What was the pilum made of?

[Magnus]

You know, the weights we see on some pila shafts in sculpture may in fact be because the wood sometimes used is a lighter soft wood, thus the extra weight is required to penetrate. Lead seems to be the logical choice...readily available, and less value than say bronze since bronze was rather in high demand for military and civilian items. Lead is also a lot easier to work with, making it a lot more field expediant.

I tend to agree with David on this one. Lugging around spare javelin shafts isn't very efficient. If they ran out of pila shafts, then I can't see why they wouldn't use what's on hand in the nearest forest. Remember, the pila were rescued after battle for the iron shafts, not necessarily the wooden. Figure this, what's easier to come by...wood or iron? (And I am NOT saying they didn't re-use the wood shafts.)

And they are not hard to make, nor does it take long to hammer out the iron shafts. If you can recover the javelin, great...if not, who cares. So are these weapons ones which require a lot of effort or resources? Not really. Probably takes longer to carve the wooden part of the shaft than forge the iron part of it.