SPEAR

An iron spear head, dating to the Roman period. The spear is leaf shaped with a poorly defined mid rib. There is an oval cut out on one edge of the spear head. The spear head extends to a semi-circular closed socket. Some wood still remains in the socket. The spear appears to be ceremonial in nature in that it could never have functioned effectively as a weapon. It can be compared with iron 'standard points'. It measures 200mm in length, a maximum of 55mm in width and has a maximum thickness of 5mm. The socket has a diameter of 16mm. The spear head weighs 107.1 grams.

It is something of an outlier in previous spear categorisation schemes. The most commonly used is Manning's (1985, pp. 160-70) division of the spearheads from Hod Hill, but NCL-D10B58 does not fit easily into any of Manning's groups, being too large for Groups I-II and too squat and wide for Groups III-IV. With the widest point at the centre, it had a very short 'length of entry' (Chapman, 2005, p. 28), and would therefore have been useful as a thrusting weapon rather than a projectile, although a non-functional interpretation should also be considered. It may have functioned as a standard tip, and appears to have been deliberately mutilated with a cut-out on one edge. A slightly larger spearhead of similar proportions comes from Caerleon (Chapman, 2005, Da15).

This is not an isolated example of the mutilation of Roman spearheads. An iron spearhead from Broomlee Lough near Housesteads has two neat piercings (Manning 1976, 20 and 46, fig 13 no. 19), whereas a spearhead from the Broadgate Tickethall site at Liverpool Street Station, London (Marshall 2018, 33) possessed a single perforation. Marshall 2018 offers a range of other parallels including one with a single perforation, from Ariconium (Herefordshire). That site also produced some unusual copper-alloy spearheads. Cool notes several examples of spearheads from overt votive contexts and concludes that the Ariconium find represents votive deposition. In fact, similar single perforations also appear on some votive miniature spears such as a silver find that was deliberately bent and twisted before deposition at the late Roman temple site at Uley (Woodward and Leach 1993, 131-3, figs 110-11 no. 5; Cool 2012, 151-2, fig 4.40).