Curious spear-head

[Jake]

The unacceptabilty of iron as the material for the harvesting of game,mentioned in Mr.McDougall's post above,strikes me as germaine to the entire question of the scarcity of iron in the circumpolar North.
There's a very significant spiritual element that was attached to iron and it's uses,well,just about everywhere.Most Siberian artifacts that i have seen(the photos of) were articles belonging to the shaman,who also invariably doubled as a blacksmith.

In Russian,there's a curious etymology of the word for the bear spear specifically:"rogatina",meaning a forked part of a tree-trunk.Even though for centuries the bear spears were forged iron(and not forked),typical is the one below(the photo seems to have lost it's rightful owner in it's kicking about the internet,and often is used as a generic type of a Russian bear-spear).

Also,the Russian Far East is an unexplored trove of various metallic artifacts.The other photo was posted by a friend on one of the forums,it is a table of a junk vendor in the Habarovsk region.The objects are pilfered from the burial mounds in the area by the economically strapped(to put it mildly)population.In the forground is a small meteorite,also unlawful to posess under the RF laws.