Tanged Iron Arrowheads

[Sean Manning]

More iron arrowheads were excavated at that Lydian site and discussed at the conference on Iranian studies in St. Petersburg which I blogged about. Iron Kimmerian and Akkadian arrowheads also appear in documents from Babylonia alongside bronze ones (but the former are probably socketed trilobates). There are a variety of iron arrowheads in the Oriental Institute Publications volume on the treasury at Persepolis; it is now free to download.

The larger arrowheads are not medieval - pretty much all arrows in Europe during that time used socketed arrowheads. The larger heads in the above photo are more likely to be from javelins. Many of the larger arrowheads described in archaeological reports are more likely to be javelin heads.

Careful archaeologists seem to prefer terms like “projectile points.” That avoids claiming whether the projectiles were shot from a bow or hurled by hand.