Bronze mace head

From 1959 to 1981, the Čipuljić necropolis in Bugojno was the site of comprehensive, multilayered archaeological research. In the eastern part of this mediaeval necropolis, a well-preserved bronze mace head with barrel-shaped inner walls was found by the right shoulder of a skeleton of a young man.

On the exterior surface there are three rows of eight elongated pyramidal flanges with lightly rounded edges. The flanges in the middle row are slightly larger than those in the upper and lower rows. The larger flanges are framed by two shallow, finely profiled grooves. The head has finely profiled top and bottom openings of approximately the same size.

There are only a handful of direct analogues for these features of the Čipuljić mace head among similar pieces found in Europe. Another artefacts of clearly identifiable typological and chronological features were found in the same grave, thus we can date the whole assemblage to the first decades of the thirteenth century.