Development of Spear and Arrow-head Forms
We must now turn to the development of the second great class of weapons—the spear and arrow. These may be classed together, the arrow being merely the diminutive of the spear; and it may be taken as a general rule, applicable to all the arts of prehistoric times, that when a given form has once been introduced, it will speedily be repeated in every possible size that can be applied to any of the various purposes for which such a form is capable of being used. Size, in the arts of the earliest ages, is no indication of progress. In the same way it may be said of the development of the animal or vegetable kingdom, size is no indication of improved organism.
In the same beds in which the drift-type implements are found, flakes, either struck off in the formation of such tools, or especially flaked off from a core in a particular manner, indicating that they were themselves intended for use as tools, are found in considerable numbers. No more useful tool could have been used during the stone age than the plain, untouched flint flake, which, from the sharpness of the edge, is capable of being used for a variety of purposes. Those, for example, formed of obsidian are so sharp that it is recorded, by the Spanish historians, that the Mexicans were in the habit of shaving themselves with such flakes. As my present subject has to deal exclusively with war weapons, I will not enter into a detailed description of these flakes, further than to observe that they are found, together with the cores from which they were struck off, in every quarter of the globe in which flint, obsidian, or any other suitable material has been found, and that everywhere the process of flaking appears to have been the same.
Now, the fracture of flint is very uncertain; by constant habit, the ancient flint-workers appear to have been able to command the fracture of the flint in a manner that cannot be imitated, even by the most skilful forgers of those implements in modern times; but, notwithstanding this, the varieties of the forms of the flakes thus struck off must have been very considerable, and these varieties must, from the very first, have suggested some of the different forms of tools that were made out of them.
I cannot, perhaps, explain this point better than by exhibiting a number of flakes, found by myself in the bed of the Bann at Toom, in Ireland, at the spot where that river flows out of Lough Neagh. This was a place originally discovered by Mr. Evans, where probably, in a habitation built upon the river, they formerly manufactured flint implements; and the bed of the river for the space of a hundred yards or more is covered with the flakes. It will be seen on examining these flakes, that some of them came off in a broad leaf-shaped form, and these, with a very little additional chipping, have been formed into spear-heads. Others longer and thicker have been chipped into something like picks, and others thinner and narrower than the two former, have been used probably as knives; others for scraping skins. We see from this that certain forms would naturally suggest themselves through the natural fracture of the flint, and this may to a certain extent account, though it does not, I think, entirely account, for the remarkable resemblance of form and unity of development observable in the spear and arrow heads, derived from localities so remote from each other as almost to preclude the possibility of their having ever been derived from a common source.
I have arranged in tabular form, on diagram No. 2 (= Plate XIII), representations of spear and arrow heads from all the different localities from which I have been able to obtain them in sufficient number to show fairly the numerous varieties which each country produces. On the top of the diagram, from left to right, the several forms are arranged in the order that appears most truly to indicate progression; but it must not be supposed that this arrangement is absolutely correct, for the several forms, such for example as the tang and the triangular form, were most probably derived from a common centre. The specimens from each locality ought therefore, in order to display their progression properly, to be arranged in the form of a tree, branching from a common stem. On the left of the diagram are written the different periods and localities, from which the specimens are derived. Commencing with the drift—the oldest of which we have any knowledge—which is coeval with the elephant and rhinoceros in Europe, we have the peculiar thick form already described. The examples of the drift period here shown, from their small size, must evidently have been used with a shaft, as they are scarcely large enough to have served as hand tools. None of the lozenge, tang, or triangular forms, have ever been found in the drift.
The next line represents specimens from the French caves of the reindeer period, which are taken from the Reliquiae Aquitanicae, chiefly from Dordogne.147 It will be seen that in these caves the first rude indications of the lozenge and tang form are represented, but no perfect specimens of either class. No example of the triangular form has been discovered. The leaf-shape form, however, is well represented.
In the ancient habitations of the Swiss Lakes, which belong to a later period, all varieties, except those of the drift type, are represented, but none of them in their most fully developed form; the tangs, it will be seen, are long, and the barbs comparatively short; the triangular form, which I consider to be the latest in the order of development, is mentioned by Dr. Keller, from whose work these specimens are taken, as being extremely rare. The comparative rarity of flint implements in the Lakes may, however, in some measure be accounted for, by the absence of flint in the district, necessitating the importation of this material from a distance.
The specimens from Yorkshire, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, and Germany, may be considered to carry the development of these forms up to the latest period, viz. the late stone, and early bronze age; for there can be no doubt from the number of arrow-heads found in these countries, in connexion with implements of bronze, that they were used for missile purposes long after the armes blanches had been constructed of metal.
In all these localities it will be seen that the various gradations of form are identical; but as I have been able to collect a much larger number of arrow-heads from Ireland than elsewhere, the development of form is more apparent in the specimens selected from that country.
From the leaf-shape, it will be observed, there is every link of transition into the perfect lozenge type, and the latter is as a general rule, both in Ireland and in Yorkshire, much rarer, and more carefully constructed, than the leaf-shaped type, showing that there is every probability of the lozenge having been an improved form.
The tang form is represented, at first, by a few rude chips on each side of the base of the original flake, narrowing that part in such a manner as to admit of its being inserted, into a handle or shaft, and bound round with a sinew. This is superseded by the gradual formation of barbs on each side, and these barbs are lengthened by degrees, until they reach to the line of the base of the tang; the tang subsequently shortens, leaving the barbs with a semicircular aperture between them, and thus approaching some of the forms represented in the triangular column. These latter barbed specimens are usually more finished, and chipped with greater care than the long-tanged ones, which are rougher, more time-worn, and probably of earlier date.
