Standardised Manufacture of Iron Age Weaponry from Southern Scandinavia: Constructing and Provenancing the Havor Lance

This chapter examines a single weapon type classified as the ‘Havor’ lance, recovered from the famous war booty sacrifices of southern Scandinavia during the Late Roman and Early Germanic Iron Age. A metallographic analysis of 13 samples reveals that the Havor lance was produced using a fairly uniform construction technique, labelled here as the ‘spiral-form’ method. The spiral-form method is not only clearly visible in the macroscopic cross-sections of lance specimens but also in weld lines illuminated through X-radiography. This chapter follows on from previous research demonstrating the Havor lance to be a highly standardised weapon product in terms of both construction form and shape, as shown by traditional metric analysis and innovative geometric morphometric analysis.

The standardised form and appearance as well as the singular construction method of the Havor lance are at odds with the different microstructures and types of iron observed in the individual specimens. The metallographic and chemical analysis of entrapped slag inclusions reveal that the lances were made using phosphoric iron, ferritic iron, and steel from different iron production regions, which appear to correspond generally to modern-day Denmark and southern Norway. The discrepancy between the standardised appearance of the lances and the different types of iron used in their manufacture presents a more complex scenario than had hitherto been envisaged for iron availability and weapon construction in southern Scandinavia during the Iron Age.