Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post - Ceremonial Spear? Dayak? Batak? or ?____?

milandro · 22nd September 2024, 08:43 AM

Welcome to the forum.

I am afraid that this is one of those pieces " for those who travel...", at least, in my humble opinion. I wouldn't attribute any special significance to any element that you are mentioning.

This is a piece made to impress the foreign traveller and be sold at one of the countless markets in Indonesia (they may even come from very common tourist spots).

We see a fair amount of krises , tombaks, mandau, decorated with fairly new " tribal" paint signs and teeth in The Netherlands. Some were brought back very recently.

This seems to be a tourist piece as many others

At best they feature repurposed blades integrated in sheaths which are covered in decorations made to impress , sometimes (and I think this is now the case) the blades are not old repurposed ones but especially made for the production of these flashy items. In my opinion, sorry, this is what you have.

There are references in the archive and a discussion on the fact that in Indonesia at some point these became very " popular" among travellers

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...ht=teeth+dayak

22nd September 2024, 08:43 AM	#3
milandro Member Join Date: Jan 2022 Location: Netherlands Posts: 484	Welcome to the forum. I am afraid that this is one of those pieces " for those who travel...", at least, in my humble opinion. I wouldn't attribute any special significance to any element that you are mentioning. This is a piece made to impress the foreign traveller and be sold at one of the countless markets in Indonesia (they may even come from very common tourist spots). We see a fair amount of krises , tombaks, mandau, decorated with fairly new " tribal" paint signs and teeth in The Netherlands. Some were brought back very recently. This seems to be a tourist piece as many others At best they feature repurposed blades integrated in sheaths which are covered in decorations made to impress , sometimes (and I think this is now the case) the blades are not old repurposed ones but especially made for the production of these flashy items. In my opinion, sorry, this is what you have. There are references in the archive and a discussion on the fact that in Indonesia at some point these became very " popular" among travellers http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...ht=teeth+dayak Last edited by milandro; 22nd September 2024 at 09:17 AM.