African Point

Not one opinion! No one is surprised at the shape of this object in Africa. No one has an opinion if it is too heavy for an arrow point.

It is quite unlike some arrowheads from congo that I have seen. But some of the tribes there had rather big bows, it I remember correctly, so even if the socket is big it might still be an arrowhead. 9,5mm for a spear seems a little too weak.

Also, I've never seen a spear with a flat transverse edge. Seems to me like this one is best directed in one direction only, making it better as an arrow and not a spear.

But I would not be surpriced if I'm wrong. There are a lot of different sizes and shapes coming out of that region :)

First: I am far away from being an expert in these things - I just combine things I know, and give you the sources - to make it easier for you to rule out the nonsense. I hope it helps like the truth from childs mouth sometimes does :).

I think its an arrowhead for really big game like elephant, rhino or hippo - or a woodcrafting tool like a hatchet or adze.

The 9,5mm socket would lead to a 9,5-11mm piece of wood, to fit in there. It must be really hard wood to be stiff enough for a long spear or some atlatl like dart to carry such a heavy head - but the shorter the stick or arrowshaft gets - the better this piece could fly, because the shortness increases the dynamic stiffness like shortening arrows. The shorter the weapon will be, the more realistic ist seems to me - a 2m spear with 10mm diameter does not seem likely in my imagination.

I have seen such a shaped form in the korean movie "war of the arrows" as a chinese/manchu arrowhead - which was described as very heavy with a lot of penetration. From reading Atarn and one edition of the German magazine "Traditionell Bogenschie?en" (the name means traditional archery in German) I know that Manchu were big game hunters. That was my initial chain of thoughts for the arrowhead conclusion - although I still question the movie-part because I don't find any source for a comparable arrowhead with a connection to Manchu or other biggame hunters.
In a German doctoral thesis in medicine a German physician compared several arrowheads - including a half-moon shaped one, which did suprisingly serious injuries. It twists while cutting into pork and ballistic gelatine - and probably would cause a lot of bloodloss. The slightly C-shaped blade of the Congolese metalpiece could do so too - beeing useful to game with thick skin. The imense weight would do the rest with deep penetration. Maybe this one is useful for a short-range big game arrowhead.

My other thought about a hatchet part came from the shape of the blade. With this thing glued to a branch fork - it could be a great tool to chop and shape small pieces of wood. The marks from using it seem to be very symmetrical, questioning the use of a arrowhead to me. If such an arrow hits a rib oder similar bone it gets marks - but it must be used plenty of times to get symmetric marks from usage if it wouldnt be shaped that way on purpose.

Feel free to question my thougths a lot!

I would have been very happy to accept this as a miniature adz except, 1. The socket is so small that a decent size handle could hardly be attached. 2. Besides the small diameter off the socket it is also of light construction (thin).
3. an adz would usually be chisel ground and this is ground on both sides.

i just found something in the database of the university of missouri - same site as the grayson collection:

a knive to parry - with some similaritys.

http://anthromuseum.missouri.edu/online ... knife.shtm

could be used for the same - with different design.

what do you think, jack?

The knife is a giant thing. The point is 12 cm.

It looking an arrow point to me.

Here in Hungary, found up to 40g arrow points with simillar size (another shape) so it not too big for an arrow.

What part of africa it came from?

Or it schould be a spear head too.

Zoltan; See first post.

According to the book Ata ?pe, African bows and arrows, it is a chokwe arrowhead, North Angola, South Kongo.

TZH

Very interesting. Does it say what it was used for? Or the meaning of chokwe?

I used to do ethnographic research among traditional iron forgers in Northern Cameroon (who, among other things made arrow points) and I have seen lots of arrow and spear points from that and adjacent regions. The only thing I want to add here is that spear points with transverse, chisel-shaped edges are fairly common in the Sahel region of West Africa. Smaller forms of this kind of point (and this may well be what is illustrated above) are sometimes fixed on the butt end of lances having a larger, pointed spear point on the other end. I have seen these kinds of weapons in old photos and drawings of Bornuan horseman, for example. I was told that the chisel end can be used for stopping fleeing cattle, fleeing people, etc, from horseback--by cutting tendons in the backs of their legs as they run. I have no idea if this is true, but the same weapon was used by vaqueros in New Spain to stop running cattle that they intended to butcher.

Ian

It was used for hunting birds.

The author ((Hendrik Wiethase) mentions on pp. 141. the arrows with that kind of arrowhead as belonging/used by the tribe chokwe, but on pp. 172. the same ones are "Kuango Djuma" arrows.

Big birds, hehe!

a bird point? that doesn' t make sense to me or did they shoot the whole bird in half with that blade?