In January this year a local metal detectorist kindly donated one of his finds to my handling collection to be used on outreach and education events. As it got to the front of my queue of artefacts this week, my volunteer and I set to pinning it down typologically in order to record it.

Initial searches could not find a similar example and so we turned to Dot Boughton, one of the NW FLO’s who has a lot of experience with Bronze Age material. She agreed that the addition of a single side loop was unusual and referred us onto Richard Davis, a Bronze Age spear expert. He very kindly got back to us rapidly with the following information ‘ ’Spearheads with a single loop down the socket are rare. There are only six like this from Britain, none from Ireland. They have a very tight distribution pattern:-

Medomsley, Durham Netherby Fort, Cumbria (2) Snape, North Yorks Dumfries Glenkens, Dumfries

They can be attributed to the Penard phase of the MBA, which is now dated 1250-1125BC.

This identification was great, and the location of our spear, in County Durham, fits within the known distribution pattern which is great. It is now recorded on the PAS database as DUR-F54FE1 and only narrowly missed being put in Richard’s new book but it was shown to him too late. It is always nice to get local finds, and to know that it will be available for further study in the future, as well as helping other members of the public get closer to the past.