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Description: | Early Bronze Age barbed and tanged chert arrowhead. This arrowhead has been knapped from a light grey white coloured piece of chert or very poor flint. It is broadly sub-triangular in plan and lentoid in cross section. The arrowhead measures 39.9 mm in length, 17mm maximum width, is 3.9mm thick and weighs 1.63 grams. The tang of the arrowhead is 8.5mm long and 5.9mm wide.
The arrowhead has been knapped using a number of different techniques, including direct and indirect percussion, as well as pressure / ripple flaking. It is broadly symmetrical in shape however one of the barbs has been damaged. It is likely that this damage is relatively recent and there is no evidence of reworking of the damaged area to suggest repair in antiquity. Both the sides of the arrowhead have been retouched to create sharp edges. One face of the arrowhead has received more reworking than the other and a large number of retouch scars are present. This reworking is at the thickest point of the arrowhead. The quality of the chert is relatively poor and there are a number of relatively small hinge fractures present. Hinge fractures are formed where the force of the blow has not traveled evenly through the chert or where the force meets a flaw or fracture. Chert artefacts are common in the area of the Marches as there are few sources of flint available. The flint that is available is mostly from glacial or riverine deposits and the quality of these sources is poor. However, there are a number of sources of chert in the area and it seems that these are exploited throughout prehistory.
This arrowhead is similar to the group described as Sutton (example d) in Green (1980: p126) 'Flint Arrowheads of the British Isles'. The reason for comparing this type with the arrowhead in question is the relatively narrow tang and width across the barbs, the relatively sharp angle of the point, and the lack of true over hanging barbs. | 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: | -2200
-1900 | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Creator: | Peter Reavill | Identifier: | http://www.finds.org.uk/database/artefac... | Language: | en-GB | Format: | text/html | Go to resource |
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