Any good _small_ production spearheads?

[Dan D'Silva]

I'll begin calling some blacksmiths on the morrow. There's quite a lot of them in Bucks County, but I wouldn't put any bets on any of them taking a job that's this far out of their usual; let's just say that this is a pretty stodgy place, whatever we may claim.

Still, though, is the production market really so thin? I mean, a custom piece is great but there must be reenactors out there who don't have any blacksmiths nearby that they can work with.

Sean, that's a good, er, point. I probably would have thought it was a javelin head if the museum didn't have another item labeled as one. For whatever reason, the possibility that they used several different types side-by-side didn't cross my mind.

The iron spearhead from Persepolis (OIP 69 plate 76 no. 1) was about 20 cm long and 50 mm wide with a socket with an internal diameter about 16 mm at the mouth. The two three-flanged dart points (plate 76 no. 2 and 3) had sockets 22 and 16 mm in diameter at the mouth. These figures are taken from my photocopy of the scaled diagram.

Thanks for that! I've got this plate on my computer but I could never find measurements for anything on it.

I once scaled the spearheads from the Susa friezes because they're very clear illustrations. Assuming everything is in proportion and the men are around 5' 6", the blades would be a little more than seven inches/18cm. But they're significantly bigger than the ones in the Persepolis reliefs (if the people are the same height). The actual one found at Persepolis is presumably a real-life example of those.