鳥形안테나式 細形銅劍의 問題

Problems in the bird-shaped antenna daggers found in Korea and Kyushu, Japan

The author tries to trace the origin of the bird-shaped antenna daggers found in southwestern Manchuria, Korea, and northern Kyushu, Japan. These bronze daggers (iron blade in Manchurian examples) are roughly contemporary with the Former Han period of China 3rd-1st century B.C. In case of Korea, the pommel is shaped into two water-birds (possibly ducks) whose tails are joined and their necks turned back to face each other. In Japan and Manchuria, the water-birds are conventionalized and the heads are not visible, having been buried into the feathers. The much publicised specimen in the British Museum (formerly of the Eumorf opolous collection) is exactly of the same type and it must have come originally from the same area instead of mainland China, as was reported. The so-called “Korean-type bronze dagger culture,” to which the water-bird antenna daggers belong, arose possibly in northwestern Korea around the third or fourth century B.C. and spread into adjoining areas including the western part of Japan. Noting the wide-spread of bird-antenna daggers in Siberia and Inner Mnogolia (Ordos), the author presumes: (1) The basic form of the Siberian bird-pommel is ultimately to be associated with earlier Hallstatt antennenschwerter (Lipovka and Weltenburg types of Hallstatt B2 and 3) whose pommel types were first adopted by the Scythians for some of their akinakes daggers. (2) The akinakes daggers with antenna pommels spread into Siberia and eventually reached the Ordos region via Minussinsk, and in this steppe region with its animal art tradition, some of the antennae were transformed into the heads of birds of prey. The single pommel with two swan-heads from Germany must reflect a reflux of this Scythian animal art although, in Germany, the bird of prey was changed into a swan, following the tradition of arctic animal art different from Siberia. (3) In the Far East, in the Ordos region, the bird of prey of Siberia with a hooked beak was changed into water-birds with flat bills, and thence the new type of bird-antennae traveled further east into Korea where it became the pommels of some of the Korean type bronze daggers which are characterized by the attenuated part on both sides of the blade near the hilt. The British Museum piece is a typical Korean-type dagger and it must have originally come from an area between southwestern Manchuria and western Japan.