According to a report in Live Science , this ancient murder case is being studied by Professor Anagnostis Agelarakis, who is an anthropologist at Adelphi University in Garden City, New York who told reporters “The way that the [ spear's] penetration took place in [reference] to the bone, it is an exact 90-degree angle against the sternum.”
It was suspected that the approximately 0.6 by 0.4-inch hole (1.5 by 1.1 centimeter) was caused by a seven-sided styrax , but how exactly did they prove it? Fortunately for Agelarakis, his wife, Argiro Agelarakis, is a scientific illustrator and anthropologist, also from Adelphi. Thus, Agelarakis had a set of replica weapons cast from a bronze alloy and through experimental archaeology he discovered they didn't form the same circle when they hit the test targets. So, the styrax likely wasn't thrown at the man, Agelarakis concluded.