Greenchist fighting adze

[Tim Simmons]

In my continuing persuit of stone weapons I got this from the usual global flea market. A Papuan West Highland adze. It is the most lovely thing. Beautiful in the hand. The blade is greenchist or greenstone in ways very similar to nephrrite and jadeite but not those. It can have a similar hardness on the Mohs scale, around 6. There is a great help if you are interested in Papuan stone tools and weapons

"Culture of Stone, sacred and profane uses of stone among the Dani. O. W. "Bud" Hampton, Texas A&M University Press."

Greenstone is not the hardest of tool stone. The black stones tend to be harder for tree felling and other hard work. I do not want to post pages from the book so I will just give a flavour of what can be gleaned from the work. Mr Hampton does use some fancy words when simple ones would do. This axe is not "ANTIQUE" but would fit with Mr Hampton's field research in the very early 1980s. The people use the spear as a priciple weapon, the adze is used by some groups as a weapon. The halft is not long, a total of 42cm long. The hight of an adult male in the region is around 4' 6" so it need not be huge. This example is well handled and the blade is perfect which makes me believe it was a weapon, made for hitting soft things like people. It is very fine and must have been somebodies pride and joy. Just look at the exquisite multi fibre cordage.