Spears can be so difficult to place and date. Fernando's spear of interest appears to be of fairly simple design and I suspect the socket never was completely closed. I believe that 'rustic' is a a very good description for the forging of this lance - simple, but adequate. I'd surely think it is at least a couple of hundred years old, if not more and, being of good size, likely would have been both for hunting and local defense.
Of course, it is difficult to really know what has been lost to corrosion and I have rather arbitrarily selected to show what I interpret as two small Migration Period javelin heads originally made with a partially open socket and have omitted showing a pattern-welded winged lance head that I believe has opened through corrosion.
I'd expect a large lance head made by a skilled smith to have a well formed, complete socket. But how much effort would be placed into sockets of smaller javelins, meant to be thrown and more likely made for the hunt? Surely with adhesive and wrapping, these partially open sockets should have been adequate for that purpose.
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