| Summary: | 'Moor Sand Wreck'. The Salcombe swords: report by Phillip Baker- in July 1977, two bronze age weapons were found while instructing beginners in skin diving. The sword was in excellent condition, but the dagger had a badly worn narrower blade. Both blades lay exposed, wholly unattached to the gravel, in gullies between weed covered rocks at about 6m depth. Prof. K Branigan; the sword can be placed in the 11th - 12th centuries BC, and came from somewhere in western or central Europe. Its blade shows many features of the Rixheim swords, both in general shape and in such details as the broad shallow grooving and low central rib, and decorative arcs at the base of the blade. The rod tang, however is not usually associated with this form of blade, although it is found on other swords of the same period and from the same areas. The sword may well have arrived off the coast of Devon in antiquity. The finder wishes to have the swords displayed in a museum and have the area in which they were found protected as a wreck. |
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