3000-year-old weapon made from meteorite discovered in Switzerland

Aug 06 2023

JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SCIENCE
A Bronze Age arrowhead from Mörigen, Switzerland made of meteoritic iron.

An ancient weapon discovered in Switzerland was crafted from a meteorite, a new study has shown.

“A single object made of meteoritic iron has been identified,” researchers wrote in the study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

The arrowhead is from the Bronze Age (900–800 BCE) and is 39.3mm long and weighs 2.9g.

It was found in Mörigen, Switzerland in the 19th century, and is now part of the Bern History Museum collection.

The researchers used a portable X-ray fluorescence analyser to prove the extraterrestrial origin of the arrowhead.

The aim of the study was to identify potential objects made of meteoritic iron from the Twannberg iron meteorite strewn field, which is close to where the arrowhead was found.

However, the arrowhead was not made of the Twannberg iron meteorite, instead researchers suggested it could have been from the Kaalijarv meteorite in Estonia.

“Among just three large European IAB iron meteorites with fitting chemical composition, the Kaalijarv meteorite (Estonia) is the most likely source because this large crater-forming fall event happened at ∼1500 years BC during the Bronze Age and produced many small fragments.”


Meteoritic iron artefacts are rare, only two had previously been found in Central and Western Europe.