1936.10.2

Collection type

Object

Description

Spear with hard wooden point set into a long wooden shaft, with the junction covered by a hide sheath [RTS 3/1/2005].

Long description

Spear consisting of a point made from a hard, dark reddish brown coloured wood (Pantone 476C), tapering out to a narrow body with round section. The base of this rests against a long narrow shaft, made from yellowish wood (Pantone 464C), also round in section and with a rounded butt. The surfaces of both have been polished. The junction between the two elements has been covered with a sheath made from a section of animal's tail, shrunken in place over the top of the shaft and the base of the point, with the surface lightly impressed using a tool with lentoid shaped leading edge. This is a dark brown colour (Pantone black 4C). The spear is complete and intact, with minor surface damage along the shaft, and a weight of 560.5 grams. It has a total length of 2065 mm, of which the point measures 388 mm to the top of the sheath and the sheath itself is 165 mm long. The point has a maximum diameter of 29.5 mm; the sheath has a maximum diameter of 31 mm, and the shaft has a diameter of 18 mm [RTS 3/1/2005].

Geographical reference

South Sudan

Africa > Eastern Africa > South Sudan

Cultural groups

Nuer

Person

Field collector Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard

PRM source Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1936

Date collected

1935 - 1936

Acquisition information

Donated: 1936

Materials and processes

Material Wood Plant, Material Animal Hide Skin, Material Animal Tail, Process Carved, Process Polished, Process Covered, Process Tooled, Process Socketed

Dimensions

Length: max 2065 mm, Diameter 29.5 mm point, Diameter 18 mm shaft, Length 165 mm sheath, Length 388 mm point, Weight 560.5 g

Object numbers

Accession number: 1936.10.2

Research and responses

For an essay on the variety and cultural significance of spears in South Sudan, particularly among the Dinka and Nuer, see ‘“Spears” that are not Spears’, by Jok Madut Jok, in Pieces of a Nation: South Sudanese Heritage and Museum Collections, edited by Zoe Cormack and Cherry Leonardi (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2021), pp. 110–114.

Evans-Pritchard did his fieldwork amongst the Nuer in four expeditions, which took place in 1930, 1931, 1935 and 1936. This object was probably collected in 1935 or 1936, when he held a research fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust (see E.E. Evans-Pritchard, 1940, The Nuer).

Evans-Pritchard, writing in 1940, said of the Nuer: 'Till recently they possessed very few iron spears, cherished as heirlooms, but used instead the straightened horns of antelope and buck, ebony wood, and the rib-bones of giraffe, all of which are still used to-day, though almost entirely in dances ...’ (E.E. Evans-Pritchard, 1940, The Nuer, p. 86). Howell gives the Nuer term for these spears as giit, while the iron headed spears were known as mur. He states that the giit were regarded 'with considerable amusement' by younger Nuer, but that a few were retained as they were 'considered particularly effective in war, and the Nuer hope they may one day be able to use them ... although it required greater skill and strength to inflict a wound with a giit, the wounds once inflicted are more severe'. He goes on to describe the method of hafting them: 'The giit ... is fixed at the joint with an unsewn leather collar made from the tail skin of an ox. This is soaked and stretched round the haft, where it shrinks as it dries'. (P.P. Howell, 1947, "On the Value of Iron Among the Nuer", Man 47, p. 132-3).

Note that 1931.66.6-9 and 1936.10.1 are all made in a very similar fashion, with shafts carved from the same type of wood, which has a very distinctive grain to it. Four of these spears have hard wood heads, probably ebony, while 1936.10.1 has a head of straightened antelope horn [RTS 3/1/2005].

Search terms: Weapon, Spear, Spear-head