13_CBS
2009-07-24, 07:22 PM
I'm working as minion intern at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (http://www.museum.upenn.edu/) this summer, and today I was given the great privilege taking a look at unearthed Middle Eastern weapons and other artifacts from the mysterious archaeological site of Hasanlu. But before I begin, a very quick bit of backstory about the site.
Disclaimer: I only heard about the Hasanlu site about a month and a half ago, and since I've completed only 1 year of undergraduate school with only 1 semester's worth of archaeology classes under my belt, I am by no means an expert on the matter. However, the Professor and Ph.D I'm working for is a physical anthropologist (meaning that she works a lot with bones, particularly human ones) who, among other projects, works on (or is at least quite familiar with) the Hasanlu site. Thus, I have something of an academic insider's point of view on the matter.
Hasanlu was a settlement (a "tepe") near Lake Urmia in what is today Iran (Lake Urmia is the tiny little lake on the northwest corner of the map) (http://iran.itravel.thruhere.net/images/maps/ir-map.png). As far as I know, around the early iron age, ca. 1000 BC to, at the latest, 800 BC, there was a raid on the area by armed people. The results were pretty devastating: I wasn't able to get hold of the casualty numbers, but the area was not resettled for several generations--I was told that there was about a 100 to 500 year gap between the raid and the next resettling. The settlement was apparently burned to the ground during the raid, often with people in them (I'm not sure whether they were locked in by the raiders or barricaded themselves to ward off the raiders when the raiders set everything on fire).
Now, the great mystery of Hasanlu is twofold:
1) Who did the raiding? That is, which group of people (or kingdom or empire) destroyed Hasanlu?
2) Who was raided? That is, which group of people (or kingdom or empire) suffered this attack?
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teppe_Hasanlu) claims that the people involved are already known, but my Professor and her colleagues firmly disagree. At the moment, there are apparently lots of ideas flying about on the identities of the raiders and the raided, and despite having been academically excavated back in the 60's, the site's artifacts haven't given a definite answer as to who the people were.
The weapons and pieces of weapons found at Hasanlu also propose their own puzzle:
1) Which weapon belonged to whom? Did spear #19345 belong to a raider, or did it belong to some fellow living in the settlement?
2) Where did these weapons come from? Where did the people get their hands on them? Were they locally manufactured, or were they traded for from elsewhere? Which elsewhere?
3) There were plenty of bodies found at the site (I've personally handled, stored, and moved around hundreds of the skulls and bones of Hasanlu), each bearing various marks of trauma. Which of the weapons inflicted which wounds?
So, as I said, I was treated to being allowed to look at (and in some cases, even touch!) some of the scruffy looking, yet priceless, weapons found at the Hasanlu site.
Since this was the early Iron Age, some of the weapons were bronze, while others were iron (I wasn't able to get any further data on the metals in the weapons, sadly). Discounting found arrowheads (which were overwhelmingly iron--does this mean anything?), the ratio of iron weapons to bronze weapons was roughly 1:1. Also, even among weapons of the same type, there were lots of variations--for example, some of the spearheads were fairly small, while others were positively colossal. I was shown mostly spearheads, unsurprisingly, though there was at least one iron short sword in the collection, along with a lot of stone maceheads (and bronze ones, too).
I was going to simply post the pictures I was able to take of the weapons, but after speaking with the collection's keeper, it seems that I'm unable to do so. Apparently, academicians don't like it when you post pictures of stuff they want to publish themselves. :smallannoyed: Thus, the best I can do is try to describe to you, in great detail, the pictures of stuff that I took.
Set 1:
The first set I took were various quivers for arrows. What surprised me quite a bit here was the fact that these quivers were at least partly made of metal. If there was a leather interior to these quivers, it is unknown (or, at least, I haven't been told such). It was difficult to distinguish which end was the opening since it was flattened and slightly melted (remember: the site was burned down by the raiders), but on one end of the quiver are round, button-like decorations made of metal. By the looks of it, the quivers were made of mostly iron with decorative copper or bronze "beads" attached to the button-like decorations. I wasn't able to get exact measurements, but the metal parts appeared to be from half a foot long to one and a half feet long (.3 to .45 meters). I originally mistook them for being sword sheathes.
Set 2:
I managed to grab a picture of a bronze cheekpiece for a helmet. It was vaguely axehead-like in shape, with tiny holes all around the edges. The very kind assistant keeper who showed me around the collection said that the holes were there so that one could sew a cloth or leather padding to the inside of the cheekpiece. The cheekpiece didn't seem to have any hinges or anything that would show how it was attached to the helmet, however.
