Casgliadau Arlein

This young cow skull show clear signs of being struck repeatedly with a poleaxe.

There are five points of impact, four of which have produced holes 10-15mm wide. The amount of force used during the proceedure seems excessive, as the tool was used five times and some of the holes have the remains of the bone pushed inside, while the cranium surface has split. In the case of the two holes on the upper right, the direction of force was from the top left, entering at a right angle. There are sharp blade marks on either side of some of the holes.

It appears that a metal rather than a stone implement was used. The section of the implement used is like that of Bronze Age weapons such as spearheads and halberds, with a raised ridge on either side which produce a wide, diamond-shaped hole. There are holes of this type in a late Bronze Age shield from long Wittenham (Needham 1979, fig 2). Experiments on sheep skulls with Early Bronze Age halberds hafted at right angles to the blades (Flaherty 2007) suggest that halberd could successfully be used to kill an animal or person. These halberds entered about 60mm into the skull, however which would leave a hole with a width of about 40mm, much wider that the holes in the Peterstone skull. The smaller size of the holes in this cranium is possibly due to less force being used of the thicker skull of the cow providing increased resistance to the blows. Early Bronze Age spearheads would leave a narrower hole (eg Needham 1979).

Subsequent to the death of the animal the horn cores were removed.