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Archaic Weapons: Graves and Sanctuaries (Part 2)

Thasos and her sanctuaries

Around the second quarter of the 7th century, the first indications of an organized Greek settlement can be identified on and around the Thasos acropolis. The sanctuaries of Apollo and Athena on the acropolis hill, and of Heracles and Artemis near the 6th-century agora are established. The material recovered from these sanctuaries consists primarily of fine pottery, jewelry, loom weights, figurines and statuary. Unfortunately, very little in the way of early votive weaponry has been recovered from these holy sites. This is quite interesting: in the central and southern Aegean, weapon dedications in sanctuaries are considerably more common than in the Thasian sphere during the 7th and particularly the 6th century.

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Early Weapons: Spears, Swords and Pocket-knives (Part 1)

In previous posts, we established the basic geographical and historical context of our study; it is now time to discuss the actual archaeological evidence. We will begin with the earliest, pre-apoikism periods, and have a closer look at what types of weaponry have been brought to light.

The blades of Kastri

Thasos, and specifically the site of Kastri, has provided us with the most extensive corpus of early knife and dagger blades on the island. More than fifty distinct blades (both bronze and iron) have been identified, primarily from the cemeteries of the settlement. Their typology is varied (Koukouli-Chrysanthaki, in her original study, Protohistoric Thasos, identifies at least five separate bronze types, and several more iron ones). It is difficult to establish a strict typological sequence, given the partial state of preservation of many of the blades and the disturbed stratigraphy of many of the graves: these built chamber tombs had been frequently re-used during antiquity, in some cases several dozen times.

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