Grec ancien bronze Collection de pointes de flèche (Sans prix de réserve)

Ancient Greek Bronze Collection of Four Arrowheads

Culture / Period: Ancient Greek
Date / Period: 10th–6th century B.C.
Material: Bronze
Dimensions: 18–28 mm
Condition: Good condition

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Provenance information:
Object Registration ID: 767
The current owner purchased this object from a reputable Dutch numismatic auction house in Schiedam, the Netherlands. Due to privacy regulations, the name of the previous owner could not be disclosed. No further information concerning the earlier ownership history of the object was available from the previous owner.

Background Information:
This collection consists of four cast bronze socketed arrowheads dating to the Greek Archaic period. The group displays several variations in size and blade profile, illustrating the diversity of arrowhead types employed between the Late Bronze Age and the early Classical world. Their hollow sockets were designed to receive a wooden shaft, producing a secure and durable projectile suitable for repeated use.

Bronze socketed arrowheads represented an important technological development in ancient warfare and hunting. Their aerodynamic form and reinforced socket provided greater strength than earlier tanged examples, making them effective both on the battlefield and in everyday subsistence activities. Similar arrowheads equipped the bows of Greek warriors, local militias, hunters, and mounted archers throughout the eastern Mediterranean.

The production of such arrowheads required skilled bronze casting using reusable moulds, allowing specialist workshops to manufacture large numbers of standardized weapons. Although individual forms varied by region and period, socketed bronze arrowheads became widely distributed through military exchange, trade, and cultural contact across the Greek world, the Balkans, Anatolia, and the Black Sea region.

Dating to approximately the 10th–6th century B.C., these arrowheads belong to a formative period in Greek history, spanning the transition from the Early Iron Age into the Archaic period, when organised warfare, expanding trade networks, and the rise of the Greek city-states transformed the eastern Mediterranean.