Polished Chinese arrowheads

[Peter Dekker]

Is that not an amazing sword? The blades may all be missing from the Silk Road swords because much of Xinjiang is old sea beds with salt deposits below the surface, for instance, in graves.

I didn't know about it being salty there, but it makes sense. A sweaty fingerprint on one of my old swords will become a nasty stain within days if untreated. (Modern, pattern welded steel tends to be more corrosion resistant even when it is high carbon steel because of lower impurities of stuff like sulphur and manganese.) Centuries of that may be well enough to eat up a blade entirely! What a shame, I bet there were some beauties among those as well. I wonder in what condition the Met's example has been kept, it looks much better than many early Qing / late Ming swords I've seen. Conditions must have been near-perfect.

Peter and all; I assume you know of bi-metal arrow points from China, presumably cross bow points. What would be the purpose of putting a bronze point on a steel shaft?

I was unaware of these. In what regions were they found, and to what period are they dated? Do you have pics?

[jack farrell]

From the curio market in Bejing. The shorter one was to be seen in museums in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

[Peter Dekker]

Hi Jack,

Now I see the pics I realize I've seen them before. I must admit that I'm still very under-educated when it comes to these very old Chinese artifacts.

But some random thoughts that come up:
I would assume they date from the first few centuries B.C. around the bronze / iron age transition. At this period their armor mainly consisted of cured leather or turtle shell laced together. These bronze heads were probably sufficient to pierce them, so for that part there was no need for hardened iron / steel tips as of yet.

But why an iron tang, then... Perhaps iron was already known to be tougher than bronze, and so perhaps the most vulnerable part of the arrow, right behind the head, was done with this material in order to assure a maximum transfer of kinetic energy to the target. I've seen some bent bronze tangs. But also steel ones, for that matter, mainly on chisel-shaped heads from Jin period Jurchen sites. But I wonder whether that was something ceremonial instead, because the tangs are bent all the way back and I can't see how that could happen just from impact. With a tang bent in a loop, I can imagine them dangling from a necklace or something similar. And we all know how much shamans love dangling stuff of all sorts.. Anyway, I'm drifting away to the Manchu / Jurchen again.

Another theory is that perhaps iron-making was not yet so well-developed yet as to make the complex geometries of the heads in large quantities in an economical manner. What we see may not be an optimal solution from a functional standpoint, but the easiest one to do with the technological and economical resources at hand at the time. Casting these heads around a metal rod may have been an easier / cheaper way to make such tips, considering the high melting-point of iron.

Hardening may also have been an issue. The amount of heat necessary to heat the head for this, may have been too much for the thinner bronze tang behind it and it may have become too soft or to the contrary, tend to become too brittle after quenching as it was inevitably hotter than the head. (Unless one works with clay, but that would add to the labor intensiveness and thus cost.) Given the same heat-treatment throughout, this bimetal construction may have come up with a pretty hard bronze tip, and a really tough iron tang. But this really is more the area of a metallurgist, I may be overlooking things here.

I wonder what our living period source database and theory-generator, Bede Dwyer, comes up with when running these points through his system.

-Peter

[Bede]

Peter,
I have some of those iron tanged bronze arrowheads too. The conventional wisdom is that the complex shapes were easy to cast, but iron was much cheaper than bronze so the heads were cast over iron rods. I have some all bronze arrowheads where the tang made up more than half the weight of the arrowhead. Aside from being cheaper, iron was also lighter than bronze.

In the late Warring States Period, some areas had perfected casting complete iron arrowheads and then de-carbonising the cast iron into low carbon steel. Then the outer surface had carbon added to case harden it. These eventually replaced the bronze arrowheads because the steel, unlike the iron, was harder than bronze. Steel armour (of the hardness of modern spring steel) came into use in the mid-Western Han Period. There have been some lamellar and scale breast plates excavated. This was probably a response to the improved arrowheads.

As you know, the casting and removal and re-adding of carbon was also used for sword making in the Han, especially for long, straight swords.

[Stephen Selby]

Was wondering of those who went to the Silk Road Museum, if you saw the Scythian swords of bi-metal construction? These were basically bronze swords with steel tips. the provenience card stated 17-1 C BCE.

Dear Jack,

There's something wrong with the attribution of these swords if they are described as 'Scythian'. The period is correct; but they originate in to the North of the Dian culture among people referred to in Chinese writing as 'Qiang'. The consensus is that the came from a proto-Tibetan culture. They did however, migrate through trade to Siberia.

[jack farrell]

Stephen; The provenience card is written in Korean which is the same as Greek to me. However, the Met sword does open the door to the possibility.

But what about the bi-metal arrow points? Date? Purpose?

[Bede]

Jack,
Bronze arrowheads with iron tangs are recorded from Burial Ground No. 44 in Yangxiadu, the secondary capital of the state on Yan in the Warring States period. This site is in the south east of Yixian County in Hebei province. There were many pure iron weapons, swords, spearheads and ji halberds.

The arrowheads were all prismatic bronze heads with iron tangs. As I wrote before, the most likely reason for still using bronze for the heads is ease of making complex shapes by casting. A secondary reason is that bronze is as hard as wrought iron. Until the widespread use of steel, bronze arrowheads were still effective if expensive.

See Yang Hong,Weapons in Ancient China,1992. Apparently, bronze arrowheads (zu) with iron tangs (ting) were used into the Han dynasty.