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Description: | Almost complete barbed and tanged flint arrowhead. The arrowhead is missing its tip, part of each barb and the tang, but is otherwise a good example. It is 59.84mm long, 35.04mm wide, 8.38mm thick and weighs 13.33g. The incomplete barbs are 9.7mm, 7.76mm wide and 7.8mm long, 6.62mm wide. The incomplete tang is 8.12mm long and 11.6mm. The arrowhead is bi-facially worked with ripple flaking and is clearly retouched along each edge. It appears that some large flakes may have been struck from one side due to subsequent damage. The two sides of the arrowhead form an angle of approximately 40 degrees. The flint is mid grey in colour with light and dark grey patches.
Flint arrowheads of this type were in use in the early Bronze Age sometime between 1900 and 1600 BC. This arrowhead can be classified by Green 1980 (Flint Arrowheads BAR report 75) as a Ballyclare type B. This type of large arrowhead is an unusual find in Essex and was probably imported as a prestige item, possibly from as far away as Ireland. The large size of this type of arrowhead also suggests it was more for show than practicality, though larger arrowheads would have been preferable for hunting deer (Green, page 118 and 173). During the Bronze Age, archers had a special status as warriors and were sometimes buried with all of their arching equipment, including their flint arrowheads. | 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: | -1900
-1600 | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Creator: | Caroline McDonald | Identifier: | http://www.finds.org.uk/database/artefac... | Language: | en-GB | Format: | text/html | Go to resource |
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