Folia archeologica 24.

Tibor Kovács: Representations of Weapons on Bronze Age Pottery

20 T. KOVÁCS being dispersed in space and time, we cannot make attempts for identifying before having recognized the inner connexions of the representations. The way leads here through an analysis of the details. On the Mende jar the face is indicated by two eyes. Representations of human faces, as simplified as this, are found on the Trojan ware, dated to the last centuries of the 3rd millennium B.C., where we find two small knobs for the eyes and one for the nose immediately under the rim, projecting externally.

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0 Considerable differences in time exclude, however, the possibility of a connection between our objects and the Trojan ones or other early fragments of the Anatolian-Aegean territory, neither do they make likely a relation with the pieces dated by W. Lamb to the mid-second millennium B.C. (Alaça Höyük, Bogazköy.)

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1 Face urns of the same time are unknown in South-East Europe or in Central Europe and Italy.

32 In the case of the face urns (Mende, Tiszafüred, Tószeg), we can exclude the possibility of a direct loan from the adjacent areas as for the time being. It is the contents of the representations which seem to play here a decisive role, as the details of the faces seem to have little in common. As for the members of the human body represented they are not identic in their execution either. Proportions of arms and hand show a lifelike reduction in size, while the modelling of the fingers is different. On the Mende and Igar fragments the fingers are plastically raised, on the two jars with representations of daggers they are indicated by incised lines, i.e. formed in a more schematic way. This feature is not to be neglected when trying to find the objects corresponding to the daggers represented. In regard of the Mende fragment - always presuming that the maker of the vessel intended to copy an existing piece and not merely represent a dagger on the whole - we have to start from the followings: the five knobs at the end of the hilt represent a row of rivets, ( ?) which fact points to a wooden hilt; the shoulder part of the clay dagger extends to both sides, which means a haft plate broken at angles to the body; the five rivets on the shoulder make a straight row, the three incised lines on the blade, converging on the tip, imitate engraved patterns or ribs (cf. Fig. 3; Fig. 10. no. 14). Considering above features the early pieces imported from Central European workshops (cf. Fig. 10. no. 1 ) can be eliminated from the daggers or swords with solid hilts, used in Hungary during the 17th to 14th centuries,

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3 but it would be difficult to find any formal connections among the Mende piece and the swords 3

0 Schmidt, H., Trojanische Altertümer. (Berlin 1902) 80, Figs. 1840-41; Biegen, С. VCaskey, J. Ь.-Ramon, M., Troy II. (Cincinnati 1951) PI. 168, 37.1023. 3

1 Lamb, W., Face-urns kindred types in Anatolia. BSA 46(1951) 79, Fig. 3a-c. 3

2 We should like to refer to the fact that on the figurines of the Dubovac-Cirna culture, found in a fairly large number and representing women, the face (or mask) is outlined with lines or dots; the one exception is the male figure on the Dupljaja cart model with a plastical formation of the face. Cf. Garasanin, M., Neolithikum und Bronzezeit in Serbien und Macédonien. BRGK 39(1958) 86, Pl. XVII, 1.; Sandars, N. К., Prehistoric art in Europe. (London 1968) 173-175, Fig. 66 A. 3

3 Mo^solics, A., Bronzefunde etc. 51.