A Tréboul type spearhead from Twisk

A detector find of a Tréboult type spearhead from Twist (West-Friesland) is discussed. It is dated by its wooden ash (Fraxinus) shaft preserved to to c. 1867-1542 BCE. The composition of the alloy was determined with pXRF analysis of the outside patina and a drilled core sample. The alloy fits well within the corpus of other Dutch Tréboul spearheads. Like other examples, the Twisk Tréboul spearhead is created from a tin-copper bronze, with other elements represented in minor quantities. After tin (c. 9.9 %wt), arsenic is the most prominent element (c. 0.45 %wt), with nickel (c. 0.29 %wt) as the only other element above 0.1 %wt. Antimony (c. 0.07 %wt), silver (c. 0.03 %wt) and lead (c. 0.02 %) are rare. Presumably, the Great Orme mine in Wales supplied the base ores. We suggest that this spearhead ended up in Twisk as part of the exchange systems upheld by (near)coastal communities in the northwestern Netherlands (and not overland from a Meuse-river / eastern coversand landscape origin). The decidedly non-local appearance of the Twisk and other Tréboul spearheads from the Netherlands, will have been an immediate and visual reminder of the ways in which local communities such as the Bronze Age farmers of Twisk were integrated into a much bigger supra-regional collective.