A morning star is any of several medieval club-like weapons consisting of a shaft with an attached ball adorned with one or more spikes, each used, to varying degrees, a combination of blunt-force and puncture attack to kill or wound the enemy.

A club is a short staff or stick, usually made of wood, wielded as a weapon since prehistory. There are several examples of blunt-force trauma caused by clubs in the past, including at the site of Nataruk in Turkana, Kenya, described as the scene of a prehistoric conflict between bands of hunter-gatherers 10,000 years ago.