page_title: Oakeshott typology
section_title: Type XVIII
hierarchical_section_title: Oakeshott typology / Oakeshott types / Type XVIII
caption_attribution_description: The Kingmaker Limited Edition Medieval Sword
context_page_description: The Oakeshott typology was created by historian and illustrator Ewart Oakeshott as a way to define and catalogue the medieval sword based on physical form. It categorises the swords of the European Middle Ages into 13 main types, labelled X through XXII. Oakeshott introduced it in his 1960 treatise The Archaeology of Weapons: Arms and Armour from Prehistory to the Age of Chivalry.
  The system is a continuation of Jan Petersen's typology of the Viking sword, which Petersen introduced in De Norske Vikingsverd in 1919. In 1927 the system was simplified by R.E.M. Wheeler to only seven types, labelled I through VII. Oakeshott slightly expanded the system with two transitional types, VIII and IX, and then he started work on his own typology.
  Among the many reasons for his typology, Oakeshott found date classification unreliable during his research. He wrote that the weapons' dates of manufacture, use, and retirement have been greatly obscured by trade, warfare, and other various exchanges combined with the weapons' own longevity.
context_section_description: Tapering blades with broad base, short grip, diamond cross-section. In distinction from type XV, these blades almost always feature a raised mid-rib that reinforces the blade for thrusting, and in the examples given in Records of the Medieval Sword, they can be seen to have a less linear and consistent taper along the edge of the blade, sometimes showing a subtle increase of the taper toward the point.  Subtype XVIIIa: narrow blades with a longer grip. Subtype XVIIIb: Bastard swords with a longer blade and long grip; were in use c. 1450 – c. 1520. Subtype XVIIIc: shorter grip, broad blade; c. 90. Subtype XVIIIe: Narrow, long blade with extended ricasso more narrow than the blade and very long grip.
caption: Type XVIII.
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