Nils Visser

<p>Two vanes, helical. Made of a strip of wood. Most arrows were rather crude, designed for one time use only, rather than frequent re-use. Logical ofcourse, if you're shooting from a city wall at besieging troops, it's rather hard to go down and get your arrows again. There was a wide variety of different types of arrowheads. We are saving the detailed pics for publications.</p> <p> </p>

There were a wide variety of different arrowheads of the types mentioned by Serdon or Zimmerman.

You bet, but it will take a while. We are from the Dutch Warbow Society, and our research team is working on making a website where we can publish pictures and data. I will also write an article ofcourse and see if magazines are interested. So the data will come, but it will take some time, as you can imagine, there is a huge amount of information to work through.

The crossbow bolts are made from oak (chêne). This more or less seems the standard munitions depot of the civilian militia's as found in Germany, the Low Countries, Northern France (I don't know about the south). We have manuscripts which list city council orders for 30,000-35,000 arrows or bolts. This particular collection seems to have been acquired between 1475 and 1500. It was kept in the basement of an old church. Guns, bullets and gunpowder replaced the old weapons, and there was a legal argument between the church and the city council about whom owned what. Until this was decided, nothing could be sold to salvage the wood or iron. It dragged on so long, it was mostly forgotten. In the 1880s ownership was finally granted to the city council, by that time it was recognized the collection had a historical value. It was rediscovered in the 1980's and then finally displayed.