First non-utilitarian weapons found in the Arabian Peninsula

[Andreas Johansson]

A collection of evidently non-functional bronze weapons have been found from Iron Age Oman:

http://phys.org/news/2016-03-non-utilitarian-weapons-arabian-peninsula.html

[Erpingham]

Do these shed any fresh light on armament and/or warfare of the region?

[Duncan Head]

Not a lot, I would say. We already knew that composite bows were used in eastern Arabia - eg http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0471.2005.00255.x/abstract (which used to be free on academia.edu but isn't any more). I don't think we had a representation of the quivers before now.

I don't remember seeing an axehead like that from Arabia - reminds me of some Luristan axes.