Too bad that my experiment with enclosing pdf files didn't work out as planned. But if you click on them you can read the copied texts.

Arjan, of course you are welcome to see any of my Langgai Tinggai whenever you feel like it but let's do it in private to focus on the thread theme.
I agree on the sea-river part and that's what I try to sort out above. Most expeditions were on the rivers but some were also on the open sea to more distant places. Those expeditions were usually performed together with Malays and other more experienced seafarers.

Michael

Michael, i am not suggesting to strap the sword on and walk around with it. The mandau can be easily packaged to conceal what it is. In the proper box no one is going to know what's inside.
When i was new to collecting i once brought a Moro kris to the curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's armory division. This, of course, required travelling with the well wrapped kris on the very crowded NYC subway system as well as through the streets and into the museum. No one was the wiser. I called the museu first and made an appointment. The curator was very happy to meet with me and explain what i had.

David, of course I know by now how to transport swords in public areas. Actually I have two sword bags especially made for this. And when I carry more than 5 swords I use my scuba diving bag. I just don't feel like doing it because I don't doubt myself that the hilt material is different than on all my other Dayak parang.

Michael

Well Michael, if that's your reasoning why didn't you say so to begin with? I'm glad you are so sure on this one and do not feel the need for the opinion of anyone with actual academic knowledge of such things. I admire your faith. :)

Thanks for your understanding David,

I just tried to be a bit more "diplomatic" about it earlier.

Michael

I see Tim's remark has been deleted completely.
Maybe this post can be censorred too :confused: :rolleyes: :shrug:

Michael,

I am pretty impressed by all the theories and citations from old books and publications that you can produce on this item.

Hopefully we can see the pictures of the steller seacow bone hilts in this thread. As seeing and recognizing that material will be quite interesting.

I have one hilt in my collection that has a distinctively different colour.
Maybe your relation can take a look at the pictures of that hilt ?

Best regards,
Willem

Willem, you live almost next to the Seacowbone-indificationcenter( beside de Kunsthal) ......why not ask them ?

Arjan

Isn't the Dugong ID center in Rotterdam known to be one of the best in Europe? ;)

Michael

PS Btw, yours doesn't look like dugong (based on your pictures anyway). But it is a very nice example of one of the rare dragon hilts!

The porous part seems to be narrow, rather than round/wide,as at the ball of a femur. I suspect it might be a piece from the curve of a jawbone, if indeed it is not an antler. On whales the jawbone ("pan bone") is said to be the only bone suitable to carving and making of useful objects.

The second hilt shown seems to show some irregularities of the original substance surface, between pommel and grip, that look like those of an antler. The denseness of the porous core is more suggestive of antler than of bone to me. It looks like antler.
BTW, elk is only solid at the tips. All antlers and horns are solid at the tips, though for varying lengths.
Different types of bone can be better or worse for these uses. Sheep bone is, for instance, flaky and peely.
Cattle, camel, and jiraffe are especially favoured for traditional bone goods. No camels or giraffes on Borneo, of course.
Given the fairly immediate obviousness of digesting beef, I often speculate that the popularity of humans associating with cattle has more to do with their particularly useful hides, bones, and horns than their meat.
Point is that there's a lot more to which bone to use than availability. Bones of animals can vary similarly to bones of trees, from specie to specie.

I visited the NMR (Natuurkundig Museum Rotterdam) yesterday and only found dolfins and other small whales on display.
They probably have a dugong skeleton in their collection, but the conservator Mr Moeliker is on holidays.

Anyway, these skeletons can be found on the WWWeb, and personally if I check the bones, I can not find any bone (yet) that would be suitable to carve a hilt in te shape of mandau hilts.
So if anyone has a serious suggestion which bone is suitable to carve a mandauhilt, I would be much obliged.

Best regards,
Willem

BTW, there has been quite a trade in arctic ivory (etc.) since at least the 18th and aparently somewhat world wide. I have an Indonesian statue of a rhinoceros made from what is clearly walrus tooth, for instance. So geography is no barrier to a material being used, or even popular, especially in seagoing cultures.
I find the sea/land division idea fascinating. Somehow seems to link to the tradition of not carrying kris across water?

Note that the porous core is not exposed at the top (ie. butt) side of the pommel hook, but only where it is carved down into its center. If this were a piece sawn from a longer bone, would this be the case? Seems like antler. Whatever it is, it seems it is pretty close to its original surface shape, and should be able to be matched up with an example. It fits up to an antler pretty well. Can we get (individual) pics of the candidate sea cow bones, with scale? Can we get a pic of a rib end? Does it have a forked or L-curved end?

BTW, I would be very careful taking any antique to any official person of any kind for identification or any other reason, especially curators or academics you don't personally know. To some of them we private collectors are all dirty looters, and there is a host of reasons they could decide to take your antique, or even charge you with criminal charges; not just CITEs but national treasure type laws, weapon laws, who knows....but then I'm autistic, so moving thru human culture is quite a dark and risky journey for me, and being turned down is clearly not the worst that can happen when asking for help.

