Is an 'unzipped arrow" simply one that hasn’t been shot? I came across the term while watching a program on Ötzi the glacier mummy I suppose Copper Age hunters would have reused their shot arrows. I had hear of an arrow ‘zipping’ or letting an arrow ‘zip’, but never ‘unzipped arrows’. I hope someone can answer the question for me.
Maybe referring to the feathers?
At a risk of stating the obvious, every arrow is at one point unused, ie. unshot. It has no bearing on whether or not that arrow will be shot countless times in the future.
Chalcolithic Alpine hunters reused their arrows just like everybody else. Ötzi had mostly unfinished arrows in his quiver. So, I guess they were ‘unzipped’, a term I have never heard after 35 years of practicing (pre-)historic archery and bowyery. It would not be the first, or tenth time, that documentary makers have pretty much invented words for esoteric subject matters.
Thanks Toxylon.
Probably a free translation from the Italian.
Are you sure they didn’t say ‘untipped’? (i.e. not finished with a point or arrowhead)
From the Wikipedia article
Other items found with the Iceman were a copper axe with a yew handle, a chert-bladed knife with an ash handle and a quiver of 14 arrows with viburnum and dogwood shafts.[45][46] Two of the arrows, which were broken, were tipped with flint and had fletching (stabilizing fins), while the other 12 were unfinished and untipped
Thank you Mangetout. It’s likely I misheard the word ‘untipped’. Issue solved.
Also, he was found on a melting glazier, but how to you melt a window installer?
Bucket of soapy water?
Show them unlimited videos of kittens romping?
We should alert the glassworkers’ union.