1934.8.111

Collection type

Object

Description

Poisoned arrow with triangular iron head, long circular sectioned tang and cane shaft with bound and nocked end [RTS 6/6/2005].

Long description

Arrow consisting of an iron arrowhead with blunted tip and triangular blade ending in 2 sharp barbs at its base, one longer than the other. This is set on a long roughly round sectioned tang. The lower part of this has been bound in a fibre strip and coated with a dark resinous material, creating a raised knob at its base that would prevent the tang being forced further into the shaft on impact. The surface of both blade and tang have been coated with a dark material that is said to be poisonous. The tang fits into the top of a hollow, yellow cane shaft (Pantone 7509C). The upper part of this has also been bound in plant fibre, which appears to be coated with a reddish brown fixative (Pantone 4625C). Similar binding occurs at the end of the shaft, immediately above a shallow, concave nock. The nock itself is heavily coated in resin. The object is complete and intact, but the tang is loose in its socket. It has a weight of 9.5 grams and a total length of 466 mm. The visible part of the arrowhead is 92 mm long, with the blade portion being 22 mm long, 13.7 mm wide and 1 mm thick at the centre, while the tang has a diameter of 3.2 mm. The shaft is 374 mm long, with a diameter of 8 mm and a nock length of 1.5 mm; the fibre binding at the base of the tang is 23 mm long and has a diameter of 5.2 mm, while that around the upper shaft is 54 mm long, and the butt binding has a length of 17 mm [RTS 7/6/2005].

Geographical reference

South Sudan

Africa > Eastern Africa > South Sudan

Western Equatoria near Tambura

Cultural groups

Zande

Person

Field collector Percy Horace Gordon Powell-Cotton

Field collector Hannah Powell-Cotton

PRM source Percy Horace Gordon Powell-Cotton

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1933

Date collected

29th April 1933

Acquisition information

Donated: 1934

Materials and processes

Material Poison, Material Iron Metal, Material Cane Plant, Material Plant Fibre, Material Resin Plant, Process Forged (Metal), Process Hammered, Process Carved, Process Notched, Process Bound

Dimensions

Length 374 mm shaft, Width: max 13.7 mm arrowhead, Diameter 8 mm shaft, Length: max 466 mm, Length 97 mm arrowhead, Length 22 mm blade, Weight 9.5 g

Object numbers

Accession number: 1934.8.111 Other numbers: 1012

Research and responses

Note that on the original list recording these objects, the provenance is given as the 'road to Tambura', not Tambura itself; however the coordinates given may well be those of Tambura. Powell-Cotton made ethnographic films during his 1932-3 shooting expedition to southern Sudan; footage included a male Zande potter at work (see the description in Mrs Powell Cotton, "Village Handicrafts in the Sudan", Man 34 (112), pp 90-91).

According to Larken, bows and arrows were not in general use by the 1920's, and those he did see were all "short and not very stiff, none exceeding three feet in length". He gives the local term for bow as mboto, and for arrow as guanza, describing the latter as follows: "The arrowheads were serrated and barbed, about two or three inches long, the shafts of gbagi grass or perhaps of millet stalk, about two feet in length. The heads were inserted and the ends of the shafts bound with fibre, the binding being painted with an exudation from the root of the kao tree as a protection. Poison was used on them, and they were carried in small quivers of skin (P.M. Larken, 1926, "An Account of the Zande", Sudan Notes and Records IX no. 1, p 41).

For related bow, see 1934.8.107; for associated arrows, see 1934.8.108-110, 1934.8.112-117. For another type of Zande arrow, called mamara, see 1934.8.119 [RTS 17/11/2003].

Search terms: Archery Weapon, Arrow, Arrow-head, Arrow Shaft, Weapon, Poison