|
Date: |
|
Description: | Complete, cast copper alloy Middle Bronze Age, side looped, spearhead. This spearhead has a narrow leaf shaped blade with a lozenge shaped section. The shaft is circular in section and socketed. To either side of the shaft, halfway along its length, is a lozenge or leaf shaped side loop, both of which are slightly flattened against the shaft. There is no peg hole on the shaft. The casting seams are not visible, except for a raised but smoothed seam of metal above one of the side loops. The original surface is mostly intact and has a mid brown patina. The object has suffered damage in a variety of forms. The surface is pitted and scratched, notable at the blade tip and along the mid rib. The edges of the blade are chipped. There is a subsquare nick at the mouth of the socket that has caused two cracks to run up the shaft to just below one of the side loops, and a triangular nick that has not resulted in cracking. There is also a sub oval hole running from one of the side loops. These signs of damage are worn smooth and evenly patinated suggesting that they occurred in antiquity. However there is a large amount of scratching to the object surface, which may be the result of more modern damage, possibly over harsh cleaning. There are also two grooves on the object that are shiny bronze in colour that are definitely due to recent damage. The socket of the spearhead is blocked with compacted soil, as are the side loops. Under microscopic inspection there are traces of a fibrous material that may be leather or heavily decayed wood, but not enough survives to get a positive identification. The soil is probably compacted due to the post depositional environment. Because of this blockage, it is not known how far the socket extends into the shaft. The spearhead is 145.06mm long, of which 54.34mm is the shaft, 28.56mm at the widest point of the blade and 10.72mm thick at the mid rib. The socket mouth has a diameter of 18.78mm. The side loops are 18mm long and the bottom of the loop begins 20.78mm from the end of the shaft. The object weighs 72.75g. A parallel for this spearhead can be seen in Ehrenberg, 1977 number 25. Ehrenberg comments that spearheads of this type date from the Middle Bronze Age period, but it is thought those with the flattened side loops continued into the later Bronze Age. | Format: | text/html | License: | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ | Publisher: | The Portable Antiquities Scheme | Rights holder: | The Portable Antiquities Scheme | Subjects: | archaeology | Temporal: | -1500
-900 | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Creator: | Caroline McDonald | Identifier: | http://www.finds.org.uk/database/artefac... | Language: | en-GB | Format: | text/html | Go to resource |
|
More Like this...
-
SPEARHEAD
Complete, cast copper alloy Middle…
-
SPEAR
An incomplete cast copper alloy…
-
spear
Incomplete, cast copper alloy Late…
-
SPEAR
Incomplete, cast copper alloy Late…
-
SPEAR
A near complete cast bronze…
-
SPEAR
Incomplete, cast copper alloy Late…
-
spear
An incomplete, cast copper alloy…
-
SPEAR
An incomplete, cast copper alloy…
-
HOARD
A Late Bronze Age metalworking…
-
SPEAR
Cast bronze (copper alloy) side…
|