Ethnographic Arms & Armour - And now, for something DIFFERENT ….. (from me, anyway) ;)

Great to see some Australian Aboriginal artefacts. I have a small collection which I show here. The painted shield is probably mid 20th century the handle is rather small but not all hands are big? it came with a painted heavy pole club which had clearly been painted a few times. I rather stupidly sold it at auction along with the bulk of my collection some decade ago. The rest of the wooden pieces are most likely turn of the 19th /20th century perhaps one or two might be a little older. Then we come to the hammer stone. This could be as old as pre-contact. It came to me in a swap with a fellow that was a member here. The said fellow had be giving a small collection of Aboriginal stone artefact as a young person from his fathers archaeologist friend who had work in AUS. Could just be a story but I now regret not having tried to get the other pieces. Finally we come to the hafted flint/chert stone pick/club weapon. Some 20 yrs ago when first shown here it caused great controversy. However after a lot of effort, getting the wood microscopically analysed, finding information on Aboriginal flint trade routes and finding photos of items produced in the same form of construction as opposed to the more commonly seen bent and clamped stick haft form the matter was settled. This piece could be quite old. There is a very worn piece of silk/cotton insulated copper early electrical wire {which has been made since 1800} on the haft. This could have been added much later or at the time of collecting to hang it up where ever in the past who knows?

Ps.

The flint stone is more or less a natural found stone. There are some facets but I could not tell if from being knapped or thermal facets or from natures influence by movement. This book is very informative on how stone tools were formed and used. Many are fine but the Aboriginals were happy to use minimally work stones as tools.