Set 3:
The next set was a picture of small bronze or copper tubes, each no more than an inch/2.5 cm long. Their purpose is pretty much unknown: at the moment, researchers think that they might have served as bead-like ornamentation for horses. Before I forget, I wasn't really told whether or not horses were involved in the raid--there definitely were horses found at the site, but I'm not sure if the raiders necessarily came in on horseback, and how many of them were cavalry and how many were infantry.
As an aside, they also found bits for horses at the site, apparently made of iron.
Set 4:
I took a picture of a large bronze piece of a what was probably a shield or part of a shield. I'd estimate the object to have been, oh, 1 to 1.5 feet (.3 to .45 meters) in diameter. It looked fairly thin to be a stand-alone shield, so I would guess that the bronze part was faced or backed with wood and/or leather. There was no mention of whether or not the shields were hand-gripped or secured to the arm.
The object resembled a sun in that there was a circular center and "rays" of metal seemed to come out of it, forming a shield.
Set 5:
The assistant keeper said that this object was called a "sickle blade" in the archives, but that struck me as a bit odd. It was bronze and was indeed shaped like a sickle, but the curve was even deeper than a khopesh]/url] to the point where it almost looked like a boomerang, and, unlike a khopesh, there was nothing resembling a tang that would have been the core of a handgrip. I also noticed a series of tiny holes along the convex edge of the sickle, and that one of the sickle's ends was shaped into something like a socket, fit for a fairly thin stick or somesuch. As a result, I suspect that this sickle-shaped object wasn't a weapon at all, and the assistant keeper suspects that this might have instead been a standard holder of some sort.
On the bottom side of the sickle were three, obviously purposefully made circular indentations. It's unknown as to what they were for.
Set 6:
This picture was of a large, crumbling pile of...bronze something. Some of them were about 2-3 inches in length and 1-2 inches in width (5-7.5 cm in length, 2.5-5 cm in width) and had a single hole near the edges. This made me toy with the idea that some of the metal pieces might have been part of a scale suit of armor. They certainly seemed thick enough. I couldn't really figure out what the larger pieces were.
Set 7:
Now THIS was quite interesting. I was told that it was the metal part of a javelin, and I would estimate that it was about 2, 2.5 feet long (.61, .76 meters) and about as thick as your thumb. What's really cool is the way it corroded: either the object was simply all bronze and the bronze corroded in a funny way, or the javelin was actually made in at least two layers. I noticed this because, at about halfway down the length of the javelin tip, there was a spot about twice as long as your thumb that, instead of the typical light green that meant rusted bronze/copper, was a very dark brown/black with flecks of rusty red, which seems to indicate iron (the assistant keeper certainly thinks so). If that's the case, then it might have been that the javelin maker welded a layer of bronze onto an iron core, and the bronze somehow managed to corrode off while the iron was left curiously intact. I have no idea how that would work, but who knows? Strange things happen in archaeology.
If the two-metal weld theory is correct, it begs the question as to why it was made in such a way. Any ideas?
Set 8:
This object was...kinda weird. Neither the assistant keeper nor I were able to figure out what it was. It was about 2 inches long (5 cm) and 1 inch thick (2.5 cm), and one end was Y shaped, [url=http://www.naturfoto-cz.de/photos/sevcik/water-buffalo--bubalus-arnee-buvol-5.jpg]not unlike the horns of a water buffalo (http://www.fallingpixel.com/products/6948/mains/KhLR01.jpg). If this sounds funny to you, imagine how we felt when we looked at it. Our general reaction was, "wut". :smallannoyed: So we have no idea what it was or what it does. As a side note, it was made of bronze.
Set 9:
This object was also kinda weird, and again neither of us could identify what it was. Judging from its coloration, it appeared to be made of iron, and might have been a little to finely crafted from iron to be contemporary with all the other iron objects (it certainly preserved better than the other iron stuff). Imagine if you took a beer bottle and managed to saw off the very top of the bottle, plus a few inches. That's what the object looked like.
Again, both of us were like, "wut" when we saw this.
Set 10:
This object was circular and was about, oh, 4 or 5 inches in diameter (10 or 12.5 cm), and was made of bronze. They were apparently horse decorations (which, in the context of this collection, pretty much meant "we're not sure what it is"), though they kept calling it a "boss" :smallconfused: As in, as I first thought, a shield boss. But it apparently was not.
