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Alessandro Neri

Comprising two caltrops, hand-forged with square-section in the form of four welded arrowheads; 42mm , 21 grams total.
Acquired on the German art market around 2000.
From the collection of Surrey, UK, gentleman.
Cf. Tsurtsumia, M., 'Tribolos, a Byzantine Landmine' in Byzantion, 2012, pp.413-422, fig.1, for identical specimen.


The caltrop was a ball from which four spikes projected in such a way that when three spikes were on the ground the fourth was always pointed upward. To step on it was to risk a laceration or puncture wound–painful, debilitating and hard to heal–which could result in serious infection or a slow death. The caltrop, therefore, bears a close family resemblance to snares, stakes, trenches and pits used singly or in combination to entangle or injure the feet of men and animals. Like those devices, it might well have originated as a hunting trap.

The word ‘caltrop’ originally meant the star thistle, a weed whose form and function were similar to those of the weapon. The Greeks called the device a tetrahedron or tribolos, again because of its shape. Borrowing the Greek word, as they so often did, the Romans referred to it as a tribulus, but they also called it a murex, because of its resemblance to the shell of the murex, the mollusk from which the Tyrians obtained their famous purple dyes. Under a wide variety of names, the caltrop appears and reappears in military history throughout Europe, Asia and North Africa, and eventually in the New World.


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The seller guarantees that he acquired this piece according to all national and international laws related to the ownership of cultural property. Provenance statement seen by Catawiki.


9th-14th Century AD

Byzantine Iron Anti Cavalry Caltrops Caltrop  Trivoli  Group

Archaeology

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Byzantine Iron Anti Cavalry Caltrops Caltrop Trivoli Group

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