Painted wooden spear with iron spike. Painted with bands of red, yellow and green and with areas of geometric pattern. [DV [OPS move] 13/6/2018]

Collection type: Object
Description: Painted wooden spear with iron spike. Painted with bands of red, yellow and green and with areas of geometric pattern. [DV [OPS move] 13/6/2018]
Geographical reference: Sri Lanka
Asia > Southern Asia > Sri Lanka
Person: Field collector Unknown Collector; PRM source Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Date / Period: Date made: Before 1656
Date collected: By 1656?
Acquisition information: Transferred: 01/12/1886
Materials and processes: Material Pigment, Material Bird Feather, Material Wood Plant, Material Iron Metal, Material Metal, Process Painted, Process Carved, Process Forged (Metal)
Dimensions: Width: max 20 mm, Length: max 1768 mm, Depth: max 20 mm
Object numbers: Accession number: 1886.1.230 Other numbers: 27
Associated publications: Possibly listed on page 45 of Museum Tradescantianum, Or a Collection of Rarities Preserved at South-Lambeth neer London, by John Tradescant (London, 1656), where there is an entry reading: 'Javelin⎯Japan, Turkish, or Indian lance'. [JC 19 9 2013] Listed as entry 384 on page 344 of 'Ethnological Specimens in the Pitt Rivers Museum attributed to the Tradescant Collection', by Lynne Williamson, in Tradescant's Rarities: Essays on the Foundation of the Ashmolean Museum 1683 with a Catalogue of the Surviving Early Collections, ed. Arthur MacGregor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 338−45. The entry takes the form of an edited transcription of the entry in the 'List of Anthropological objects transferred from the Ashmolean to the Pitt Rivers' museum 1886' (for which, see under ‘Primary Documentation’), with metric dimensions: ‘384. SPEAR (1886 no. 230). “East Indian (?Ceylonese) lance with moulded, round and socketed spike on one end 137 mm long and 20 mm diameter. Shaft of wood 0.54 m long, and 20 mm diameter at the spiked end, decreasing in diameter to 13 mm at the other end, which appears to have lost six long feathers, which were bound as in an arrow. The shaft has been painted red, with circles, spirals and other ornaments in black and yellow, in nearly the same style as the shaft of the preceding object [i.e. 1886.1.229]. Whole length 2.80 m.” 1656 p. 45: Javelin⎯Japan, Turkish, or Indian lance.' [JC 17 9 2013]

Search terms: Weapon, Spear