From Dictionary of Celtic Myth and Legend by Miranda J. Green:
This seems to be a Celtic phenomenon more than anything else. Many of these artifacts were also deliberately destructed – for example, swords bent in half, so they could not be used again. This does not suggest accidental loss.
Bodies of water seemed to have some particular significance for religious events. You can look earlier on in Celtic history and see human sacrifices left in bogs (The Life and Death of a Druid Prince is recommended reading if you’re interested in more on that subject).
Here’s some further speculation. As others pointed out, people tended to live near rivers, and travelers tended to follow rivers. If people died or lost their weapons anywhere in the drainage or flood plain of a major river, isn’t it fairly likely that the weapons would eventually work their way toward the riverbed over time?
A river is also a great place for an ambush and disarming.
If some bandit or guerilla-soldier type points a bow at a guy struggling through a river and tells him to to throw his sword away, he’s not going to have much of a choice to do anything else.
Could I ask what type of weapons are found in such situations, compared to what would be considered a ‘good’ sword or shield? Would they really destroy & sacrifice a high-quality weapon? Your mention of ‘imitation daggers’ has piqued my interest in the idea of gestural offerings.
Keep in mind though that swords were not all of the same quality. Just like anything else today you’ll find a spectrum of quality and prices.
Also, by the late middle ages swords were mass produced by very powerful guilds and in various places in Germany and italy specially, making swords not only more affordable, but also quite varied in their style and quality/price.
Of course, earlier in history this is not necessarily true.
Thanks bonzer and fluiddruid. I think that what was meant on the show was that there is an abnormally large number of swords in rivers even given all the stuff about battles being fought there and so on. Swords that have been deliberatly tampered with (such as bending in 1/2) mean it’s highly likely that someone intentionally placed the sword there rather than by accident or misfortune.
One of the half dozen examples of such a dagger from the Thames is included in the gallery of images as part of this Museum of London web exhibition. This page from it gives you an idea of how they sum the issues up at a popular level. (They also have a website to accompany their new “London Before London” gallery, which I plugged above, but I was having trouble getting most of it to work.)
As someone with only an amateur interest in archaeology, I’m no judge of the quality of ancient metalwork, but I believe that the general answer is “it varies”.
However, the parallel I’d suggest is the internment of swords alongside burials. This is sufficiently common that, while good weapons may have been valuable, high status items, that didn’t always outweigh the symbolic gesture of including one in a burial. Indeed, the gesture often probably intended to have additional weight because the item was valuable.
Right. And in huge quantities, too. I’ve seen pictures – and unfortunately, I can’t recall in which text – of huge piles of metalwork, particularly swords, from riverbeds being excavated.
I suppose it makes sense. Many ancient European religions were heavy on the notion of sacrifice - that is, if you want the gods to do something, you must do so in return. We tend to think of sacrifice as animal or human sacrifice, but object sacrifice was also known. (Ancient curses are particularly amusing in this regard. They are nearly ordering the gods to punish their enemy, and will list specifically what they are giving up in exchange.) Something valuable like swords and weaponry would have particular significance. Combine that with a long-term settlement of the area, give it a few hundred years, and, boom, huge deposits of metal items in the river when we dig it up now.
Here is a site about some specific finds from a river in Ireland. This site has a Bronze Age find from a river in Croatia. Here is a review of a text that goes in much more detail on ritual deposits.