A seemingly boring rectangular stone, used as part of a foundation for an old barn in a Czech garden, is actually half of a rare Bronze Age shape used to make spearheads, a new study finds.
The nearly 9-inch-long (23-centimeter) shape, carved into a volcanic rock known as rhyolite tuff, dates to the Late Bronze Age, c. 1350 BC.
“This is the best-preserved and most perfect cast of a bronze spearhead in Central Europe,” study first author Milan Salašan archaeologist at the Moravian Museum in the Czech Republic, told LiveScience in an email. “Based on the shape of the spearhead and the type of raw material used … the shape was imported into southern Moravia from northern Hungary.”
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The newly discovered 2.4 pound (1.1 kilogram) form matches others from Urnemark culturewhich appeared in the middle of the second millennium BC. and are known to cremate and bury the dead in urns in field cemeteries.
In their analysis, Salas and his colleagues wrote how molds like this made it possible to cast metal tools and weapons, such as spearheads, axes and daggers, with greater uniformity. This in turn would have created armed conflict easier to maintainand also strengthened the commercial and political power of cultures i The Carpathian Basin of Central Europe, they wrote in the study, which was published in the journal Archeological Rozhledy (Czech for “Archaeological Prospects”) in 2025.
“These types of spearheads, characterized by ribs along the blade and a sharp ridge on the base, are common in the Carpathians,” Salaš told Radio Prague Internationalthe official international broadcasting station in the Czech Republic. “It was essentially (a) serial production. As we can see, the mold was used very intensively. Possibly dozens of spearheads were cast from it.”
The stone was discovered by homeowner J. Tomanec in 2007, after he noticed that the gray slab protruded slightly from the ground, where it probably fell after being used in a barn foundation. In 2019, Tomanec gave the stone to the Moravian Museum, where Salaš examined it more closely using X-ray fluorescence scans to determine which elements make up the shape.
“It was proven that bronze was cast in the mold and that both halves of the mold were held together with copper wire,” Salaš told LiveScience via email.
The back story of the form
To trace the origins of the form, study co-authorship Antonín Prichystalprofessor of geology at Masaryk University, worked with Salaš and used X-ray diffractiona technique that determines the atomic structure of certain crystalline solids, such as rock. This determined that the shape was made of rhyolite tuff, which is often found in the Bükk Mountains in Hungary or around the nearby town of Salgótarján.
About 20 million years ago, there was a huge volcano in the area that produced an “enormous amount of tuff,” Přichystal said. “Unfortunately, we are unable to determine the exact location where the mold was prepared, but in general the origin is clear (northern Hungary up to southeast Slovakia),” he told LiveScience in an email.
While other Bronze Age weapons and armor has been found in nearby areas in the Carpathian Basingives the form a behind-the-scenes look at how these objects were made.
“In this case, heavy burning and traces of heat clearly show its repeated use and serial production of bronze castings,” said Salaš.
Molds from the Urnfield period are often found at settlements; more rarely they are uncovered in burials as grave goods. It is unclear how an Urnfield culture spearhead form ended up in the man’s garden, but it was “most likely redeployed in modern times from a nearby Urnfield Period site,” the authors wrote in the study.
This interesting case shows how long the journey from the discovery of a unique archaeological object (2007) to its scientific evaluation in a professional journal (2025) can sometimes be,” Přichystal said.
Salaš, M., Přichystal, A., Petřík, J., Slavíček, K., Všianský, D., & Nosek, V. (2025). A unique stone mold for casting a spearhead from Morkůvky in South Moravia as an example of long-distance importation in the Urnfield period, and its technological contribution. Archeological Rozhledy, 77(2). https://doi.org/10.35686/ar.2025.272
