A city situated on the Vistula estuary in Poland, which evolved from the 12th century to become one of the most important trading centres of eastern Europe. The town controlled the overland timber trade and its access to the northern-flowing rivers gave good access to the Baltic. Some of the most spectacular archaeological finds are a collection of Byzantine silks. [fco]. A halberd or dagger-axe, the characteristic weapon of the Chinese Bronze Age. The dagger-shaped bronze blade, usually with a flat tang but occasionally with a shaft hole, was mounted perpendicular to the wooden shaft. The blade had a crosspiece parallel to the shaft to help secure it in place; in later versions this crosspiece reached increasingly far down the shaft. Bronze ge blades and nonfunctionaljade replicas of blades often appear as mortuary gifts in Shang tombs. The earliest ge yet known have come from the third stratum at Erlitou (mid-2nd millennium bc). In the Eastern Zhou period the ge was sometimes combined with a spear, the ge blade at right angles to the spearhead, to form a Ji. The ji was in existence by the late 6th or early 5th century bc, as it is depicted in battle scenes on bronze vessels of that time. Extravagant ji carrying three ge blades were found in the late 5th-century bc tomb of the Marquis Yi in Sui Xian.
The Macmillan dictionary of archaeology, Ruth D. Whitehouse, 1983Copied