You’re not going to be-leaf this arrowhead find!

During recent excavations at a site in Northamptonshire, our Milton Keynes field team uncovered kilometres of ditches, hundreds of pits, graves, and a limekiln. Some of the earliest features on site potentially dated to the Early Neolithic period and contained worked flint, including this lovely example of a leaf-shaped arrowhead.

This classic form of arrowhead is generally known as leaf-shaped for obvious reasons. The arrowhead, which was recovered from a pit, is a little over 3cm long and would have been formed by knapping.

It would have been made by removing a flake from a flint core, such as a pebble or nodule, and trimming it into shape. Then it would have been thinned by removing long, narrow flakes from across the surfaces using a process called pressure-flaking, which was probably done using an antler tine (the pointed tip). A process which would have taken a lot of patience and skill! Each of the tiny flake scars we can see on this example shows where a tiny flake has been removed. The waste flakes are referred to as debitage, which we often find during our excavations. When the arrowhead was finished, it would then be mounted on the tip of a wooden shaft to form the arrow, though this is rarely preserved in the archaeological record.

Leaf-shaped arrowheads were in use during the Early Neolithic period (approximately 4000–3000 BC) and would have been used for hunting and interpersonal violence. Interestingly, this example is undamaged. It is relatively uncommon to recover these arrowheads intact. The tips are normally missing, presumably lost during the item’s use (likely from impact damage) or broken following their deposition so, it is possible that this arrowhead was not actually used.

The arrowhead was recovered from a pit which contained a number of other pieces of worked flint alongside a small amount of pottery. The pottery is in poor condition and is currently only broadly dateable as prehistoric. However, post-excavation analysis is ongoing which may be able to provide a narrower date range, hopefully determining whether this too is Early Neolithic in date.

This work has been done on behalf of Bloor Homes in consultation with Quercus Heritage Limited.