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Spearhead

1200–800 BCE
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 301
This spearhead represents the highest tradition of the British Bronze Age. The piece is undeniably beautiful: its shape is elegant and spare to the point of evoking modern art. The socket of the spearhead is hollow and includes two peg holes. These would allow the shaft of the spear to be replaced often without undue difficulty; a possession such as this would be much too valuable not to use again and again. When given to the Museum, there was in fact a small section of wood still remaining inside.

The spearhead almost certainly comes from the Selbourne/Blackmoor hoard of Bronze Age objects, found in the nineteenth century in Hampshire. The hoard was acquired by two great nineteenth-century collectors: first by the antiquarian George Roots, and then by General A. H. Pitt-Rivers, an omnivorous collector especially interested in British objects and also a renowned archaeologist.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Spearhead
  • Date: 1200–800 BCE
  • Culture: Bronze Age
  • Medium: Copper alloy
  • Dimensions: Overall: 15 9/16 x 2 3/8in. (39.5 x 6.1cm)
    wood: 5 1/8in. (13cm)
  • Classification: Metalwork-Copper alloy
  • Credit Line: Gift of Peter Sharrer, 1998
  • Object Number: 1998.540.1
  • Curatorial Department: Medieval Art and The Cloisters

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