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Pitt Rivers Museum

1938.35.1340

Boomerang, plain with tapering ends.


1938.35.1340

Digital asset copyright: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford

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Collection type
Object
Description
Boomerang, plain with tapering ends.
Person
Field collector Norman Heywood Hardy
Field collector Harry Stockdale
PRM source Henry Balfour
Date / Period
Date made: Before 1898
Date collected
By 1898
Acquisition information
Bequeathed: 1939
Materials and processes
Material Wood Plant, Process Carved
Dimensions
Length x Width: max 530 x 49 mm
Object numbers
Accession number: 1938.35.1340 Other numbers: 2010
Research and responses

This boomerang was studied by Harold Hoogenboom during a research visit in June 2025. He was able to offer an earlier date of acquisition for this boomerang, because Norman Hardy left Australia on New Years Day in 1898, departing from Sydney and heading to China. This can be verified by an article in The Sydney Mail, published Saturday 8 Jan 1898 (see: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/163801731). Therefore the boomerang needed to have been in Hardy's possession by 1898 rather than 1900 as previously documented. For a short paper written by Norman Hardy and John Jennings entitled "The Boomerang and its Flights", see https://archive.org/details/wideworldmagazin02lond/page/626.

Search terms: Weapon, Hunting, Boomerang, Hunting accessory