Assembled Beothuk Arrow Reproductions

Chert and iron arrowheads and Beothuk arrow reproductions

The Beothuk arrow reproductions that I talked about on Friday are assembled now and stained with red ochre and oil.  I've made plenty of these arrows with stone points over the years, but this set includes the first arrow that I've made with a hammered iron arrowhead made from a modified nail.  I have made look-alike arrows for film props in this style, but they weren't hammered out of nails and lashed on in the correct fashion. I left off Friday's post wondering about the change in Beothuk arrows that came with the adoption of arrowheads hammered out of nails.

Pine shafts, goose feathers, chert or iron arrowheads, sinew and hide glue binding, red ochre and oil stain

Stone and iron points. The pointy part
of the arrowhead doesn't change a
great deal, but the hafting area of
the arrowheads are very different.

The iron arrowheads were hafted differently because the body of the nail was used as a long skinny tang that would have been lashed into a channel gouged in the side of the arrow shaft.  In contrast, the chert arrowheads that the Beothuk and their ancestors made were designed to be tied into a slot cut into the end of the arrow shaft.  The process of chipping the corner notches into the stone arrowhead created backward facing barbs, so that when the arrow went in, it wouldn't come back out again.  These barbs disappear on the iron nail arrowheads.  The general size and shape of the cutting and piercing part of the arrowhead isn't much different, but the barbs, which had been part of Beothuk arrowhead design for centuries suddenly vanish on the iron arrowheads.  It would have required a little extra effort, but it would have been possible to cut or grind barbs into the iron arrowheads, however the Beothuk chose not to.

Modified nail arrowhead (left)
Knapped chert arrowhead (right)

One difference between iron and stone would be the durability of the arrowheads.  A stone point is very likely to break if it encounters a bone or hits a stone or root on a missed shot, whereas an iron point is much more durable.  Perhaps the barbless design of the iron points is evidence that iron-tipped arrows were designed to be re-used.  Without the barbs, arrows could easily be withdrawn from the killed animal.  With stone points the chance of the point being re-usable was much lower, so there's no reason to make the design easy to remove from the wound.  The iron would also probably have a little more value associated with it, both because its durable, but also because its new and rare, compared to stone.  Again, this would create more incentive to retrieve and reuse the arrows.

Arrowhead and two feather fletching based on historic descriptions and drawings of Beothuk arrows

The same arrowhead and feathers shown in profile.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Tying on Beothuk Points

Chert and Iron
Beothuk arrowhead
Reproductions

I'm working on a few Beothuk arrows today.  I'm tying points and feathers on to the pine shafts so that I can ochre stain them.  Since I had a few modified iron nail points on hand from a previous project, I decided to try hafting one on to a complete arrow.   The introduction of iron nails to the Beothuk tool kit changed the way points were hafted, although you can still use sinew and glue to tie them to the shaft.  The main difference is that the long tangs would have been tied into a narrow channel carved down along the arrow shaft from the tip, rather than inserted into a cut slot, like the knapped stone points.  The end result would have differed from the stone tipped points in a couple of ways - first the points made on nails would have been slightly heavier, giving more forward weight to the arrow and secondly the prominent barbs on the corner notched chert arrowheads are gone from the slender, leaf-shaped arrowheads hammered out of iron nails.  Would the heavier points penetrate farther and eliminate the need for barbs to prevent the arrow from backing out of the wound?  Or was it just too much of a hassle to cut and file barbs into a hammered iron point?

A side view of an iron point (top) and a stone point (bottom).  The long tang of the iron point needs a lot more sinew lashing to completely encase it.  

Chert, corner notched Recent Indian projectile point reproduction

I think you can see a little more clearly that iron tang fits in a slot running along the outside edge of the wood arrow shaft.  The two points have comparable cutting edges and angles, but the iron point is a little heavier and lacks the prominent barbs of the stone point.  

Photo Credit: Tim Rast

Beothuk Iron Arrowheads

A reproduction Beothuk arrowhead

I'm working on a couple orders right now that are heavy with Beothuk and Dorset Palaeoeskimo artifact reproductions.  Today I made four Beothuk arrowheads by cold hammering square cut iron nails.  Laurie McLean did his MA on Beothuk ironworking and I used a short publication that he put together with the Newfoundland Archaeological Heritage Outreach Program in 2003 as a reference for the work.  He shows there how the Beothuk would hammer nails in the middle to remove the end and start the shaping of the blade.  He also gives some idea of the size of nails used and the arrowheads made from them.

The four arrowheads on the right were all cold hammered and ground out of nails that were identical to the two on the left.  They lost their rust during the hammering. 

I worked two of the nails by chiseling
off the hear.  This is not how the
Beothuk worked them.

I started with 4 inch nails that I bought off a supplier that I found through eBay.  I picked 4 inch nails because I was aiming for a finished arrowhead in the 11 cm range (about 4 3/8").  I knew the nail would get wider through hammering, but I guess I wasn't thinking about how it would also get longer.  The four arrowheads that I made today were all made by hammering and grinding and they ranged in size from 10 to 14 cm long.  For the longest three, I either left the head on the nail as I hammered or chiseled it off flush with where it joined the body of the nail.  I thought that I needed to do that to preserve the length of the finished arrowhead.  But of course that was unnecessary and the better reproduction came from actually following the Beothuk method as it was preserved in the archaeological record.

Based on artifacts recovered from Beothuk archaeological sites, this is how they began working nails into arrowheads.   The nails were hammered flat in the mid section.

When the iron gets foil thin, its easy to bend and snap the nail head off.

A sequence from nail to
completed arrowhead

To work the nails, I hammered them cold on an anvil with a metal claw hammer.  I made a few strikes with a hammerstone and it worked fine, although the long handle on the hammer made things much easier.  To grind the blade down to size and make it symmetrical and sharp, I used a bench grinder for the coarse work and an hand file for the lighter work.  Again, a stone abrader worked fine, but I opted for something with a longer handle to actually do the work.  I did a small amount of hammering on the tang as well to narrow it.  This also added length to the arrowhead.  In the end, the hammered arrowhead was more or less the same length as the nail that it was made from, even with more than 3 cm removed from the head end.  The four arrowheads are all more or less correct, although as a set they feel large.  I have some 3 inch nails on the way and I think working them in the same way will give me some smaller points that will create a better collection.  I'd like the points to be in the 7cm to 11cm range when completed.

Its possible that some of the little nail heads were ground into scrapers.  It makes sense to reuse those little pieces somehow.

References: 
McLean, Laurie
2003 A Guide to Beothuk Iron. NAHOP Artifact Studies 1.Archaeology Unit, MUN, St. John's

Photo Credits: Tim Rast