NEW RADIOCARBON dating has raised new questions about a Perthshire spearhead once thought to have associations with William Wallace.

The Kinclaven iron spearhead was found in the bed of the River Tay, beside Kinclaven Castle, in 1991 by an eagle-eyed member of the public.

It was initially identified as late medieval (13th/14th century), with an appealing association to be made between the find and the location, as the castle was the site of a War of Independence skirmish led by William Wallace.

More recently, a follow-up look at the spearhead suggested that it could in fact be a much earlier example, dating from the 6th/7th century.

This would make it a useful addition to the small number of early medieval iron spearheads from Scotland, including examples found in Scalloway, Shetland, Birsay on Orkney and at Dunadd, Argyll.

However, further studies have revealed that it could date from the middle of the medieval period, a time from which archaeological evidence is much rarer.

A notable feature of the spearhead is that its hollow socket had preserved a detachable length of the wooden shaft, measuring 95mm long.

Further analysis of this shaft fragment—a radiocarbon determination included —offered clear possibilities for further information.

A grant to Perth Museum of £290 from the Research Fund of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland enabled a small sample of the wood to be sent to the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre (SUERC) laboratory in East Kilbride, for radiocarbon determination.

And the laboratory’s findings saw a rather surprising result came back.

History officer Mark Hall said that the results revealed a 68.2 % chance of spearhead dating from between 1040 AD to 1160 AD and a 95.4% chance of it falling between 1020AD to 1190AD.

“What this means of course is that we are not dealing with a 6th or 7th century spearhead but an 11th century example, which is, if anything, even rarer,” Mark said.

“Of course, technically speaking we are dealing with a date for the wooden shaft and not the iron spearhead itself.

“What we do not know is if the pairing of shaft and spearhead is the original one or a later one due to shaft breakage.

“Even if we allow some element of inheritance of an heirloom it stretches the bounds of credibility to think that a 6th or 7th century spearhead was in use/ passed on for something like 500 years.

“We can perhaps allow that the spear could have been an heirloom over two or three generations but realistically no more.

“This would give us two basic scenarios to consider, an entirely new spear (head and shaft) of the 11th century or a spearhead (may be as much as a century old) newly shafted in the 11th century.”

Mark added, “We now have a clutch of items that have been identified in the past few years as being from this period. We now have a clear image of the military activity was going on in the area at the time.”

The spearhead forms part of the Recognised Collections of Perth Museum and Art Gallery.