At last the question gets answered! The longest blades are from Port Nidau in Switzerland. Reading the rest of the Swordforum thread, though, two-handed use is only one possibility; others posters suggest their use in executions, from horseback (hmm... too early for Celtic cavalry?) from chariots (hmm once again) or simply as great big swords to be used as ornaments or thrown into lakes as offerings. Perhaps most importantly, the possible two-handers all come from before the EB timeframe. That, incidentally would be before the Celts invented mail which makes two-hander use on the battlefield even less likely: unless you need to cut through heavy armour, discarding your shield is not going to be worth it.

To set the record straight, I never said that all Celtic swords were short and blunt, what I said was that during the La Tene period, there was a tendency for swords to get shorter and for more to be made with blunt ends. You start off, c.700BC with the classic Celtic Longsword, leaf shaped and long and you end up with little machete-like weapons. Doesn't that make you wonder how Celtic warfare was developing...?

Calling the British "sword masters" a fantasy unit is still valid, since no swords anything like the Port Nidau models have turned up in Britain or Ireland. The continental equivalent, if not fantasy, is still both conjecture and anachronistic even if real (much more so than the lorica segmentata everyone gets so annoyed about)

Thank you and goodnight.