1895.22.199

Collection type

Object

Description

Bamboo bow with animal sinew string. [ASh [OPS move] 22/9/2017]

Long description

Bow made from a long length of bamboo, which has been stained around the edges and along the nodules. Around the nodules on the exterior is a zigzag pattern and decorating the bow are birds and trees, with geometric patterns painted onto the surface. Attached is an animal sinew string, which has been looped over the ends of the bow and knotted into place. [ASh [OPS move] 22/9/2017]

Geographical reference

Solomon Islands

Oceania > Melanesia > Solomon Islands

New Georgia

Person

Field collector Henry Boyle Townshend Somerville

Field collector HMS Penguin

PRM source Henry Boyle Townshend Somerville

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1894

Date collected

1893 - 1894

Acquisition information

Donated: 1895

Materials and processes

Material Bamboo Plant, Material Pigment, Material Animal Sinew, Process Carved, Process Strung, Process Drawn, Process Knotted

Dimensions

Width: max 44 mm, Length: max 1392 mm, Depth: max 68 mm

Object numbers

Accession number: 1895.22.199

Research and responses

For an account of Somerville's collection from the Solomon Islands, see 'The H. B. T. Somerville Collection of Artefacts from the Solomon Islands in the Pitt Rivers Museum’, by Deborah Waite, in The General’s Gift: A Celebration of the Pitt Rivers Museum Centenary, 1884–1984 (JASO Occasional Papers, no. 3), edited by B. A. L. Cranstone and Steven Seidenberg (Oxford: JASO, 1884), pp. 41–52. (Copy in RDF: Collectors: Somerville.) [JC 24 2 2007]

For an account of Somerville's collecting in the Solomon Islands, see 'Notes and Queries, Science, and “Curios”: Lieutenant Boyle Somerville’s Ethnographic Collecting in the Solomon Islands, 1893–1895’, by Deborah Waite, in JASO: Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, Vol. XXXI, no. 3 (Michaelmas 2000), pp. 277-308. (Copy in RDF: Collectors: Somerville.) [JC 24 2 2007]

Search terms: Archery Weapon, Toy and Game, Sport, Bow