Set 11:
This was a short sword made of all iron, even the grip (it apparently had no tang). The shape of the sword may remind one of a cinquedea (http://www.earmi.it/armi/glossario/immagini/cinquedea.jpg), in that the sides of the blade are not parallel but point inward to, well, a point (though the sword's actual point seems to have corroded/broken off). Perhaps this sword was designed more for stabbing than slashing? The length was quite similar to that of a Roman gladius, if slightly longer and narrower.
Set 12:
This was an iron sickle, a fairly small one, no longer than, perhaps, 5 inches (12.5 cm). I main reason I took a picture of this was because I was having too much fun imagining the poor shmuck who took a tiny sickle to raiding skirmish. It was likely a weapon of desperation taken up by one of the residents, but what if it were wielded by one of the raiders?
Raider 1: I got a bow!
Raider 2: I got myself a nice mace.
Raider 3: Check out my sweet all iron sword!
Raider 4: ...I have a sickle. My **** is longer than this stupid thing.
*Awkward Silence*
Raider 1: ...so, uh...who else is pumped for some town raiding?
Set 13:
Another mysterious sickle-shaped object, this one being made of iron. It was fairly wide and flat, and combined with its thick crescent-moon shape, it seems rather unlikely that it was used as a weapon.
Set 14:
This one wasn't a weapon, but instead a bronze spring-loaded pin. That's right, back when it still functioned, this pin, made of cast bronze, was springy, much like the way modern safety pins are--a pretty good piece of metalworking, I think. This pin seemed to be more of a decorative thing, though. I think it was about 2 inches (5 cm) long.
Set 15:
This was a fairly large collection of stone maceheads--I counted about 21 mace heads overall (there were metal maceheads, of course). Most of them were very finely carved and extremely smooth, and looked very much like doorknobs (in fact, they're classified as "doorknob shaped/typed maceheads"). They seem to have been made of a variety of stones, judging form the colors. One of them (which actually might not have been a macehead) was oddly shaped and had flower decorations on it, like an ancient Middle Eastern version of killing a man with a pink colored M16 with a unicorn painted on it. Reproduction handles were included in the shelves, and overall the maces seemed to have been no longer than 1.5 feet (.76 meters) long.
Set 16:
I took a picture of a stone mold that was used for casting bronze. It initially appeared to be the mold for an axe head, but the assistant keeper argued that it might have been a mold for a furniture covering instead, like the arms of a couch or a chair. The rubber cast made from said mold does indeed look like an axe head, but could also have been the coverings for the arms of a chair.
Set 17:
The last set of pictures that I took was of a bronze helmet that was rather squashed. It looked a lot like the famous Etruscan helmet (http://www.sheshen-eceni.co.uk/images/etruscan%20helmet%20bm1.jpg), minus the big decorative fin and the spike at the top of the helmet. Not much else to say about this, sadly, aside from that there was a gaping hole in the helmet. Whether this was caused only by corrosion or was initially made by a weapon seems to be unknown.
That's it for the pictures. As for the rest of the weapons...
The spear heads looked very much like the Greek leaf-shaped spear heads (http://www.anythinganywhere.com/commerce/relic/pak-spear-fe-36.jpg) in that most of them had the distinctive central ridge along the length of the blade. Some of them looked more like this (http://www.anythinganywhere.com/commerce/relic/pak-spear-fe-33.jpg), however, and didn't have that central ridge. As I said before, there was a fairly even mix of iron and bronze spear heads, and they seemed to be the most commonly found metal weapon on the site.
The mace heads (which were also plentiful) ranged from being doorknob shaped, and some were richly decorated, while others looked vicious with inch long (2.5 cm) spikes jutting out from all angles :smalleek: If I remember correctly, these seemed to be mostly bronze and stone, with the occasional iron one here and there.
There were lots of arrowheads as well, but these were almost entirely iron. I wonder why...:smallconfused:
There didn't seem to be much in the way of body armor left at the site--I'm not sure whether this was because the raiders took with them all the body armor they could find as loot or because they raiders and the townspeople didn't wear much body armor. There might was the helmet, of course, and the assistant keeper did tell me that there were metal fragments that might have made up a greave (or a pair of greaves, or even a vambrace since she was indicating at her arm), and some of the metal fragments might have come from a suit of scale, but that was about it. There seemed to be little physical evidence of body armor.
As I said before, there were horses at the site at the time of the attack, and researchers seemed to have identified a structure that might have been a stable, but aside from that there seems to have been no evidence for the use of cavalry in the raid, either by or against the defenders. There was also no evidence of the use of chariots, either, although artistic depictions found at the site do feature chariots from time to time.
