1900.55.400

Collection type

Object

Description

Spatulate club decorated with incised scroll work on both sides at the head and grip. [SM 27/03/2007]

Long description

Spatulate club decorated with incised scroll work on both sides at the head and grip. The head is decorated with a scroll design. Above the grip is decorated with scroll and zigzag designs. Below the grip is decorated with a zigzag design. The incised designs have been filled in with lime. [SM 27/03/2007]

Geographical reference

Papua New Guinea

Oceania > Melanesia > Papua New Guinea

Milne Bay Province Kiriwina Goodenough District Trobriand Islands

Person

Field collector Norman Heywood Hardy

PRM source Robert Francis Wilkins

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1900

Date collected

By 1900

Acquisition information

Donated: 1900

Materials and processes

Material Lime, Material Wood Plant, Process Carved, Process Incised, Process Decorated

Dimensions

Length: max 775 mm

Object numbers

Accession number: 1900.55.400

Research and responses

The following notes are drawn from research compiled by Andy Mills as part of the DCF Cutting Edge project in 2006-2007.

Perhaps the only scholarly work to be specifically directed towards this aspect of the well-documented Trobriands culture, a short 1920 article on weaponry was published by Bronislaw Malinowski (Malinowski, B. (1920) War & Weapons Among the Natives of the Trobriand Islands. Man, 20, pp. 10-12). In this article, Malinowski records that such sword-clubs, although widespread throughout Trobriands society, and carried by men in their everyday business, were never, in fact, used in pitched battles and formally-initiated warfare. Rather, they were weapons of everyday skirmish and brawl – specifically the sort of conflicts which ultimately led to all-out war. Malinowski remarks that the principal motivations of disagreement between Trobriands men of the period in which this sword-club was collected were: arguments over garden boundaries, the ownership and wanderings of pigs, conflicts over the attentions and fidelity of women, breaches of formal etiquette, and the attacker’s suspicion that the defender was a sorceror – a common cause of conflict in many parts of the world (Malinowski, 1920, p. 10). In contrast to this, large-scale battles were fought using spears and shields only, and under a rigid system of military protocols; the number of casualties were generally very small in all-out Trobriands warfare, and flight and homelessness were often the most widely-felt result of such major conflicts. [El.B 27/02/2008]

Search terms: Weapon, Club