- Collection type
- Object
- Description
- Carved wooden spear with elongated leaf blade, with a twisted metal butt. [VS [OPS move] 3/7/2018]
- Geographical reference
- Date / Period
- Date made: Before 1656
- Date collected
- By 1656?
- Acquisition information
- Transferred: 01/12/1886
- Materials and processes
- Material Iron Metal, Material Wood Plant, Process Carved, Process Forged (Metal), Process Twisted
- Dimensions
- Depth: max 26 mm, Length: max 1664 mm, Width: max 42 mm
- Object numbers
- Accession number: 1886.1.530
- 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 362 on pages 340−341 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: ‘362. SPEAR (1886 no. 530). “An Eastern African ? spear or lance with a rather well-wrought pointed leaf-shaped iron head having a small rim or shoulder round the lower edge of the socket and a slit up the side. Whole length 293 mm. Greatest diameter 33 mm. Shaft of dark brown wood rather roughly rounded, 23 mm greatest diameter, and ornamented just below the socket of the head, and at about 0.5 m from the other end with a little carved work, which looks almost as if it had been turned on a lathe. On the bottom a socketed spike 315 mm long, the portion below the socket being quadrangular, then twisted, below which it is round and diminishing to a point. Whole length of spear 1.68 m.” 1656. p. 45: Javelin⎯Japan, Turkish, or Indian Lance.' Also discussed (with 1886.1.529 and 1886.1.531) on page 339: ‘Nos. 361−3, possibly East African spears, lances, javelins: these have in fact been identified as West African, from Gabon.' [JC 17 9 2013]
1886.1.530
Carved wooden spear with elongated leaf blade, with a twisted metal butt. [VS [OPS move] 3/7/2018]
1886.1.530
Digital asset copyright: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford
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