Evans, Arthur J.: The Palace of Minos: a comparative account of the successive stages of the early Cretan civilization as illustred by the discoveries at Knossos (Band 2,1): Fresh lights on origins and external relations (London, 1928)

170

TRANSIT ROAD IN RELATION TO N. AND W.

Diffusion
of Iberic
and Hi-
bernian
halberd
types.

The
' Mara-
viglie' of
the Col di
Tenda.

boring,1 belonging to a type, known also to exist in jet, amber, bone, and other
materials, ranging from Spain and Britain to the Baltic Coast and Bohemia.
The fact that these ornaments were in this case of tin, however, may link them
up with the Iberic and Britannic family of such objects, and fit in with the
evidence of a trade route from the West—the mythical ' Road of Hercules'
—that found on one side its continuation along the Ligurian and Etruscan
Coast of Italy, and on the other penetrated into the Po Valley. The charac-
teristic mark of this intercourse is the diffusion of the halberd, the blade of
which stood out, pickaxe fashion, at right angles to the shaft,—a weapon which
in its simplest form, without a definite median rib, first appears in the Chalco-
lithic deposits of Spain.2 In its secondary shape, with a rib or accentuated
thickening of the blade, it is equally at home in Ireland and North Britain,
spreading thence to Scandinavia and North Germany, where specimens with
bronze-cased shafts form a prominent feature of the Early Bronze Age.

Evidences of the diffusion of bronze and copper halberds in this
secondary stage of their evolution extend sporadically to the West Coast of
Central Italy, to Sicily, though hardly to the Aegean islands,3 phenomena
which help to explain the intrusion in a contrary sense of Minoan dagger
types along the Tyrrhene shores.

But the most striking evidence of the penetration of the halberd type
concerns North-Western Italy and is supplied by the remarkable figures cut
with blunt instruments on the ice-polished schist rocks above the Col di
Tenda,4 which affords the natural passage for the Western trade-route over the

1 Cf. Peet, op. a'/., p. 262, Fig. 147. He
cites, p. 263, a similar stud of bone from
a rock grave in Sardinia.

2 E. g. H. et L. Siret, Les Premiers Ages du
Me'tal dans le Sud-Est de PEspagne, PI. 33,
No. 169. The cross graining of the wood
shows that this was hafted as a halberd. The
centre of the blade is thicker, but there is no
distinct rib. It has three rivets, as most of
the early examples.

s Montelius, Die Chron. d. altesten Bronzezeit
<5rr., p. 164, refers to a broad-stemmed blade
from Amorgos (Blinkenberg, Mem. de la Soc.
R. des Ants, du Nord, 1896, p. 30) but certainty
on this point can hardly be reached.

* The first scientific account of the ' Mara-
viglie ' (known as ' Marvels' since the publica-
tion of Gioffredo's Storia delle A/pi Marittime

in 1650) was in a communication of Mr. M.
Moggridge, of the Italian Alpine Club, to the
Prehistoric Congress at Norwich in 1868,
(p. 359 seqq. and with five plates). Many of
his copies were taken at a height of over 7,800
feet above sea-level. But the fullest materials
are due to the patience and enterprise of
Mr. Clarence Bicknell, from 1897 onwards (see
Proc. Soc. Ants., 1897, vol. xvii, p. 13 seqq.:
Le Figure incise sidle rocce di Val Fontanalba
(AM della Soc. ligustica, arc, anno viii, fasc.
iv, Genoa, 1898): The Prehistoric Rock-
engravings in the Italian Maritime Alps, Bordi-
ghera, 1902 : ' Further Explorations, &c.,'
1903, and especially his Guide to the engrav-
ings (Bordighera, 1913) containing a summary
of the results from the plates of which the
specimens of Fig. 85 are taken). See, too,