By Clover Little, Inventory Assistant, National Museum of Ireland
Copyright © 2023 Clover Little
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The Irish Antiquities Inventory Team has recently begun transcribing original register entries, some of them over a hundred years old, into the Irish Antiquities Division’s object database. These entries were generally written at the time the object was added into the collection, and they serve as a fascinating window into archaeological terminology and how it has developed over the years.
While transcribing the entries from 1937, I came across a word I had never encountered before. At first I simply wrote it down and kept working, but the insufferable curiosity had lodged itself in my brain and not five minutes later, I had to investigate further.
What on earth is a ricasso?
It sounded like some sort of food, or maybe a quirky misspelling of Picasso. But as it turns out, the word “ricasso” refers a short, blunt, and unsharpened portion of a blade, which can be notched or concave, and is found adjacent to the hilt, which is composed of the handle and grip (fig. 1). Not all blades had them, but when present they served a purpose by providing a flat, thick edge on which to rest the index finger.
It turns out there are a lot of technical terms used to describe the various parts of a sword. All swords are made of two parts, the hilt and the blade; the hilt can be further divided into the pommel, grip, and cross-guard, while the blade is composed of a point or tip, edge, central ridge, and sometimes a fuller, rain-guard, and/or ricasso. These terms might seem like they’re only useful to the most extreme of weapons enthusiasts, but they’re also a necessity when writing technical descriptions; swords can look very different from one another, and it’s important that we have the vocabulary at our disposal to distinguish them.
For example, ricassos first began to appear in the Bronze Age but also become common in the later medieval period, and as one can see, their basic form is the only great similarity between them (fig. 2-3). The Bronze Age sword might be described as leaf-shaped, and it might be distinguished by its number of rivet-holes; there is in fact an entire typology of Irish Bronze Swords developed by George Eogan (1965; fig. 2). A medieval sword, on the other hand, might be characterised as triangular or narrow, and might be distinguished by the presence of a rain-guard or the shape of the fuller; a separate typology for such medieval swords also exists, developed by R. Ewart Oakeshott (1960).
Unfortunately for archaeologists, though, the presence of a ricasso isn’t always easy to detect. Bronze and copper tools survive reasonably well in the archaeological record, but iron, which swords were regularly made of after iron-working was developed, deteriorates swiftly. Unless the lucky blade is in a hypoxic or anoxic environment (meaning there is little to no oxygen), it will deteriorate to the point that it is very difficult to tell if a ricasso was ever present. Many of the swords on display in Viking Ireland are a good example of this; their hilts and pommels are more likely to be made of bronze, gold, or silver and when they are, they are in far better condition than the iron blade (fig. 4)!
Even so, there are several blades with ricassos to be found at the National Museum of Ireland- Archaeology. My personal favourite is the brilliant replica of the Monasterevin Sword, which can be found in Medieval Ireland 1150-1550. Check it out next time you visit!
References
Oakeshott, R.E. (1960). The Archaeology of Weapons: Arms and Armour from Prehistory to the Age of Chivalry. London: Lutterworth Press.
Eogan, G. (1965). Catalogue of Irish Bronze Swords. Dublin: National Museum of Ireland.
