1930.82.66

Collection type

Object

Description

Bone lance-head with multiple carved barbs and a tang. A forgery. [SM 12/02/2008]

Geographical reference

New Zealand

Oceania > Australia and New Zealand > New Zealand

South Island

Cultural groups

Māori

Person

Maker James Frank Robieson

Field collector Unknown Collector

PRM source Stevens Auction Rooms

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1930

Date collected

By 1930

Acquisition information

Purchased: 1930

Materials and processes

Material Bone, Process Carved

Dimensions

Width: max 6 mm, Length: max 93 mm

Object numbers

Accession number: 1930.82.66

Research and responses

For a general account of this collection, see page 185 of ‘The Faking of Maori Art’, by Henry Devenish Skinner and T. Barrow in Henry Devenish Skinner, Comparatively Speaking: Studies in Pacific Material Culture 1921– 1972 (eds. Peter Gathercole, Foss Leach, and Helen Leach), (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1974), pp. 181–92: 'The sale of "Maori artefacts" by Robieson through Stevens's auction rooms in London to a Pitt Rivers Museum buyer, accounted for in the 8 October 1930 catalogue entry, involved some seventy-six items, most of which are genuine. Adzes, flakes, chisels, obsidian scrapers, and broken pieces of nephrite ornaments make up the bulk of this material. The entire lot was sold for one English pound - Robieson must have indeed been in hard straits in the dismal depression conditions of the period to have sold so much for so little.' This is one of the items identified by Skinner and Barrow as a fake. Illustrated as figure 12.6 on page 184 and described as: 'Bone point resembling a birdspear harpoon (9.3 cm).' [JC 13 5 2003]

Search terms: Weapon, Reproduction, Spear-head