ARROWHEAD

Haft end of flat copper-alloy barbed and tanged arrowhead. Edges are no longer sharp, due mainly to recent damage/erosion (showing pale green). Extensive recent linear grazing, particularly on one face (showing pale green). Otherwise the patina is dark brown/green, with microscopic crazing suggesting that corrosion is active below the surface. Slight edge bevels faintly visible on both faces. The notches between the tang and the barbs are facetted from one face only, and may be cast rather than created as a secondary process. If this is the case, the object must have been manufactured as an arrowhead rather than being made as a secondary process from a fragment of another artefact; this makes it extremely rare.
The tang has roughly straight sides and a roughly rectangular (perhaps incomplete?) base. The internal edges of the barbs, which are longer than the tang, are also approximately straight, though the external edges are convex and abut the internal edge in a point. Its shape is much like flint examples (e.g. Green's type Sutton C (H. S. Green, The Flint Arrowheads of the British Isles, BAR British Series 75, 1980)), and the fact that it appears to be cast and unlike a typical medieval (iron) arrowhead suggests a Bronze Age date. Tanged (usually with barbs) copper-alloy arrowheads are known from the late Bronze Age in Britain and western Europe (cf. Brendon O'Connor, 1980), though they are rare; 14 possible examples are recorded from Suffolk now, only four of which are tanged examples (from Wetheringsett, Lakenheath, Mildenhall and Eriswell). This example, however, has more in common with early Bronze Age forms and may be of this date, which would make it the only EBA example known from Britain. Length (incomplete) 24 mm (c. 40-45 mm reconstructed), maximum width 20 mm, thickness 1 mm, weight 3.51g.
List of copper-alloy arrowheads known from Suffolk: socketed, from BRD 018 (residual in a Middle Saxon context), CDD 022, HNY 017, and Suffolk Misc.; tanged, from ERL 050; barbed and tanged, from LKH and MNL 333 (neither yet on SMR); side-looped, from LVM 020 and WCB 015 (perhaps part of an LBA hoard); uncertain shape, from EXG Misc. (from LBA hoard). They are also known from Norfolk; examples include one from Hockwold, one from Methwold, and two of uncertain provenance.