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Description: | A rare and important find for Essex of an almost complete Bronze Age bronze arrowhead. Cast in one piece, this arrowhead is barbed and tanged in form, with the two sides forming an angle of approximately 35 degrees. It is 39.76mm long, 19.82mm wide from barb to barb, 2.56mm thick and weighs 5.10g. The extreme end of the point is missing and the barbs are damaged and truncated. The tang, which is complete and rectangular in plan is 7.8mm and the barbs are 3.48mm and 2.38mm long respectively. The arrowhead has a low mid ridge, making the object bevelled on one face and so gives it a triangular section. Much of the original surface survives with a dark green patina, but it is heavily scratched and pitted. The exposed surfaces are mid green in colour. There is one small patch of bright green corrosion to one side of the longer tang.There is only one bronze arrowhead from a secure Bronze Age context in Britain and that was in the Penard hoard, first reported in Archaeologica 71, page 138. The Penard arrowhead has a mid rib as opposed to ridge, but is still barbed and tanged. At the time of its discovery it was a unique find in Britain and was presumed to be an import as there are numerous finds of bronze arrowheads recorded from Northern France.However, thanks to an increase in the number of reported metal detected finds, Bronze Age bronze arrowheads are now growing in number, though they remain a rare group of artefact. Dr Colin Pendleton reports that Suffolk has 17 known examples, of which 5 can be termed barbed and tanged. Norfolk has at least 4 recorded and more examples are being added to the database from around the country. This suggests that bronze arrowheads were also a British tradition.The arrowhead reported here is the first known from Essex and as such is an important discovery for the county, as well as adding to the growing British corpus. Though the barbed and tanged form was used in flint from the Early Bronze Age to the Middle Bronze Age, the evidence from Penard, which dates from 1275-1140 BC, suggests that copper alloy arrowheads did not come into fashion until later in the Middle Bronze Age. Therefore this is the suggested date range for this arrowhead.Thanks are extended to Dr Stuart Needham of the British Museum for his opinion on this artefact.
Original Image | Publisher: | http://finds.org.uk | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/r... | Go to resource |
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