Image: Early medieval, Spearhead (FindID 223955)

Description: A complete, exceptionally long iron spearhead of early Anglo-Saxon date, with a relatively long blade (three-quarters of its length) and split socket. The blade has concave sides both above and below its widest point. It is relatively thin and flat in cross-section. Kevin Leahy comments: 'This spearhead, with its open socket, only really fits into the early Anglo-Saxon period and can be placed in Michael Swanton's Group H3. Some of the weapons are very large: most in the region of 350-500 mm but there is one from Pewsey, Wilts (grave 22) that was at least 600 mm long. The shape of the Godalming spearhead is interesting as it looks Scandinavian, very much like one from Welbeck Hill, Lincs. Swanton placed these spearheads into the later fifth or early sixth centuries (1973, 110-14).' Helen Geake comments: 'Karen Høilund Nielsen's classification of the spearheads from four East Anglian cemeteries (Penn and Brugmann 2007, 17-22, 71) does not include any of this remarkable length. Her closest type is Concave Long 1a, which she dates to period MA1 (450-510), thus agreeing well with Swanton's date. I'm not as keen as Kevin is on a specifically Scandinavian inspiration, as the Godalming spearhead lacks the midrib of the Welbeck Hill example (Swanton 1973, fig. 82e). When the Pewsey cemetery is finally published (Annable and Eagles forthcomng, hopefully 2010) we should be able to see how well the spearhead in grave 22 matches the Godalming example. Swanton comments that the H3 type includes some of the largest and most impressive blades of the time, and this is certainly the case for the Godalming spearhead.'
Title: Early medieval: Spearhead
Credit: https://finds.org.uk/database/ajax/download/id/179932 Catalog: https://finds.org.uk/database/images/image/id/179932/recordtype/artefacts archive copy at the Wayback Machine Artefact: https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/223955
Author: Surrey County Council, David Williams, 2008-06-25 12:37:50
Permission: Attribution-ShareAlike License
Usage Terms: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0
License: CC BY-SA 2.0
License Link: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
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