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May 24, 2023

Archeologists Discover Bronze Age Arrowhead Made Of ‘Alien Metal’

A Bronze-Age arrowhead made of meteoritic iron is a rare example of such archeological artifacts in ... [+] Europe. Long before humans were able to smelt iron from natural ores, artifacts made of iron

A Bronze-Age arrowhead made of meteoritic iron is a rare example of such archeological artifacts in ... [+] Europe.

Long before humans were able to smelt iron from natural ores, artifacts made of iron appeared in the archeological record. These "Out Of Place Objects" have indeed an extraterrestrial origin, even if not ancient aliens visiting Earth. They are made of fragments of iron that fell to Earth as meteorites. Meteoric iron was used by early people in many parts of the world. Artifacts like ceremonial daggers, figurines or jewelry made of meteoric iron were found in Turkey, Greece, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Indonesia, Iran, Canada, Greenland, Russia, China and North Africa. A collection of iron beads found in a 6,000-year-old tomb predated Egypt's Iron Age by 2,000 years.

In central and western Europe, only two archeological artifacts of meteoric origin have been known so far: a bracelet and an ax head from Poland.

Now a team of archeologist and geologists discovered an arrowhead likely made of material coming from a meteorite. The team identified the chemical make-up of the used material - an iron-nickel-aluminium alloy - thanks to a combination of electron-microscope images, X-rays and high-energy radiation analysis, and compared the results with known samples of meteorites.

The analyzed arrowhead is part of a series of arrowheads otherwise made of bronze found more than 100 years ago at the Swiss archeological site of Mörigen, and now part of the collections of the Bern History Museum. The site of Mörigen, a late Bronze Age pile-dwelling once locate near the shores of a lake, was of special interest to the researchers as there is a known meteorite fall nearby. The Twannberg iron-meteorite, comprising three fragments, is the largest meteorite ever found in Switzerland. It seemed quite possible that a smaller fragments of this meteorite was discovered in prehistoric times and used in the nearby settlement to craft the arrowhead. But the chemical properties didn't match.

Widening the search, the researchers noted that the nickel and germanium concentrations for the Mörigen arrowhead share similarities with the Kaalijarv meteorite from Estonia, a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. This meteorite fall happened around 3,500 years ago during the Bronze Age and produced many small fragments. Maybe it was even observed. The discovery and collection of such small iron fragments appears much more likely than in case of buried large meteorites.

The link between Estonia and Switzerland also supports the existence of a network spanning prehistoric Europe, used to trade goods like amber as gemstones, silex stones for tool production and iron meteorites. The researchers now how hope to find more artifacts of the same origin in other archaeological collections.

The study "An arrowhead made of meteoritic iron from the late Bronze Age settlement of Mörigen, Switzerland and its possible source" was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science (2023).