Been rumaging through a box of my late dads that was put away when we cleared his house after he died.
Amongst quite a few roman artifacts there was this flint?/stone arrow head. Ive asked my mum about it and she says she thinks he found this in the south wirral somewhere. She thinks around the neston area
i dont think its flint but it is napped (sp) its certainly not of a local stone.
Can anyone help me with dating it ? or identifying the material it is made from pls
If anyone is knowledgable in this field i can meet to show u it for a proper examination
I'd have to look at it properly but it may be a brown chert which whilst not local to Wirral, is often washed up on the dee shore from stones as far away as Scotland.
Great if you could find out the exact find spot and report it to the Portable Antiquities Scheme. It's not worth anything money wise, but all of the items could have significant archaeological value in an early lacking in prehistoric finds.
forgot to say....the best person to show this to is a guy called Ron Cowell at Liverpool museum. He's a legend on stuff like this. It's a barbed and tanged arrowhead by the way. Unusually dull in appearance which makes me think it might not be chert.
you're welcome. Report it to the PAS too, it's a significant find for Wirral. Any idea where the Roman finds are from? I'd be more helpful in identifying them if you want me to take a look.
nice collection! Well the first few are relatively straight forward, I think!! They are called Melon beads and are made from a type of glass. There were a few coming into late iron-age Britain, but tend to be Roman in date. I think a similar one was found at excavations in Irby.The larger one looks like a globular bead, similar to finds from Meols. Possibly Roman, or remelted glass from Medieval. I wouldn't know for sure, I'm not an expert.
These are a set of hair pins, though one is possibly a darning needle. Can't tell what they're made of from the photo. Copper alloy would suggest Roman, though bone was used by Romans and throughout middle ages for these.
Gaming counters are really nice. I'd not be able to date them, but they're a high status object. They were often used for gaming, but also military strategy. The square thingey seems to be a bone dice, which I think you knew.
Bottom one is likely to have been a brooch, and would have had a pin attached to it.
Thanks for showing these, they're fantastic finds. They'd be really important to the archaeological record if you could discover where they were found.
Hope this was of some help. Like I say, I'm not a finds expert so don't take my word as gospel!
the hair pins are bone as is the "sailmakers" needle and are approx 6 inches long
I think the die has been made from a tessarae (sp) that are used to make the ornamental mosaic floors.
The counters are all made of bone. except teh big on ewhich appears to have been made from a piece of Black-burnished ware pottery
The ring is made of silver and it is labelled as a 2nd-3rd C childs ring, it is very small!
Sorry i should have added some scale to the pics. Much of the roman stuff came from Holt nr farndon,on the river Dee where there was a roman rooftile factory.
my mum thinks the green glass bead was from meols beach at low tide. If youd like to take a look at the items for yourself i can arrange to meet up with u
