Swords & Knives (also: spies and jam)

[bunn]

1) People in Britain didn't usually get buried with their stuff in the fourth century, so we don't know how common it was to carry a knife
2) But we think possibly there might be more knives found in comparison to other tools in Britain in the C4th.
3) There are very few swords, but that's OK because iron things don't survive well in Britain
4) Anyway, swords were dead high status things and almost nobody had one.
5) therefore everyone was re-arming like mad, only with knives because swords were so hard to make.

Is it me, or does that not entirely make sense?  If iron things don't survive well, how come there are all these knives (if there are loads of knives, which seems unclear).   And if swords don't survive well, how do we know almost nobody had one? And how big does a knife have to be before you can call it a sword anyway?  OK, big souper dooper pattern welded watchercullums are probably hard to make, but at what point during the process of taking some iron and giving it a pointy end does it become 'a sword'...? 

While I'm at it, why do people assume that making horseshoes, by comparison to swords, would be dead easy?  I would have thought making shoes for animals that all have different feet and gaits and are liable to get expensively and dangerously injured if you get it wrong would actually be quite hard.  And I speak as one who tried to make her greyhound wear rubber boots, with a striking lack of success. :-D


Skipping back a couple of centuries, I am intrigued by Hadrian's Frumentarii secret service, but wish to put a cherry on the top.  Would it be ridiculous to invent a Senatorial secret service working in parallel and sometimes at cross purposes with the Imperial one? 

In other news, I am unconvinced by rhubarb jam. It doesn't seem to be very... jammy. It is more like a pie filling in a pot.

Comments

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

1) I would imagine that small tool knives were ubiquitous, as they were in pretty much every pre-modern culture I can think of (especially prior to the invention of special eating utensils). Daggers are a different matter, but I'd be more surprised if for some reason people in 4th century Britain were getting by just fine without one of the most basic human tools.

I'd say forearm-length is about the minimum for a sword--and the types of knives most people carried would be the equivalent of modern utility knives, not honking great daggers or machetes. (The difference between a sword and a knife is somewhat more involved than length--swords have to do a bunch of things knifes don't--and swordsmithing does take a different kind of skillset and is not simple. This is why quality functional modern swords are Very Expensive and quality functional modern knives are considerably less so--plus one CAN do everyday cooking tasks and so on with cheap cutlery and just be annoyed, but a cheap sword may get you killed) and I would be inclined to buy the "swords were high status items" because broadly speaking, small utility knives were widely used historically, while swords were not, for a combination of economic and social reasons. (Pattern welding is overrated and also probably irrelevant to the period.)

I'm not an expert on horseshoes, but I think it's strictly not a matter of easier as different skillsets. The blacksmithing that goes into a horseshoe is pretty basic--and historically horseshoes were made by blacksmiths. The tricky part is, as you say, fitting them to the horses correctly--OTOH, swords have to be balanced, sufficiently flexible, able to hold an edge, and suited for whatever style of combat is the thing locally, and many of those factors change with every sword, so it's not like there's no fluctuating factors involved in swordsmithing. Historically in most cultures swordsmiths specialized because the actual iron or steel working was considerably more complicated. People did not specialize in horseshoe-making--blacksmiths did a variety of things. (They didn't have horseshoes in Europe in the 4th century yet, though, did they? I thought they got introduced to Europe in the Middle Ages, Roman horse booties--quite a different thing--aside.)

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

Would it be ridiculous to invent a Senatorial secret service working in parallel and sometimes at cross purposes with the Imperial one?

Nothing is too ridiculous when it comes to secret services!

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I *think* the argument being put forward is that there are *more* knives than in previous centuries, because Britain has become unsafe, so people are re-arming. But I don't quite see how he makes that work.

I agree people must have had knives anyway, and I think the logic of deducing anything from a *maybe* increase in found items of a type that survives really badly is a bit rash, particularly as he admits there's no increase in sword or spearhead finds! It seems like evidence the other way, if anything.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there are too many factors going into archaeological preservation (and too many uses for knives besides defense) to make that kind of leap, I think.