Iron arrowhead

Arkan82 · Post by **Arkan82** » Thu Sep 02, 2010 6:55 am

And the first point in the upper left??

jack farrell · Post by **jack farrell** » Thu Sep 02, 2010 9:58 pm

Upper left? This is a very Mongol type. There is an identical one in a Liao dynasty collection from what is modern China.

jack farrell · Post by **jack farrell** » Tue Sep 14, 2010 2:30 am

These came from a kind of rummage sale. The vendor goes about buying large numbers of an item. He had about 30 of these when I found him; said he had sold a hundred. They were not expensive which made me suspicious. But everyone was different and they looked good to me. So I got these. He was not sure where they were from.

Some had been used for farming or some such. The next time there was a sale he had none and did not know if he ever would.

Would anyone like to hazard a guess as to provenience? What is your source?

PjSingh · Post by **PjSingh** » Tue Sep 14, 2010 12:06 pm

The shape of the one in the middle reminds me of a Khanda from punjab india.

daryush · Post by **daryush** » Tue Sep 14, 2010 3:36 pm

34 cm seems a little big for an arrowhead! Might be a spearhead?

jack farrell · Post by **jack farrell** » Tue Sep 14, 2010 8:30 pm

PJ; Please explain Khanda. What time period?

daryush · Post by **daryush** » Tue Sep 14, 2010 10:30 pm

Not sure about the time period but it's a type of Indian sword. AFAIK They are narrower in the middle of the blade than at the ends, and have a straight blade with a short point. Very similar to the arrowhead.

Here's a good picture:

PjSingh · Post by **PjSingh** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 1:45 pm

The Word Khanda is derived from the sanskrit word Kharag.Swords were refered to as Kharag prior to the different names that came later.Khandas became more popular among the Sikhs from the 16th century onwards and are still popular with the Akalis.

jack farrell · Post by **jack farrell** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 11:26 pm

These are certainly not arrowheads, and not swords and probably not even spears. What they are is lance points, I have seen them in the literature in several places, twice labeled as Mongol Empire and they also appear in a book about Kazakh armaments. I would suspect they have a larger distribution, would not be surprised if they were used throughout the Qing dynasty.

I would assume they came from Inner Mongolia because large caches of middle ages items originate from there. They are apparently still being used for rural agricultural purposes.

My assumption would be that blunt pointed projectiles would do their damage without becoming wedged in the target so easily. A fourth point is broken off which demonstrates that the blade is tempered steel.

Other than the rare chisel pointed arrow head (tranchet point), blunt pointed arrowheads seem to be the exclusive provenience of the second millennium. In fact, Chinese used those until the end of military archery.

Are there other references to these lance points with the faceted central ring?

Bede · Post by **Bede** » Thu Sep 16, 2010 8:30 am

I agree with Jack.

There are quite a few paintings showing people and sometimes demons carrying spears with heads shaped like these. An acquaintance of mine acquired a set of weapons with the faceted ball decoration at the transition between the blade and the socket. They included several types of blades and they were once displayed in a temple. Due to their protected past they were still in good condition. The group included various large bladed chopping weapons, tridents, and many spear blades. Unfortunately the wooden shafts had been cut short so that they could be put in decorative racks.

I have a spear blade in this style with traces of the shaft, but it had been buried like the ones in the picture here.

I have seen pictures of some the blunt bladed types with concave sides from as early as the Song Dynasty and others that were clearly made in the Qing. Most of these types are in the military encyclopaedias with explanations of their various uses. Because of the books, old types of head were reused in later dynasties as ceremonial and real weapons.

It is quite possible that there are also cast iron ones made to defraud the Qing military authorities and some maybe from the Taiping Rebellion.

In use, they were probably very sharp and the obtuse angles of some of the points were likely to be very dangerous to unarmoured men or horses. The unsharpened ones probably come from government stockpiles. Archaeologists have excavated large arsenals going back to the Han Dynasty.