And...I think that's about it. I'll post more info when I get it.
Disclaimer: I only heard about the Hasanlu site about a month and a half ago, and since I've completed only 1 year of undergraduate school with only 1 semester's worth of archaeology classes under my belt, I am by no means an expert on the matter. However, the Professor and Ph.D I'm working for is a physical anthropologist (meaning that she works a lot with bones, particularly human ones) who, among other projects, works on (or is at least quite familiar with) the Hasanlu site. Thus, I have something of an academic insider's point of view on the matter.
Hasanlu was a settlement (a "tepe") near Lake Urmia in what is today Iran (Lake Urmia is the tiny little lake on the northwest corner of the map) (http://iran.itravel.thruhere.net/images/maps/ir-map.png). As far as I know, around the early iron age, ca. 1000 BC to, at the latest, 800 BC, there was a raid on the area by armed people. The results were pretty devastating: I wasn't able to get hold of the casualty numbers, but the area was not resettled for several generations--I was told that there was about a 100 to 500 year gap between the raid and the next resettling. The settlement was apparently burned to the ground during the raid, often with people in them (I'm not sure whether they were locked in by the raiders or barricaded themselves to ward off the raiders when the raiders set everything on fire).
Now, the great mystery of Hasanlu is twofold:
1) Who did the raiding? That is, which group of people (or kingdom or empire) destroyed Hasanlu?
2) Who was raided? That is, which group of people (or kingdom or empire) suffered this attack?
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teppe_Hasanlu) claims that the people involved are already known, but my Professor and her colleagues firmly disagree. At the moment, there are apparently lots of ideas flying about on the identities of the raiders and the raided, and despite having been academically excavated back in the 60's, the site's artifacts haven't given a definite answer as to who the people were.
The weapons and pieces of weapons found at Hasanlu also propose their own puzzle:
1) Which weapon belonged to whom? Did spear #19345 belong to a raider, or did it belong to some fellow living in the settlement?
2) Where did these weapons come from? Where did the people get their hands on them? Were they locally manufactured, or were they traded for from elsewhere? Which elsewhere?
3) There were plenty of bodies found at the site (I've personally handled, stored, and moved around hundreds of the skulls and bones of Hasanlu), each bearing various marks of trauma. Which of the weapons inflicted which wounds?
So, as I said, I was treated to being allowed to look at (and in some cases, even touch!) some of the scruffy looking, yet priceless, weapons found at the Hasanlu site.
Since this was the early Iron Age, some of the weapons were bronze, while others were iron (I wasn't able to get any further data on the metals in the weapons, sadly). Discounting found arrowheads (which were overwhelmingly iron--does this mean anything?), the ratio of iron weapons to bronze weapons was roughly 1:1. Also, even among weapons of the same type, there were lots of variations--for example, some of the spearheads were fairly small, while others were positively colossal. I was shown mostly spearheads, unsurprisingly, though there was at least one iron short sword in the collection, along with a lot of stone maceheads (and bronze ones, too).
I was going to simply post the pictures I was able to take of the weapons, but after speaking with the collection's keeper, it seems that I'm unable to do so. Apparently, academicians don't like it when you post pictures of stuff they want to publish themselves. :smallannoyed: Thus, the best I can do is try to describe to you, in great detail, the pictures of stuff that I took.
Set 1:
The first set I took were various quivers for arrows. What surprised me quite a bit here was the fact that these quivers were at least partly made of metal. If there was a leather interior to these quivers, it is unknown (or, at least, I haven't been told such). It was difficult to distinguish which end was the opening since it was flattened and slightly melted (remember: the site was burned down by the raiders), but on one end of the quiver are round, button-like decorations made of metal. By the looks of it, the quivers were made of mostly iron with decorative copper or bronze "beads" attached to the button-like decorations. I wasn't able to get exact measurements, but the metal parts appeared to be from half a foot long to one and a half feet long (.3 to .45 meters). I originally mistook them for being sword sheathes.
Set 2:
I managed to grab a picture of a bronze cheekpiece for a helmet. It was vaguely axehead-like in shape, with tiny holes all around the edges. The very kind assistant keeper who showed me around the collection said that the holes were there so that one could sew a cloth or leather padding to the inside of the cheekpiece. The cheekpiece didn't seem to have any hinges or anything that would show how it was attached to the helmet, however.
