Szabó Miklós, Petres F. Éva: Decorated weapons on the La Tene Iron Age in the Carpathian Basin. (Inventaria Praehistorica Hungariae 5; Budapest, 1992)
III. THE HUNGARIAN SWORD STYLE - Connections with the Swiss Sword Style
examples: The handles of the pseudo-kantharos from Novo mesto (Fig. 31) are ornamented with a symmetric pattern which has been simplified into almost elementary motifs (drops, circles, triangles and semicircles); a similar tendency can be noted on the decorated scabbards from this region. 377 The free-flowing reinterpretation of a composition originally based on lyre motifs and peltas adorns a jug from Apahida (Fig. 32) 378 Fi na Vly } the incised ornament on a vase from Berettyóújfalu shows the geometric decomposition of the model which the potter simply failed to understand. 379 It is somewhat surprising that the workshops producing decorated weapons had little influence on other genres of metalwork in the Carpathian Basin. Ornaments comparable to the designs on scabbards are rarely found on Fig. SI Novo mesto-Kandija, incised ornament of the zoomorphic handles of a pottery pseudo-kantharos grave 40 (after Duval [1977aJ 260, no. 822) bronze, one rare exception being the anklets from Vasasszentiván and Csővár, with the palmette derivative understandably adapted to the rounded surface. 380 Connections with the Swiss Sword Style A comparison of the "Hungarian" and "Swiss" Sword Style designs reveals that the most representative documents of the latter (cp. scabbards 63, 71, 96, 99 and 100 from La Tène) are considerably less sophisticated than their eastern Celtic counterparts, and also that they are generally adorned with tendril patterns standing closer to presumable Italian prototypes. 381 Fig. S2 Apahida (Romania), incised ornament on a pottery jug (after Duval [1977a] 260, no. 824) This is also true of figurai decoration: the three animal figures on scabbard 66 from La Tène are barely stylised, and the vegetal motifs accompanying them appear to be an almost independent framing or "background" vegetation — one can hardly speak of the fusion of the decorative elements. 382 Naturally, some measure of interaction can be demonstrated between the two styles. For example, palmette derivatives comparable to the triangular leaf motifs discussed in the above do occasionally appear on the upper part of the front plate to Swiss scabbards instead of the usual triskeles, which can plausibly be seen as the influence of the Hungarian Sword Style. 383 In contrast, Middle La Tène swords in the Hungarian Style from the Carpathian Basin often feature a triskeles pattern of the scabbard mouth which bespeaks the Swiss canon. 384 The Swiss Swords are often decorated with an extremely simple engraved pattern on the scabbard mouth such as real or pseudo-triskeles, various triple motifs (S-compositions, "comaleaves"), lyre variants, etc. 385 Relatively rare are De Navarro's Type III dragons, with the occasional complementary ornament. 386 Several
