- Collection type
- Object
- Description
- Stone tipped harpoon head. [MJD (Verve) 7/3/2016]
- Long description
- A detachable harpoon head of reddish brown wood [.1], tipped with a well-chipped barbed white stone head [.2], finely serrated along the edges; fixed by a shank into a hole cut into the end of the wood, and bound with red woollen yarn. The bottom of the shaft has a projecting shoulder. It is somewhat roughly rounded having one side rather keeled and the other flat, and appears to have lost a barb from a hole on the flat side, near the top.
- Geographical reference
- Arica y Parinacota Region Arica Province Arica unnamed grave site
- Person
- Field collector Matthew or Mathew James Harrison
- PRM source Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
- Date / Period
- Date made: Before 1868 Archaeological period: Inka Inca
- Date collected
- 1868
- Acquisition information
- Transferred: 05/10/1950
- Materials and processes
- Material Stone, Material Yarn, Material Wood Plant, Process Flaked, Process Bound
- Dimensions
- Length 60 mm stone, Length 327 mm wood
- Object numbers
- Accession number: 1886.1.1006.1 Accession number: 1886.1.1006.2 Other numbers: 10
- Research and responses
According to http://www.usc.edu/dept/tsunamis/peru/ptsu_1868.html 'On August 16, 1868, a magnitude 8.5 earthquake struck the area of the Peru-Chile Trench located just off of Peru's extreme southern coast. The large earthquake that reduced the port of Arica to rubble, also generated a huge trans-pacific tsunami that struck Arica shortly after the earthquake ended. Three navy ships were anchored in the port at the time of the earthquake; two American, the warship US Watree and storeship Fredonia; and one Peruvian, the warship Americana. ... Despite the height and ferocity of the tsunami, the Watree reported only one casualty. The Americana however, was not as lucky, loosing 83 men including the captain. The tsunami was disastrous for the port of Arica as well, where an estimated 25,000 people died as a result of the earthquake and tsunami. The waves literally swept the low-lying parts of the town clean, removing all traces, including the foundations, of the structures that once existed there. [AP 3/4/2003]
Arica is in northern Chile's Arica and Parinacota Region, located only 18 km (11 mi) south of the border with Peru. It was originally a part of Peru but it was lost after a plebiscite arranged in the Treaty of Ancon in 1883 as part of the results of the war of the Pacific. It is therefore to be considered part of Chile not Peru. [AS 14/12/2010]
Search terms: Weapon, Death, Religion, Hunting, Fishing, Harpoon-head, Grave Good, Fishing Accessory, Hunting accessory