Sibertswold Downs Grave 98

Middle-sized tumulus; grave three feet and a half deep. The coffin had passed the fire; the bones were almost gone. On the left side of the skull, or rather lower down, was the iron head of a barbed arrow [M 6552] or small dart[1], in length about eleven inches. On the right side was the blade of a sword, much like those found at Ash and Kingston; here were also a small brass ferrule (I imagine it belonged to the arrow or dart), and the blade of a knife.[1]Examples of the barbed jaculum or dart are very uncommon. The scarcity of these slender weapons, as well as of arrows, in the Anglo-Saxons is, no doubt, partly owing to the thinness of the material being less able to resist the decomposition to which objects in iron are so liable.- C.R.S.