Why One Needs “The Odd Man Out”? The Deer Hunter with Lagobolon from the Frescoes in the Thracian Tomb near Alexandrovo 1 Emil NANKOV INTRODUCTION When describing the weapons of a foot hunter depicted on the upper frieze of frescoes in the central burial chamber of the early Hellenistic tomb near the village of Alexandrovo, Haskovo district (igs. 1-2), southeastern Bulgaria, the discoverer of the tomb, Georgi Kitov (2001, 25) wrote: “He holds an unusual weapon with long body and arc-curve at the upper end passing into a band perpendicular to the base. here are round enlargements at equal distances along the weapon. he item may be a reaping hook or peculiar big knife (machaira)” 2 . he unconvincing identiications proposed by Kitov were immediately called into question by his editor, L. Vagalinski, (Kitov 2001, 25, #10) who, based on its yellow-brown color and “round enlargements”, correctly noted that the object was a curved wooden stick fashioned of trimmed wood (ig. 3). In a subsequent article Kitov (2002, 63) identiied the round enlargements on the object as “buds” and “knots”, but did not clarify whether they should be seen as functional or decora- tive elements of the reaping hook or the machaira, which he initially suggested. Meanwhile, in an attempt to interpret the Alexandrovo hunting frieze from the prism of the hracian orphism, modifying Kitov's identiication, Prof. Alexander Fol (2002, 235, 237) has suggested that the reaping-hook was in fact a sickle – “one of the typical maenadic instruments” used for the killing of Orpheus. His idea, however, has gained no support. At the same time, the editor's alternative 1 his article presents a slightly enlarged English ver- sion of the text of the invited lecture, which I delivered on January 21, 2010, within the seminar “Archaeology” or- ganized by the Department of Archaeology at New Bulgarian University. I wish to thank, among others, Julia Tsvetkova, Aneta Petrova, Maya Vassileva, Valeria Bineva, Boyan Dumanov, Petar Zidarov and Bogdan Atanasov for their comments, sugges- tions and further bibli- ography on the subject. I would also like to thank Annetta Alexandridis from the Department of History of Art and Archaeology at Cornell University for suggesting improvements and for her comments on an earlier drat of the text. 2 In ancient Greece, the reaping-hook or sickle was known as harpe, drepane, or drepanon, designating various agricultural imple- ments: a pruning-hook, a gardener's knife, as well as a sickle-shaped, curved sword or scimitar. he sickle was used not only for reaping of grain, but also of legumes, grass, straw, bushes, as well as for prun- ing trees and vines. hey are normally made of iron, less oten bronze, with the cutting edge always on the concave side of the curved blade, which was inserted and nailed into a wooden handle (cf. Kron 1998, 188- 190). Several iron blades, for example, are known from the early Hellenistic city of Seuthopolis in inland hrace, where all have been identiied as hooks for pruning vines, (Огненова- Маринова 1984, 166, Кат. ##242-248, фиг. 41-42). Cf. also the closely similar specimens found in the early Hellenistic city of Halos in hessaly, (Hijmans 2003, 126, ig. 3.33, 303, cat. nos. M4-M13 with lit). In 1996, Kitov (2005b, 27) reported the discovery of a “pruning- knife” – the only object that escaped the looting of the tomb in Shushmanetz tumulus – “...close to the door.” Curiously, he did not use it as a comparan- dum for the pruning hook he initially saw in the Alexandrovo hunting frieze. ARCHAEOLOGIA BULGARICA XIV, 1 (2010), 35-55