The Saint Sebastian Guild in Oirschot has owned a bronze spearhead for many years. It may be an ancient piece. But how old exactly is the tip of the blanket stick? The first episode of the new season Klokken van Brabant on Brabant+ provides an answer to that question.
“The dean’s stick is an attribute that the dean, say the secretary of a guild, uses on official occasions,” explains guild brother Wim van de Biggelaar. The stick has a shiny bronze spearhead. A few years ago, former mayor and amateur archaeologist Frits Speetjens suggested that this spearhead could be very old. “Since then, we have cherished this special object. We regularly dust and polish it thoroughly so that it shines beautifully again.”
They should not have done that, because the patina has disappeared. That is the weathering layer on an object that can sometimes tell a lot about its history. “Can’t we find out more about how old that bronze spearhead is?” Wim wonders. Well, we can’t be pigeonholed.
Materials expert Bertil van Os from the Cultural Heritage Agency (RCE) in Amersfoort has had an XRF spectrometer for elemental analysis for some time now. This is a handy X-ray device with which you can, among other things, measure metals on the surface of an object and detect the mutual ratio of, for example, copper, tin, zinc and lead. It looks like a handheld scanner in the supermarket. So it’s high time to travel to Amersfoort with the bronze point.
New season Klokken van Brabant
The new season of Klokken van Brabant can now be seen on Brabant+. In this series, historian Patrick Timmermans looks for the stories behind special objects in the depots of Brabant museums, archives and other collections.
How old is the bronze spearhead of the guild in Oirschot? What are those strange stones doing in the park of Heeswijk Castle? And what happened to the English pilot Charles Hall, who flew over Brabant during the Second World War? To find answers to these and other questions, Patrick visits various experts and other stakeholders. And so together they arrive at new insights and surprising outcomes.
Liesbeth Theunissen, prehistory archaeologist and Bronze Age specialist, looks surprised when we take the spearhead out of its protective bag. “At first glance, this looks really old. And it also resembles other bronze spearheads found in the Netherlands. There are about four hundred copies in total. But if we want to know for sure how old this object is, we have to scan it.”
Bertil van Os is already waiting, wringing his hands, when we enter his laboratory. He takes his XRF meter in his hand and holds the device tightly on the spearhead. After about ten seconds we see all kinds of percentages of metals appear in the screen. Bertil: “Aha, I see it immediately.”
Are you curious how old the spearhead is? Then look at the first episode of the new season Klokken van Brabant on Brabant+.