The triangular form is seen at first, with a straight base; gradually a semicircular aperture appears, and this deepens by degrees until, in some of the more carefully formed specimens, it approaches the form of a Norman arch. This last variety is especially well represented in Denmark.
Sir William Wilde’s arrangement, in his Catalogue of the Royal Irish Academy,148 differs in some respects from this; he considers the triangular an early form, and he assigns the final perfection of the art of fabricating flint spear-heads, to the large lozenge-shape form; grounding his opinion on the circumstance of many of this form, of the larger size, having been found polished, whilst those of the leaf, triangular, and tang shape are not usually carried further than the preliminary process of chipping. But it is evident that these larger forms may have been used for spears, the lozenge shape being especially adapted for this purpose, as enabling the owner of it to withdraw it from the wound, after slaying his adversary; while those of the barbed and triangular form being lighter, and calculated to stick in the wound, would be better adapted for arrow-heads: and it is unlikely that the same amount of labour would be expended on a weapon intended to be cast from a bow, as upon one designed to be held in the hand. I consider the polishing of these particular weapons therefore to be no criterion of age, but merely to indicate that they were used as armes d’hast, and not as missiles.
It appears highly probable, however, that all the several varieties, if not developed simultaneously, were used at the same time; for we find amongst the Persians, the Esquimaux, and many other nations, that a great variety of arrow-heads are carried in the same quiver, and are used either indiscriminately or for different purposes149.
In the eighth row from the top, I have arranged a series of similar forms from America, obtained chiefly from Pennsylvania, but they are also found in other parts of the continent, and some few of the illustrations here given (Plate XIII, figs. 131, 132, and 133) are from Tierra del Fuego. Their forms enable them to be arranged under precisely the same divisions as those from the continent of Europe, and in each division the same development is observable. The tang or barbed form, however, differs sufficiently from the European forms of the same class to show that they arose independently, and were not derived from a common source. The tang of the American arrow-heads, it will be seen, is broader, at least in the later forms, and it appears to have originated in a notch on the sides of the blade, intended to hold the sinew with which it is attached to the shaft or handle. This notch appears to have been constructed lower and lower on the sides of the blade, until at last it comes down quite into the base of the flint, and it then closely resembles the European in form; compare, for example, figures 94 and 136; except that the tang is broader, and has a lateral projection on each side, so as to render it firmer in the shaft when bound by the sinew.
Notches at the side of the blade are extremely rare in Ireland, but from Sweden Professor Nilsson gives a drawing of an arrow-head, which I have copied into my diagram (figure 96). It is precisely identical, in its peculiar form, to one here figured from America (figure 139), and they both have a concave base, in addition to the side notch; thus apparently representing a transition form between the tang and the triangular, which I have never noticed, except in the two specimens here referred to, and which must be regarded in Europe as extremely rare.
To illustrate the mode of fixing these instruments in their shafts, I have here figured several examples from my collection; two of these (figures 163 and 164) were derived from the Esquimaux, between Icy Cape and Point Barrow, the person from whom I purchased them having brought them himself from that locality. Figures 165, 166, and 167, are from California.
Burton says that the Indians between the Mississippi and the Pacific use the barbed form only for war150; and Schoolcraft, in the Archives of the Aborigines of America,151 gives illustrations of two methods of fastening, one for war and the other for the chase, the former being loosely tied on, so as to come off when inserted in the wound.
But, in addition to their use as arrow-points, we have reason to suppose that they were used also as knives. I have represented in the diagram (figures 168 and 169) two short-handled instruments from Peru, which are now in the British Museum, into which similar arrow-points are inserted. These, from the shortness and peculiar shape of their shafts, could hardly have been used as darts. The only weapon peculiar to those regions from which such an instrument could have been projected, is the blow-pipe, and they are entirely different from the darts used with the blow-pipe either in South America, the Malay Peninsula, or Ceylon, in which countries the blow-pipe is used. There is reason to believe, from the manner in which they are placed in the graves, unaccompanied by any bow or other weapon from which they could have been projected152, that they were employed as knives, and this is confirmed by the fact, already mentioned, of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego using their arrow-points for knives. The great numbers in which they are found in Ireland, in Yorkshire, and other localities appertaining to the late stone age, in which places they form the greater part of the relics collected, and are always the most highly finished implements discovered—the other stone implements associated with them being either celts, flint-discs, picks, or rough or partially worked flakes, that are capable of being wrought into arrows—the fact that the peculiar modification of form observable at the base of these implements appears to have been designed rather to facilitate the attachment of them to their wooden shafts or handles, than for the special purposes of war; and the frequent marks of use, as if by rubbing, that are found on the points of many of them, especially in the specimens from Ireland; all these circumstances favour the supposition that in Europe, as well as in America, these arrow-head forms were used for many other purposes besides war and the chase; and that, like the assegai of the Kaffir, and the many other examples of tool-weapons already enumerated, we may regard them as having served to our primaeval ancestors the general purposes of a small tool available for carving, cutting, and for all those works for which a fine edge and point was required. On the other hand the celt undoubtedly provided them with a large tool capable of being applied to all the rougher purposes, whether peaceful or warlike, for which it was adapted in the simple arts of an uncivilized people.
In the ninth row I have arranged, under their respective classes, the whole of the specimens of flint arrow-heads that are given in Siebold’s atlas of Japanese weapons.153 It will be seen that they present the same variety of form as those already described. A similar collection of flint arrow-heads has lately been added to the British Museum by Mr. Franks, and described by him. They formed part of a Japanese collection of curiosities, and are labelled in the Japanese character, showing that this remote country not only passed through the same stone period as ourselves, but that, as their culture improved and expanded, they, like ourselves, have at last begun to make collections of objects to illustrate the arts of remote antiquity.