Description

Summary: Socketed iron spearhead, form the spoil heap, Melksham By-pass, Melksham.

Research results

An iron spear, found in 1972 amongst material excavated during the construction of the Melksham by-pass as part of a hoard of Llyn Fawr and earlier metalwork, with the latest objects suggesting deposition in the earliest Iron Age. The spearhead is comparable to continental examples, but like many British spearheads is relatively more short and stocky, resembling later Bronze Age spearheads. River gravels found within the socket of this object reflect the eventual resting place of the hoard: in boggy ground alongside the river Avon.

The Melksham hoard has been photographed by Boughton (2019), who notes that it is one of only two Llyn Fawr hoards known in the country to not contain a socketed axehead.