Kvedulf said:
@NikeBG: in your readings, have you come across any information about weaponry and armour in Bronze Age Thrace. Was there a unique cultural costume and/or weapon? I know that the Iron Age Thracians had their rhomphia and falx, but is their any evidence that the bronze age Thracians had a culturally unique weapon, or a weapon that they seem to have preffered?
I did a quick check, but most materials are indeed for the Iron Age. And from that time also appear the unique Thracian weapons as the romphaia (IVc. BC), sica, falx etc., which seem to have not existed earlier.
The Bronze Age Thracians seem to have used mostly daggers, knives, spears, axes and swords as melee weapons and javelins, bows and slings as ranged ones. For the swords you can see some pics in the bottom of
this report, which I'll summarize here:
The earliest bronze swords fall in the group of the "Mycenean rapiers" [which is hardly surprising, IMO, considering the similiarities between the two cultures often make archaeologists unite them in one Thraco-Mycenean group] from the XVI-XIV c. BC. They are divided on two types - the Yonkovo rapier (
pic 1,
pic 2) and the "horned" rapiers, which seem to have beene predominant (
pic 1,
pic 2). Later on, between the XIII and X c. BC, appeared the swords from the Nenzingen type, aka Danubian swords, which later began being made from iron (
pic 1,
pic 2,
pic 3). They were double-bladed and could be used both for piercing and slashing.
This is also a "dagger-sword" from that time.
Here you can also see pictures of a sword from XIV-XIIc. BC, spear tips, dagger from the early Bronze age and axe from the late Copper Age. The same book also mentions the defensive equipment as "bronze helms, shields, armours, greaves, knee- and elbow-pads", though the pictures shown are from the IVc. BC onward.
I'll update the information whenever I find new one.