Bronze Age Weapon Arrowhead Excavated in Switzerland Made From Iron Meteorites

An ancient weapon from the 19th century was unearthed in Switzerland. According to a new report, it was made from materials outside our planet.

Bronze Age Arrowhead Excavated in Switzerland

The little object is made of iron recovered from something that fell to Earth. It wasn't even the nearest meteorite to the settlement at the time. Instead, scientists believe it could have traveled as far as Estonia, ScienceAlert reported.

The arrowhead thus serves as evidence of broad trade networks that must have existed thousands of years ago in addition to the use of sky iron in the pre-ore smelting era.

Geologist Beda Hofmann of the Natural History Museum of Bern and the University of Bern in Switzerland organized a coordinated search for historic meteoritic iron objects, and she successfully identified the object.

In the prehistoric era, pure iron was scarce, but our predecessors used the most readily available source - iron that descended from the sky as meteorites.

Since iron meteorites can better endure the pressure of air entry, they are the most often discovered meteorites. They are mostly made of iron, with traces of other metals, nickel, and minor amounts of different metals.

Most iron tools and weaponry from the Bronze Age are assumed to have been forged from meteoritic iron. Most of these artifacts have been discovered in the Middle East, Egypt, and Asia, while just a tiny number have been found across the enormous continent of Europe.

Arrowhead Made From IAB Meteorites

Hofmann and his colleagues discovered a single iron arrowhead among the items already removed from the site. It was 39.3 millimeters (1.5 inches) long and weighed 2.904 grams (0.102 ounces). It bears some organic residue, which the experts believe to be birch tar, which was most likely used to secure the arrowhead to the shaft.

A radioactive isotope of aluminum called aluminum-26, which only forms among the stars, is present in the object in addition to the typical iron and nickel composition predicted of meteoritic iron. The arrowhead's exact metal composition differs from the meteoritic iron found in the Twannberg field. Instead, it appears to be a member of the IAB meteorite class of iron meteorites.

Fortunately, this makes tracing its origins simpler. Three of the massive IAB meteorites known to have fallen in Europe-Bohumilitz from the Czech Republic, Retuerte de Bullaque from Spain, and Kaalijarv from Estonia have a composition that matches the arrowhead.

The best match, according to the experts, is probably Kaalijarv.

Around 1500 BCE, it crashed to Earth and scattered countless pieces that could be reshaped into tiny, pointed objects like arrowheads. However, it was almost 1,600 kilometers (994 miles) from Mörigen. It shows that it may have used the same trading channels as Baltic amber in its travels.

It would be worthwhile to search collections for items resembling the arrowhead to see whether the parent meteorite could be identified, given the significant amount of meteorite shrapnel generated by the Kaalijarv strikes.

Whether or not it was derived from Kaalijarv, the researchers write that other worked meteoritic iron fragments, including samples of relatively small size, are probably present in archaeological collections in Europe and possibly even at greater distances.

The paper was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

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