Composite spear, with wooden shaft, butt socketed for insertion of spear thrower. Blade of slate set in Spinifex gum and heavily bound with cordage. Shaft painted with red ochre.
Stone-Bladed Spear, Northern Territory, Australia. This projectile weapon from the Northern Territory is of a type that humans have been making continuously in different parts of the world for tens of thousands of years. Mounted on a long and slender shaft three metres long, the blade has been flaked from a slab of slate, set into a blob of Spinifex gum (Triodia spp.) and tightly bound with yarn Although it could be used quite effectively in the hand, in truth the shaft is too thin and flexible to permit effective thrusting. Instead, the butt of the shaft has a small circular hollow carved in it, showing that this weapon was launched with a spearthrower. Slate, wood, resin, human hair, vegetable fibre. Late 19th Century. Purchased in 1906 from the art dealer Mr. S. G. Fenton.
fighting
