Stone club.

[fearn]

Hi Tim,

Sorry I'm not responding faster, but work takes precedence and I don't currently have a good library nearby to get the images from.

Basically, I know a few things about Oceanic weapons. I also know that it's fairly difficult to get good pictures of those weapons on line, and now that I'm not near a world-class university library, I don't have the access to the old ethnographic reports that I used to have.

That said...

Basically, the club's fairly primitively made, in the sense that it's asymmetric (lumpy). If it is an old Oceanic piece, especially one made for war, I would expect a much higher standard of worksmanship. As you undoubtedly know, artistry was an important an integral part of making a good weapon. That's my main problem with the idea that this is an old ethnographic club. It's not artistic, and in fact, a teenager could have easily made it.

Personally, I'm perfectly willing to believe that the wrapping is bark. It could easily be fig bark (from Australia), or linden bark (from Europe), or hickory bark (from the US), or any of a number of other possibilities. There are a number of trees that produce bark tough enough to make cordage from, and unfortunately, they are not confined to one climatic zone or one continent.

There's a lab in Madison, Wisconsin that could easily identify the wood and perhaps the bark, and there are geology labs in many universities that could probably ID the rock to location. However, each of these tests is somewhat destructive and probably costly. Whether it is worth it in this case I can't tell, but it is technically possible to determine where the materials came from.

Hope this helps,

F