Set 3:
The next set was a picture of small bronze or copper tubes, each no more than an inch/2.5 cm long. Their purpose is pretty much unknown: at the moment, researchers think that they might have served as bead-like ornamentation for horses. Before I forget, I wasn't really told whether or not horses were involved in the raid--there definitely were horses found at the site, but I'm not sure if the raiders necessarily came in on horseback, and how many of them were cavalry and how many were infantry.
As an aside, they also found bits for horses at the site, apparently made of iron.
Set 4:
I took a picture of a large bronze piece of a what was probably a shield or part of a shield. I'd estimate the object to have been, oh, 1 to 1.5 feet (.3 to .45 meters) in diameter. It looked fairly thin to be a stand-alone shield, so I would guess that the bronze part was faced or backed with wood and/or leather. There was no mention of whether or not the shields were hand-gripped or secured to the arm.
The object resembled a sun in that there was a circular center and "rays" of metal seemed to come out of it, forming a shield.
Set 5:
The assistant keeper said that this object was called a "sickle blade" in the archives, but that struck me as a bit odd. It was bronze and was indeed shaped like a sickle, but the curve was even deeper than a khopesh]/url] to the point where it almost looked like a boomerang, and, unlike a khopesh, there was nothing resembling a tang that would have been the core of a handgrip. I also noticed a series of tiny holes along the convex edge of the sickle, and that one of the sickle's ends was shaped into something like a socket, fit for a fairly thin stick or somesuch. As a result, I suspect that this sickle-shaped object wasn't a weapon at all, and the assistant keeper suspects that this might have instead been a standard holder of some sort.
On the bottom side of the sickle were three, obviously purposefully made circular indentations. It's unknown as to what they were for.
Set 6:
This picture was of a large, crumbling pile of...bronze something. Some of them were about 2-3 inches in length and 1-2 inches in width (5-7.5 cm in length, 2.5-5 cm in width) and had a single hole near the edges. This made me toy with the idea that some of the metal pieces might have been part of a scale suit of armor. They certainly seemed thick enough. I couldn't really figure out what the larger pieces were.
Set 7:
Now THIS was quite interesting. I was told that it was the metal part of a javelin, and I would estimate that it was about 2, 2.5 feet long (.61, .76 meters) and about as thick as your thumb. What's really cool is the way it corroded: either the object was simply all bronze and the bronze corroded in a funny way, or the javelin was actually made in at least two layers. I noticed this because, at about halfway down the length of the javelin tip, there was a spot about twice as long as your thumb that, instead of the typical light green that meant rusted bronze/copper, was a very dark brown/black with flecks of rusty red, which seems to indicate iron (the assistant keeper certainly thinks so). If that's the case, then it might have been that the javelin maker welded a layer of bronze onto an iron core, and the bronze somehow managed to corrode off while the iron was left curiously intact. I have no idea how that would work, but who knows? Strange things happen in archaeology.
If the two-metal weld theory is correct, it begs the question as to why it was made in such a way. Any ideas?
Set 8:
This object was...kinda weird. Neither the assistant keeper nor I were able to figure out what it was. It was about 2 inches long (5 cm) and 1 inch thick (2.5 cm), and one end was Y shaped, [url=http://www.naturfoto-cz.de/photos/sevcik/water-buffalo--bubalus-arnee-buvol-5.jpg]not unlike the horns of a water buffalo (http://www.fallingpixel.com/products/6948/mains/KhLR01.jpg). If this sounds funny to you, imagine how we felt when we looked at it. Our general reaction was, "wut". :smallannoyed: So we have no idea what it was or what it does. As a side note, it was made of bronze.
Set 9:
This object was also kinda weird, and again neither of us could identify what it was. Judging from its coloration, it appeared to be made of iron, and might have been a little to finely crafted from iron to be contemporary with all the other iron objects (it certainly preserved better than the other iron stuff). Imagine if you took a beer bottle and managed to saw off the very top of the bottle, plus a few inches. That's what the object looked like.
Again, both of us were like, "wut" when we saw this.
Set 10:
This object was circular and was about, oh, 4 or 5 inches in diameter (10 or 12.5 cm), and was made of bronze. They were apparently horse decorations (which, in the context of this collection, pretty much meant "we're not sure what it is"), though they kept calling it a "boss" :smallconfused: As in, as I first thought, a shield boss. But it apparently was not.
