Spears, sickles and Druidic staffs!

David with two of the reconstructed spears.

Last year we were asked by Oriel Ynys Mon to reconstruct a number of objects from the Llyn Cerrig Bach Hoard.  This is one of the most spectacular Iron Age hoard ever found.  Its was discovered during the building of RAF Valley (where Prince William is now based) in the Second World War on Anglesey.  The objects had been ritually deposited in a lake as offerings and contained object from all over what is now the UK.

Reconstructed bronze horse bits.

The hoard is now kept at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff, but last year some items came back to Anglesey for temporary display at Oriel Ynys Mon.

The reconstructed iron sickle.

The Oriel wanted reconstructions made to put on permanent display and some for teaching/handling collections; so a number of the objects were chosen and we made accurate replicas of them and reconstructed the parts of the original objects that had not survived 3,000 years in a bog!

David making a spear shaft.

We learnt a lot from making the objects, not only about how they were made, but also about how they would have been used and what they would have meant to the people using them.

Using the spears!

 Click on this link for our full report on the making of the objects and the results of our experimental work we undertook to understand the objects and their uses better. http://www.ancient-arts.org/webrep2.pdf.