristic is the curve of the blade, which has onboth sides under the back a fl ute. Flatly unforged handle with three holes for the welded organicpart of the handle ends in an oval plate, and at the point where blade and handle meet it has guardsbended towards the blade. They were singled out as a separate Pritoka - Bela Cerkev type accordingto the specifi c qualities of their form, as well as the number of the fi nds. The name comes from thesites which had the largest number of the registered knives of such characteristics.Two previously known knives are the examples from Prozor near Otočac (T. 2:1) and Zagreb (T.2:2), which fi t perfectly into the standard knives of that type, and due to the insuffi cient data andlow-quality photographs, we reproduce them again. Besides the aforementioned, two more examplesof such knives are kept in the museum. One was descovered during the archaeological excavationsin 1912 on Pogorelec in Sisak (T. 1:2), the other has no site data (T. 1:1). It was recently descoveredamong the modern world fi ndings from the medieval section. Good state of its iron and bronze partsin the so-called metal state, that only objects taken from the water have, leads to the conclusionthat it also originates from Sisak. Namely, metal objects taken out of the Kupa river near Sisak areof the same state. During the 19th and in the early 20th century a lot of antique and prehistoricarchaeological material found while dredging between the banks of the river, was brought into themuseum. But, its state with the so-called characteristics of the „water“ fi nds and its similarity to theother knives found in Sisak also taken out of Kupa river, were not enough to defi ne its fi nding sitein Sisak area, and there is no archive documentation to support it. Analogies can be found for bothknives, as well as for the knives from Zagreb and Prozor, besides Sisak, also among the examples fromthe Obrovac area, Strmec near Bela Cerkev and Ljubljanica in Slovenia, and among the examples fromthe Iapodian necropolis Jezerine in Pritoka on Una river, south of Bihać in Bosnia.Seven knives of this type from Croatia (3 Sisak, 1 Zagreb, 1 Prozor, 1 Obrovac area, 1 unknownorigin) and seven out of eight examples from Slovenia (4 Strmec near Bela Cerkev, 4 Ljubljanica)belong to the random fi nds. Only one example found in the cremation grave in Strmec near BelaCerkev, as well as the one found in cremation and one found in skeleton grave of Iapodian necropolisJezerine in Pritoka in Bosnia, come from the closed graves with the adjoining fi nds that can be dated.The Strmec knife (Košak B1 grave) was found together with the sword, the combination identicalto the one that the warrior from the grave 400 in the Jezerine necropolis in Pritoka had. Namely,the knife and the sword were placed on the cover of the cilindric stone urn together with the otherobjects. Identical knife was placed in the 288 grave of the same necropolis. The same typologicalcharacteristics can be found on the knives from the cremation graves 400, 237 and 99 of Jezerinenecropolis, and to a certain point on the example coming from the grave 12 of the Iapodic necropolisin Ribić, south of Bihać, as well as on the sword from the Delmatic area found in the cremationgrave 41/ pile 14 at the well of Cetina river. They all diff er only in the length of the blade and areconsiderably more massive.Finds from the aforementioned graves from Iapodic area confi rm that the knives of this type aswell as similar swords (Jezerine in Pritoka, Ribić) were used during the last or the 7th phase of theirculture’s development. For the major part it can be synchronised to the central European Lt D1 andD2 stage of the late La Tene. These knives have also been placed among the characteristic forms ofthe Mokronog group, or its fi nal - Mokronog IIIb stage, also comparable to the central-European Lt D2stage. Mokronog group, where Tauriscs have the majority, occupied the region of the central and eastSlavonia and north-west Croatia, and on its southern end it bordered with the Iapodic country. Thecloseness of the two accustomed-to-warfare neighbours who had probably had confl icts betweenthem, as well as alliance when it came to common Roman danger, inevitably led to the knowledgeand the usage of the same kinds of weapons and consequently to the same mode of warfare.Translation: Jasminka Babić
Keywords
Pritoka - Bela Cerkev type knives; Late La Tene; Iapodes; Taurisc; Mokronog group
Hrčak ID:
8286
URI
Publication date:
1.12.2006.
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