- Collection type
- Object
- Description
- Spear with long wooden shaft, a blackened carved wooden shank bound with plant fibre, string and red textile, with a stingray barb for a point inserted into the tip. [RH [OPS move] 16/7/2018]
- Geographical reference
- New Georgia Ramada Island Nggerasi District
- 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 Wood Plant, Material Stingray Spine Fish, Material Plant Fibre, Material Pigment, Material Textile, Material String, Process Carved, Process Painted, Process Incised, Process Bound, Process Woven, Process Knotted, Process Strung
- Dimensions
- Length: max 2694 mm, Diameter: max 20 mm
- Object numbers
- Accession number: 1895.22.223
- 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]
Further items to explore
1933.38.22Miniature long-handled glaive club with incised decoration featuring curved bands of chevrons along the blade with stylised birds and fish near the handle. The reverse side of the blade has less decoration, limited to incised lines and triangles. The base of the handle finishes in a carved conical shape and rounded, spherical mid section. [BS [OPS Move] 26/07/2016]1933.38.22
1911.54.71Pearl shell fish hook with two dots, a cross on the end and a piece of string tied around the shank. [MJD 21/04/2009]1911.54.71
1933.40.28Ornament of clustered flying-fox teeth and trade beads on string-work with turtleshell spacers. [El.B 'DCF 2004-2006 What's Upstairs?' 9/6/2005]1933.40.28
1884.71.32Comb, triangular, with 13 converging cane teeth and two tufts of reddish plant fibre. [E.S-R 'DCF 2004-2006 What's Upstairs?' 17/12/2004]1884.71.32