1931.66.8

Collection type

Object

Description

Spear with ebony point set into a long wooden shaft with the junction covered by a hide sheath, decorated with brass and iron binding [RTS 11/1/2005].

Long description

Spear consisting of a narrow, elongated ebony point, with varicoloured dark brown (Pantone 476C) and reddish brown surface (Pantone 478C), circular in section. The base of this rests against the top of a long narrow shaft with circular section made from light reddish brown wood (Pantone 724C), with the end shaved to a point. Both shaft and point have been polished. The junction between the two has been covered with a cylindrical sheath, cut from a section of animal's tail with the hair removed; this was stretched over the join whilst wet and then shrunken in place, with the surface lightly tooled using an implement with lentoid-shaped edge. The sheath is a dark brown colour (Pantone black 4C). The shaft has been decorated with a series of metal rods, bent around the body to form decorative bands. These include a brass rod just above the top of the sheath, wound twice around the shaft, then further below the sheath, a similar brass rod into a spiral with 5 coils, just above a shorter iron bar with square section that is wrapped once around the body, with its ends overlapping. The iron is a metallic grey (Pantone 423C), the brass a metallic yellow (Pantone 871C). All sit tightly in place and cannot be easily moved. The spear is complete and intact, but has a few paint flecks on the point, probably modern. It has a weight of 686.7 grams, is 2300 mm long, with a shaft diameter of 22.3; the point measures 478 mm from its tip to the top of the sheath, with a maximum diameter of 28.3, while the sheath is 198 mm long and has a diameter of 30 mm; the metal rings are each approximately 2.5 mm wide [RTS 12/1/2005].

Geographical reference

South Sudan

Africa > Eastern Africa > South Sudan

Cultural groups

Nuer

Person

Field collector Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard

PRM source Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1931

Date collected

1930 - 1931

Acquisition information

Donated: 1931

Materials and processes

Material Ebony Wood Plant, Material Cattle Skin Animal, Material Animal Hide Skin, Material Animal Tail, Material Iron Metal, Material Brass Metal, Process Carved, Process Polished, Process Covered, Process Tooled, Process Socketed, Process Forged (Metal), Process Wound

Dimensions

Length 478 mm point, Diameter 22.3 mm shaft, Diameter: max 28.3 mm point, Length 198 mm sheath, Length 2300 mm, Weight 686.7 g

Object numbers

Accession number: 1931.66.8

Research and responses

For an essay on the variety and cultural significance of spears in South Sudan, particularly among the Dinka and Nuer, see ‘“Spears” that are not Spears’, by Jok Madut Jok, in Pieces of a Nation: South Sudanese Heritage and Museum Collections, edited by Zoe Cormack and Cherry Leonardi (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2021), pp. 110–114.

This object was probably collected during his first or second season of fieldwork amongst the Nuer, e.g.: in 1930 or 'the dry season' of 1931. In the former, he spent around three and a half months in Leek territory at Yahnyang and Pakur on the Bahr el Ghazal, in Lou territory at Muot Dit, and at Adok, amongst the Dok Nuer. In the latter, he spent five and a half months at Nasir, on the Nyanding River, and at Yakwat on the Sobat River (see E.E. Evans-Pritchard, 1940, The Nuer, and the map of Evans-Pritchard's fieldwork in D.H. Johnson, "Evans-Pritchard, the Nuer, and the Sudan Political Service", African Affairs 81 no. 323, p. 233).

Evans-Pritchard, writing in 1940, said of the Nuer: 'Till recently they possessed very few iron spears, cherished as heirlooms, but used instead the straightened horns of antelope and buck, ebony wood, and the rib-bones of giraffe, all of which are still used to-day, though almost entirely in dances ...’ (E.E. Evans-Pritchard, 1940, The Nuer, p. 86). Howell gives the Nuer term for these spears as giit, while the iron headed spears were known as mur. He states that the giit were regarded 'with considerable amusement' by younger Nuer, but that a few were retained as they were 'considered particularly effective in war, and the Nuer hope they may one day be able to use them ... although it required greater skill and strength to inflict a wound with a giit, the wounds once inflicted are more severe'. He goes on to describe the method of hafting them: 'The giit ... is fixed at the joint with an unsewn leather collar made from the tail skin of an ox. This is soaked and stretched round the haft, where it shrinks as it dries'. (P.P. Howell, 1947, "On the Value of Iron Among the Nuer", Man 47, p. 132-3).

The term 'White Nile' is now used to denote an administrative district immediately south of Khartoum, bordered by the districts of Northern and Southern Kordofan to the west, El Gezira and Sennar to the East, and Upper Nile to the south. However this term has been used more loosely in the past to refer to the Bahr el Abiad and Bahr el Jebel rivers or the areas around them.

Note that 1931.66.6-9 and 1936.10.2 are all made in a very similar fashion, with shafts carved from the same type of wood, which has a very distinctive grain to it. 4 of these spears have hard wood heads, probably ebony, and 1 has a head of straightened antelope horn [RTS 3/1/2005].

Search terms: Weapon, Spear, Spear-head