spear or pilum?

[Robert Vermaat]

Sorry to but in again, but I thought I would address the point about auxiliaries needing javelins.

Pila were far from the only type of javelin used by the Roman army and small spearheads and large 'bolt heads' are fairly common finds on many Roman military sites. In all likelihood many or most of these are javelin heads. Therefore, there is no need to think that just because auxilia did not have the pilum they would have been without javelins. I think the opposite would have been true in fact. I get the feeling from this and the tombstone evidence that being equipped with two or more javelins would have fairly normal in many auxiliary units. These javelins do not need to have been pila.

Crispvs, I wrote this yeaterday:

I find it very hard to accept that legionaries were confined to the Pilum and Auxiliaries to the Hasta. As has been shown above these terms are often

My thoughts exactly Martin! And I knew I read it somewhere, and here it is:
Marchant, David (1990): Roman weapons in Great Britain, a case study: spearheads, problems in dating and typology, in: Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies 1, pp. 1-6.

Some of the finds [pilum points] are clearly in legionary contexts but there are enough finds from auxiliary forts to suggest that the pilum may have been used outside the legions.