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Old 20th September 2014, 08:36 PM   #5
Shakethetrees
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Location: Louisiana
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Here's a Bronze Age point from Chinese tomb sentinel I picked up in china.

Note the rough similarity to the St. Augustine bronze point.

I think a lot of Bronze Age and later bronze points have closely related forms due to parallel development. Similar weapons and utilitarian objects often develop independently but unrelated geographically or culturally.

The fact that form follows function will dictate this evolution, not to mention manufacture technique. The more complex an object becomes, the more room for deviation from simple function. An arrow point needs to be simple to mass produce. Mass production dictates uniformity. Once this is determined, a production method of one kind or another is chosen: cast, wrought, knapped, or other.

Before the rise of machine assisted production, i.e. tool and die forging, templates and jigs assisting in maintaining uniformity, forging was accomplished by contractors with hammer and anvil either as cottage work or in arsenals. Either way, the skill and abilities of the smith determined loosely the degree of accuracy each finished point had.

As a parallel, look at early hand wrought nails. Same idea as far as the numbers required and the method of manufacture. Size and shank diameter, length and type of head are roughly consistent, but if you study a hundred or a thousand, there will be variations across the spectrum of a given type.

So if a wrought iron or steel point is of a style generally associated with a time period or geographical location, there will be many slight deviations in form recognized in the study of a hundred, or a thousand points.

Knapping flint or chert arrowheads is even further back in the evolution of technology. A Folsom point will look generally like the next one, but slight variations in the position and shape of each flaked facet will bear infinite variation.

Casting leaves the least room for variation.

A master pattern of wood metal or other material is made. From this pattern single use molds are made, in clay, plaster, sand or other heat resistant workable material.

From one individual master pattern thousands of finished points are cast. Each bears the identical form, subtleties and all.

One slight, and I do mean slight, variation among many cast and finished points done from the same pattern comes from the hand finishing that each undergoes before mounting. There will always be sprues to remove, flashings to file or stone off, edges to sharpen. Here the craftsman is following the form set in manufacture. The other is caused by slight imperfections where the metal does not fully fill the mold, but not so bad at the point is rejected.

The "point" I'm trying to make here is that the location of the find for something as simple as man arrowhead is important if you are certain that the technology matches uniquely one culture that occupied that area. If you have many cultures all sharing reasonably close technological abilities that all crossed a given geographical area, good luck tying a particular point to one or the other group, unless it is found with strong evidence supporting one group or the other.
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