Accidental finding of an iron akinak with antenna-shaped pommel

Abstract

Weapons have been a special-purpose commodity since ancient times; they were bought, kept and taken to the other world. Finding swords, daggers and knives in funerary monuments allows us to trace not only the chronology, but also cultural and ethnic ties in antiquity. But, unfortunately, as practice shows, the weapons are not always found in an undisturbed state and in closed complexes. A large amount of material of this type are so-called accidental findings.
By «accidental findings», the authors mean an archaeological artifact, discovered unintentionally, outside of purposeful searches. Despite the fact that this type of findings was found separately from the monument, and does not give a general understanding of its role in the funeral ritual, the very presence of the akinak on a particular territory is a marker of the distribution area. One of such findings is an akinak with an antenna-shaped pommel and a crosshair broken at a “blunt” angle, which
was found near the village of Marinogorka in the East Kazakhstan region. The purpose of this article is to introduce into scientific circulation the found iron akinak, with all measurements, morphological description, with analogies, and etc. The issue concerning the terminology of the name of this type of blade, as well as its distinctive features (pommel, crosshair, handle) is also considered. The akinak refers to a weapon of the “Prokhorov” type, which was distributed over a large territory and dates no
earlier than the IV-III centuries BC.