Spear

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A spear is a polearm consisting of a shaft, usually of wood, with a pointed head. The head may be simply the sharpened end of the shaft itself, as is the case with fire hardened spears, or it may be made of a more durable material fastened to the shaft, such as bone, flint, obsidian, copper, bronze, iron, or steel. The most common design for hunting and/or warfare, since ancient times has incorporated a metal spearhead shaped like a triangle, diamond, or leaf. The heads of fishing spears usually feature multiple sharp points, with or without barbs.

Spear-type weapons can be broadly divided into three categories, though there is some crossover: those designed for thrusting during combat, referred to by any number of historic names, but generically as spears and later as pikes when they are particularly long and used in coordinated military formations; those designed to be used from horseback couched in a charge, now usually referred to as lances, that are fitted with specialist features such as vamplates and grappers designed to engage lance rests fitted to breastplates; and those designed for throwing as a ranged weapon, now often referred to as darts or javelins), such as the Roman pilum.

However, it should be remembered that specific nomenclature tends to be a modern phenomenon to help develop distinctions for study and discussion purposes such as being done here, and there is always the danger of attributing characteristics to terms that were historically never made, or were not intentionally created as something to be specifically different from something else, or that they were even aware of the options that hindsight now presents to the modern viewer. This applies even when using the historic terminology for weapons from the historic languages of those cultures whose weapons are being discussed, as the nomenclature of weapons in the past was often far less specific. For example, what the Romans would consider a lancea could be a thrusting spear used on foot or from horseback, or thrown like a javelin on foot or mounted, and so is everything but what we now term a lance, as this "weapon system" of specialist parts did not even exist in their time. When it eventually emerged as a specific weapon in the late medieval period, the word lance was just another term for a spear. Modern ideas about weapon design, manufacture and function is still incomplete and there remain faulty assumptions and gaps in our understanding.

The spear has been used throughout human history as a tool for hunting, fishing and as a weapon. Along with the club, knife, and axe, it is one of the earliest and most widespread tools ever developed by early humans. As a weapon, it may be wielded with either one or two hands. It was used in virtually every conflict up until the modern era, where even to this day, it lives on in the form of a bayonet fixed onto the muzzle of a long gun.^[1]