CHAPTER XIV.
Spear-heads, Lance-heads, etc.
There can be but little doubt that one of the weapons of offence in earliest use among mankind must have been of the nature of a spear—a straight stick or staff, probably pointed and to a certain extent hardened in the fire. The idea of giving to such a staff a still harder and sharper point by attaching to it a head of bone or of stone, such as is still commonly in use among many savage tribes, would come next. And, lastly, these heads or points would be formed of metal, when its use for cutting tools and weapons had become general, and means had been discovered for rendering it available for this particular purpose. In the earlier part of the Bronze Age, when bronze was already in use for knife-daggers and even for daggers, it would appear that the spears and darts, if any such were in use, were in this country still tipped with flint. How long this practice continued it is impossible to say, and it is even doubtful whether any bronze spear-heads were in use before the time when the founders had discovered the art of making sockets by means of cores placed within the moulds. It is, however, not impossible that some of the blades found in the Wiltshire barrows, and the tanged weapons which have already been described in Chapter XI., may have been the heads of spears rather than the blades of daggers; but even at the period to which they belong the art of making cores must have been known, as the ferrule found at Arreton Down, and shown in Fig. 324, will testify, as well as the hollow socket of Fig. 328.
In the South-east of Europe and in Western Asia, as in Cyprus and at Hissarlik, tanged and not socketed spear-heads have been found in considerable numbers; but such a form is of very rare occurrence in Europe, and is unknown in Britain, unless possibly some of the blades already described as knives or daggers, such as Fig. 277, were attached to long rather than short handles, and should, therefore, have been treated of in this chapter rather than in that in which I have placed them. If spears were deposited in the graves with the dead, the shafts must in all probability have been broken, for as a rule the graves for bodies buried in the contracted position are not long enough to receive a spear of ordinary length.
In the case of some few ancient socketed tools of bronze, the socket has not been formed by casting over a core, but a wide plate of metal has been hammered over a conical mandril so as to form a socket like that of many chisels of the present day, and of the iron spear-heads of earlier times. I am not aware of any bronze instruments with the sockets formed in this manner ever having been found in this country. In all cases the sockets have been produced by cores in the casting, and in many spear-heads the adjustment of the core has been effected with such nicety that a conical hollow extends almost to the tip, with the metal around it of uniform substance, and often very thin in proportion to the size of the weapon.
The heads of arrows, bolts, darts, javelins, lances, and spears so nearly resemble one another in character, that it is impossible to draw any absolute line of distinction between them. The larger varieties must, however, have served for weapons retained in the hand as spears, while those of small and moderate size may have been for weapons thrown as lances, or possibly discharged as bolts or arrows. In length these instruments vary from about 2 inches to as much as 36 inches.
Sir W. Wilde[1173] has divided the Irish spear-heads into four varieties, as follows:—
1. The simple leaf-shaped, either long and narrow, or broad, with holes in the socket through which to pass the rivets to fix them to the shaft.
2. The looped, with eyes on each side of the socket below and on the same plane with the blade. These are generally of the long, narrow, straight-edged kind.