1925.67.2

Collection type

Object

Description

Spear with giraffe bone spearhead secured in a wooden shaft by a binding covered with a hide sheath [RTS 12/7/2005].

Long description

Spear consisting of a spearhead carved from a light cream coloured giraffe's leg bone (Pantone 7401C) with pointed tip, and a narrow oval sectioned body that tapers out towards its base, where it is probably hafted into the hollowed out top of the shaft. The junction between the two parts is obscured by a cylindrical sheath of yellow hide (Pantone 7508C) that has been cut from a length of seamless animal tail and shrunken in place over the wood. A tear in the side of this exposes a section of plant fibre binding around the top of the shaft that helps secure the base of the spearhead. The shaft has been carved from a narrow branch with the bark removed, and has a slightly knotted body that tapers to its base; the surface has been stained an orangey brown colour (Pantone 730C). The spear is complete, but the bone has a number of cracks visible along the length. It has a weight of 435.3 grams and is 1915 mm long; the spearhead has a length of 385 mm, to the top of the sheath, and a maximum diameter of 19 by 17.8 mm; the sheath is 181 mm long and 26.5 mm in diameter, while the shaft has an upper diameter of 21 by 21.5 mm [RTS 8/8/2005].

Geographical reference

South Sudan

Africa > Eastern Africa > South Sudan

Cultural groups

Dinka

Nuer

Anuak

Person

Field collector Unknown Collector

PRM source Stevens Auction Rooms

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1925

Date collected

By 1925

Acquisition information

Purchased: 1925

Materials and processes

Material Animal Bone, Material Wood Plant, Material Animal Hide Skin, Material Plant Fibre, Process Carved, Process Polished, Process Covered, Process Bound, Process Stained, Process Polished

Dimensions

Length: max 1915 mm, Diameter: max 26.5 mm, Length: max 385 mm spearhead, Weight 435.3 g

Object numbers

Accession number: 1925.67.2

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.

Although the term 'Upper Nile' is now used to refer to a modern administrative district, covering a stretch of the Bahr el Abiad from Geigar to Malakal, and the Sobat River to Nasir, at the time this object was collected the term was used differently. In this instance, it was probably being used either to describe an older administrative district (covering what later became Jonglei and Sobat), or possibly even more generally to describe the Bahr el Abiad and/or Bahr el Jebel rivers or the areas around them.

For other spears in the collection tipped with giraffe bone points, see 1936.10.4-5 (Anuak, collected by Evans-Pritchard) and 1919.13.19-20 (Possibly Dinka, purchased at the Stevens Auction Rooms). Evans-Pritchard also states that the Nuer occasionally made use of giraffe bone for spears: '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). The suggested Dinka attribute is therefore only tentative, as the object could quite easily be either Nuer or Anuak [RTS 8/8/2005].

Search terms: Weapon, Spear, Spear-head