A Bronze Sword Pulled From an Italian Lake Is Still Sharp After 3,300 Years
The 3,300-year-old weapon came out of Lake Mezzano, a volcanic crater lake northwest of Rome, and it is the third sword of its kind found there in 50 years.
Archaeologists have recovered a bronze sword from a lake in Italy, and after roughly 3,300 years underwater the blade still has a sharp edge. The weapon came out of Lake Mezzano, which sits in the crater of an ancient volcano about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of Rome.
The third sword pulled from the same lake
The sword dates to the Late Bronze Age, the 14th to 13th centuries B.C. It is the third sword of its kind found in Lake Mezzano in the past 50 years. The people who made it and carried it lived long before the Etruscans or the Romans, the two civilizations most people picture when they think of ancient Italy. The sword is described as well preserved, and its edge survived the long stay in the water.
The lake was not simply a place where people threw things away. Bronze Age people built pile dwellings — houses raised on wooden posts, also known as stilt houses — in what is now Lake Mezzano, and the archaeologists recovered parts of that submerged settlement during their recent investigations.
What else was lying on the lake bed
The sword was not alone. The team also found a long list of objects in the same waters:
- intact vases
- axes
- arrowheads
- daggers
- spearheads
- pins
- a bronze razor
The finds mix weapons, tools and pottery, and the vases are described as intact. The sword and the bronze razor were found near each other, and that pairing suggests the two objects may have been linked to a person of high social status, such as an elite warrior.
Why a sword ends up in a lake
One possibility is that the sword was placed in the water as an offering to a deity. Another is that it was deposited for a high-status warrior. Either way, a sword in a lake looks like a deliberate act rather than an accident.
The discovery also fits a wider Bronze Age practice of putting metal into water. Collections of jewelry and weapons, including blades that were bent or damaged on purpose in a ritual, were tossed into lakes and rivers. The habit did not end with the Bronze Age. It continued through the centuries into Etruscan times, when wells were ritually closed with artifacts and human sacrifices.
During the 13th century B.C., people in central Italy took part in trade networks that spanned the Mediterranean. In that world, bronze weapons were not only instruments of combat but also symbols of prestige, identity and power.
The sword and the other objects from Lake Mezzano are giving archaeologists new information about the people who flourished in prehistoric Italy long before the Romans and the Etruscans.