Origins And Cultural Contacts 339
by Christoph Steinacker in his MA thesis (1998 in Freiburg), a part of which has
been published.244
Hungarian winged spearheads were examined by Zoltán Szabó with spec-
troscopy in order to study their material composition. According to the results
these spearheads were made from low-carbon soft iron, and no traces of
cementation could be observed.245 One of the most significant studies of these
winged spearheads in the Carpathian Basin was by László Kovács who listed
their occurrence in the Carpathian Basin and considered their typology and
chronology.246
Important studies of winged spearheads were also undertaken in various
East-Central European countries, such as Poland,247 the Czech Republic,248
Austria249 and the former Yugoslavia.250 The most recent study on these spear-
heads from the Carpathian Basin was by a young Slovakian researcher who
undertook a formal examination of these weapons, an analysis of chemical
composition, and also studied the pattern welding on 36 winged spearheads
from 31 sites.251
This spearhead from Devínská Nová Ves was described and studied by Ján
Eisner252 and László Kovács.253 According to Kovács it belonged to the group of
so-called ‘Stollenlanzen’ (the Swiss name for hooked spearheads), and dated it
to the end of the 7th and beginning of the 8th century, based on the Late Avar
cast belt-set found in the burial,254 and it was also assigned to hooked spear-
heads (‘Hakenlanzenspitze’) by Christoph Steinacker.255
The hooked spearhead had already appeared during the 4th century, as
confirmed by the elite burial from Vermand (dép. Aisne, France). Ursula Koch
244 Steinacker 1998; Steinacker 1999, 119–126.
245 Szabó 1974, 3–59. Unfortunately the sampling was only made at one point on the spear
(either socket or blade) and therefore these analyses are of limited value, since the chemi-
cal composition of spears is variable.
246 Kovács 1978; Kovács 1979, Kovács 1986.
247 Kurasiński 2005, 165–213.
248 Kouřil 2005, 67–100.
249 Szameit 1987, 155–177.
250 Sekelj-Ivančan 2004, 109–128.
251 Husár 2006, 47–78.
252 Eisner 1934; Eisner 1952, 119–120.
253 Kovács 1979, 98, 104.
254 Kovács 1979, 104, footnote No. 60: he used the book of Moosbrugger-Leu (1971, 90–92) who
dated these spears to the 6–7th century. It is important to note, that Peter Paulsen (1969,
295) dated the same spearheads to the 8th century.
255 Steinacker 1998, 14.