Spearhead

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This spearhead represents the highest tradition of the British Bronze Age. The piece is undeniably beautiful: its shape is elegant and spare to the point of evoking modern art. The socket of the spearhead is hollow and includes two peg holes. These would allow the shaft of the spear to be replaced often without undue difficulty; a possession such as this would be much too valuable not to use again and again. When given to the Museum, there was in fact a small section of wood still remaining inside. The spearhead almost certainly comes from the Selbourne/Blackmoor hoard of Bronze Age objects, found in the nineteenth century in Hampshire. The hoard was acquired by two great nineteenth-century collectors: first by the antiquarian George Roots, and then by General A. H. Pitt-Rivers, an omnivorous collector especially interested in British objects and also a renowned archaeologist.

Medieval Art and The Cloisters

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of medieval and Byzantine art is among the most comprehensive in the world. Displayed in both The Met Fifth Avenue and in the Museum's branch in northern Manhattan, The Met Cloisters, the collection encompasses the art of the Mediterranean and Europe from the fall of Rome in the fourth century to the beginning of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century. It also includes pre-medieval European works of art created during the Bronze Age and early Iron Age.

Metropolitan Museum of Art