barbed with two witters,[1] but no middle tang; and last, the tanged. The same author argues from analogy that the ancients could extend this flint manufacture to other purposes, "as the same ingenuity which formed the head of an arrow could also produce a knife, a saw, and a piercer."
Colonel A. Lane-Fox, now General Pitt Rivers, in his second lecture on "Primitive Warfare,"[2] arranges the forms of arrow-heads in the same manner as I have here adopted, and shows that the transition from one form to the other is easy and natural. There are, indeed, some arrow-heads of which it would be impossible to say whether they were leaf-shaped or lozenge-shaped, or whether they were lozenge-shaped or tanged.
Sir William Wilde regards the triangular as the primary form, and the leaf-shaped and lozenge-shaped as the last.
Mr. W. J. Knowles[3] has suggested a somewhat different classification, but it seems unnecessary to alter the arrangement here adopted. He does not enter into the question of the development of the forms. An exhaustive paper on Irish flint arrow-heads, by the Rev. Dr. Buick,[4] may be usefully consulted.
Whatever may have been the order of the development of the forms, it would, in my opinion, be unwarrantable to attempt any chrono- logical arrangement founded upon mere form, as there is little doubt of the whole of these varieties having been in use in one and the same district at the same time, the shape being to some extent adapted to the flake of flint from which the arrow-heads were made, and to some extent to the purposes which the arrows were to serve. The arrow-heads in use among the North American Indians,[5] when intended for hunting, were so contrived that they could be drawn out of the wound, but those destined for war were formed and attached to the shaft in such a manner, that when it was attempted to pull out the arrow, its head became detached, and remained in the wound. The poisoned arrows of the Bushmen of South Africa[6] are in like manner made with triangular heads of iron, which become detached in the body if an attempt is made to withdraw the arrow from the wound that it has caused.
I have already remarked on the difficulty of distinguishing between javelin and arrow heads; but, from their size, I think that the late Dr. Thurnam was justified in regarding those engraved as Figs. 273, 274, 275, as heads of javelins; and they may therefore be taken first in order. Two of them have already been engraved.[7] Their beautifully worked surfaces had, however, hardly had justice done them, and, by- ↑ This word, still in use in Scotland for the barbs of a fishing-spear or hook, is a good old English term derived from the Saxon ƿiðep. Withther-hooked = barbed:—
"This dragoun hadde a long taile
That was withther-hooked saun faile."
"Arthour and Merlin," p. 210.Halliwell, "Dict. of Arch. and Prov. Words," s. v.
- ↑ Journ. R. U. Serv. Inst.
- ↑ Journ. Anth. Inst., vol. vi. p. 482
- ↑ Journ. R. S. A. of Irel., 5th S., vol. v. p. 41.
- ↑ Schoolcraft, "Ind. Tribes," vol. i. p. 212.
- ↑ Wood's "Nat. Hist, of Man," vol. i. p. 284.
- ↑ Proc. Soc. Ant., 2nd S., vol. ii. p. 429.