Set 11:
This was a short sword made of all iron, even the grip (it apparently had no tang). The shape of the sword may remind one of a cinquedea (http://www.earmi.it/armi/glossario/immagini/cinquedea.jpg), in that the sides of the blade are not parallel but point inward to, well, a point (though the sword's actual point seems to have corroded/broken off). Perhaps this sword was designed more for stabbing than slashing? The length was quite similar to that of a Roman gladius, if slightly longer and narrower.
Set 12:
This was an iron sickle, a fairly small one, no longer than, perhaps, 5 inches (12.5 cm). I main reason I took a picture of this was because I was having too much fun imagining the poor shmuck who took a tiny sickle to raiding skirmish. It was likely a weapon of desperation taken up by one of the residents, but what if it were wielded by one of the raiders?
Raider 1: I got a bow!
Raider 2: I got myself a nice mace.
Raider 3: Check out my sweet all iron sword!
Raider 4: ...I have a sickle. My **** is longer than this stupid thing.
*Awkward Silence*
Raider 1: ...so, uh...who else is pumped for some town raiding?
Set 13:
Another mysterious sickle-shaped object, this one being made of iron. It was fairly wide and flat, and combined with its thick crescent-moon shape, it seems rather unlikely that it was used as a weapon.
Set 14:
This one wasn't a weapon, but instead a bronze spring-loaded pin. That's right, back when it still functioned, this pin, made of cast bronze, was springy, much like the way modern safety pins are--a pretty good piece of metalworking, I think. This pin seemed to be more of a decorative thing, though. I think it was about 2 inches (5 cm) long.
Set 15:
This was a fairly large collection of stone maceheads--I counted about 21 mace heads overall (there were metal maceheads, of course). Most of them were very finely carved and extremely smooth, and looked very much like doorknobs (in fact, they're classified as "doorknob shaped/typed maceheads"). They seem to have been made of a variety of stones, judging form the colors. One of them (which actually might not have been a macehead) was oddly shaped and had flower decorations on it, like an ancient Middle Eastern version of killing a man with a pink colored M16 with a unicorn painted on it. Reproduction handles were included in the shelves, and overall the maces seemed to have been no longer than 1.5 feet (.76 meters) long.
Set 16:
I took a picture of a stone mold that was used for casting bronze. It initially appeared to be the mold for an axe head, but the assistant keeper argued that it might have been a mold for a furniture covering instead, like the arms of a couch or a chair. The rubber cast made from said mold does indeed look like an axe head, but could also have been the coverings for the arms of a chair.
Set 17:
The last set of pictures that I took was of a bronze helmet that was rather squashed. It looked a lot like the famous Etruscan helmet (http://www.sheshen-eceni.co.uk/images/etruscan%20helmet%20bm1.jpg), minus the big decorative fin and the spike at the top of the helmet. Not much else to say about this, sadly, aside from that there was a gaping hole in the helmet. Whether this was caused only by corrosion or was initially made by a weapon seems to be unknown.
That's it for the pictures. As for the rest of the weapons...
The spear heads looked very much like the Greek leaf-shaped spear heads (http://www.anythinganywhere.com/commerce/relic/pak-spear-fe-36.jpg) in that most of them had the distinctive central ridge along the length of the blade. Some of them looked more like this (http://www.anythinganywhere.com/commerce/relic/pak-spear-fe-33.jpg), however, and didn't have that central ridge. As I said before, there was a fairly even mix of iron and bronze spear heads, and they seemed to be the most commonly found metal weapon on the site.
The mace heads (which were also plentiful) ranged from being doorknob shaped, and some were richly decorated, while others looked vicious with inch long (2.5 cm) spikes jutting out from all angles :smalleek: If I remember correctly, these seemed to be mostly bronze and stone, with the occasional iron one here and there.
There were lots of arrowheads as well, but these were almost entirely iron. I wonder why...:smallconfused:
There didn't seem to be much in the way of body armor left at the site--I'm not sure whether this was because the raiders took with them all the body armor they could find as loot or because they raiders and the townspeople didn't wear much body armor. There might was the helmet, of course, and the assistant keeper did tell me that there were metal fragments that might have made up a greave (or a pair of greaves, or even a vambrace since she was indicating at her arm), and some of the metal fragments might have come from a suit of scale, but that was about it. There seemed to be little physical evidence of body armor.
As I said before, there were horses at the site at the time of the attack, and researchers seemed to have identified a structure that might have been a stable, but aside from that there seems to have been no evidence for the use of cavalry in the raid, either by or against the defenders. There was also no evidence of the use of chariots, either, although artistic depictions found at the site do feature chariots from time to time.
And...I think that's about it. I'll post more info when I get it.