An Ancient Spearhead

Abstract

IN the British, London, and Aylesbury Museums are a few iron spearheads, presumably of the Early Iron Age, and evidently copied from the cast-bronze spearheads of the late Bronze Age, which ended about 800 B.C. in Britain. All of these were found in England. Mr. Reginald A. Smith, Keeper of British and Medieval Antiquities, British Museum, informs me that their occurrence has long been a mystery; that, on one hand, it is difficult to account for their shape in wrought iron by reason of the high degree of technical skill required for their manufacture in this way, and that, on the other hand, cast iron, of which they may possibly be composed, is supposed to have been unknown even in medieval times.