Czech Man's Stone in Barn's Foundations Is Rare Bronze Age Spearhead Mold

In 2007, a man identified only as J. Tomanec discovered a unique rectangular stone in the garden of his home in Morkuvky, a small village in the southeastern Czech Republic. The object, which had long helped support the foundations of his barn, piqued Tomanec’s interest. Eventually, it drew attention from local archaeologists, too.

After analyzing the find, researchers identified the stone as a millennia-old artifact used to cast Bronze Age weaponry. Nearly nine inches long, the item—made from a volcanic rock called rhyolite tuff—dates to around 1350 B.C.E.

“It is a casting mold, technically called a matrix, for a bronze spearhead,” Milan Salaš, an archaeologist at the Moravian Museum in Brno, tells Radio Prague International’s Ruth Fraňková. “As we can see, it’s a fairly regular rectangular stone slab. On the dividing surface of the mold, on one side, there is a very precisely shaped and very well-preserved negative impression used for casting a bronze spearhead.”

Need to know: What is the Bronze Age?

• The Bronze Age spanned roughly 3000 B.C.E. to 1000 B.C.E., with dates varying depending on the region.
• The era fell in the middle of the so-called three ages: the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age.

Salaš is the lead author of a study, published in June 2025 in the journal Archeologicke Rozhledy, that examined the mold and outlined its surprising historical context.

Drawing on macroscopic evidence and X-ray analyses, the authors determined how the mold was used. Liquid bronze was poured into both of its halves (only one of which survives), which were then tightened with a copper wire. The result was a socketed lanceolate spearhead—in other words, a lance-shaped weapon with a hollow base. Spearheads produced with the mold would also have featured longitudinal ribs, or raised ridges running along their wings and sockets.

These types of weapons were common in the Carpathian region during the Late Bronze Age. Named after the Carpathian Mountains, which stretch across Central Europe from Austria in the west to Serbia in the south, the region includes a small section of the Czech Republic. The igneous rock used to make the mold likely originated farther east, indicating that “long-distance transport of raw materials used for the production of stone molds could reach tens to hundreds of kilometers,” write the authors in the study.

“Unfortunately, we are not able to determine precisely the site where the mold was prepared, but generally its provenance is evident (northern Hungary up to southeastern Slovakia),” study co-author Antonín Přichystal, a geologist at Masaryk University, tells Live Science’s Kenna Hughes-Castleberry in an email.

Based on comparisons with similar artifacts, the researchers hypothesize that the mold belonged to the Urnfield culture. This group spread across Europe beginning in the mid-second millennium B.C.E. and derived its name from the practice of placing cremated bones in urns, which were then buried in fields.

The other Urnfield casting molds recovered to date have chiefly been found in excavated settlements or burial grounds. This example was probably redeposited in Morkuvky in modern times from a nearby Urnfield site. Evidence of “high thermal stress” on the artifact’s surface is “associated with repeated and intensive use,” indicating that the mold might have been used to cast “up to dozens of spearheads,” according to the study.

Salaš tells Radio Prague International that Late Bronze Age soldiers generally wielded a wide range of equipment, from defensive shields to spears to leg guards.

“The warriors at Troy had the same equipment,” Salaš says. “[Homer] even writes that they carried two spears into battle. They always kept one in reserve. When a warrior threw a spear from a distance, he lost it, so he had another ready.”