THE UPPER END OF RIB BONES WHERE IT CONNECTS TO THE SPINE IS A LIKELY SHAPE FOR MANDAU HANDLES. THE RIB IS MORE ROUND THERE NOT FLAT AND THE END IS LARGER AND HAS A LARGE KNOB TO CONNECT TO THE SPINE. AS THERE ARE QUITE A LOT OF RIBS IN EACH SKELETON YOU WOULD HAVE SEVERAL SIZES AND SHAPES TO WORK WITH AS WELL AS A GOOD SUPPLY OF MATERIAL IN A SHAPE READY TO BE WORKED MORE EASILY. SORT OF LIKE THE FORK IN AN ANTLER.

Did you ever have handled the bones or ribs from a sea cow or seen from very close ?

The bones are looking to me as very spongeous ( more than the ribs) , so don't know if that material should be usefull. In Japan they seem only to make carvings from the ribs. There are enough ribs for sale online but I never see the bones......

see also that the structure ( rib bone)has some enclosements what you can see the best in the first pic.






There's also another thing and that's the reputation of the Dugong. It seems that in the Philippines people believe they are bringing bad luck,while in parts of Indonesia they are considered reincarnations of women.

Arjan,

The German blade smith also confirmed that he uses the ribs for his hilts (see above) so I assume those, and the more expensive tusks, are the parts to use for hilts.
On the wikipedia page you quoted it also says that the tusks are used for sword handles in the Gulf states.
All over the archipelago you will find keris hilts made from dugong, gading laut, but I am not sure if it's only the tusks or some other parts [ribs] are use for this too? So maybe "in parts of Indonesia they [Dugong] are considered reincarnations of women" isn't such a bad thing anyway?
The full wikipedia quote for Philippines is: "In the Philippines dugongs are thought to bring bad luck, and parts of them are used to ward against evil spirits." This also seems useful for a sword or knife hilt...

Michael

PS If you do a search for "dugong" on this forum you will see several reference pictures of dugong hilts.
Here is an interesting dugong related thread http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...ghlight=dugong

hmmm pics are good thanks. None of them show a hooked structure suitable to carve these hilts from, where there is clearly dense surface bone around the pith on all sides (ie including the butt side) of the hook.

Hi Vikingsword,

My name is Thor and I am a new member here. I hope you will all forgive me for practicing a bit of necromancy on this old thread, but I thought I'd try contributing with something to the forums for my first post here. I must also confess to having been lurking here for more than a year now and in that time I have been truly humbled by the level of knowledge on here. I've learned so much already and It is indeed an honor being in the company of you gentlemen!

I am a bachelor in biology, now undertaking my masters degree in human parasitology. To put food on the table meanwhile, I work for our Environmental Ministry here as part of the CITES Management Authority team where I am now on my 5th year. One of my many tasks at work , is looking at peoples' antiques in order to asses whether the materials used warrants the need for a CITES-permit/-certificate, i.e. if it's from a species contained within the CITES Appendices.

Basically I look at a lot of horn, bones, ivory etc. from different source species and this is where I think I might be of value to this, at this point albeit elderly, discussion.

Considering sea cows (order Sirenia) there are two extant families: Manatees, (Trichechidae) and the dugongs (Dungongidae), the latter consisting of only one extant species: The dugong, Dugong dugon. Now, the manatee species are confined to Afrcia and the New World, so they are conveniently excluded from the discussion at hand. The extant dugong however is dispersed over South East Asia, and is as such a likely candidate for source material.

One feature of the skeleton of the species in the family Dugongidae is the increased density, known as pachyostosis, of the rib bones. The weight of which the animal uses while swimming to keep on 'right keel', so to speak. It is exactly the density of this bone which makes it suitable for manufacture into tools and other items. Personally, the only Dugongid I've seen processed like this is the now extinct Steller's Sea Cow (Hydrodamalis gigas), the distribution of which was far more Northern than the extant dugong. As already mentioned, this is also the species, of which the ribs are utilized today by modern knife makers. The inuit tools I have personally seen from Steller's Sea Cow, had all been manufactured by Russian Inuit peoples, which have had a tradition for utilizing this species as part of their sustenance.

Now whether or not the Dayak likewise has/had a tradition for utilizing the extant dugong, local to Borneo, is beyond my area of expertise. Here I think it might be better consulting an anthropologist with a specialty in these people. On a further note, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if one of our members here, would be able to answer that: What do/did the Dayak catch and eat?

A last thing I would like to get around when on the topic of Sirenids, is that of alleged 'sea cow ivory'. We know from G.W. Steller's own notes that the Steller's Sea Cow didn't have any teeth, so that again leaves our extant dugong. Personally I have never seen, in photo or real life, any dugong ivory. Or let me rather put it this way: I have never seen any ivory which could not reasonably be explained as stemming from a different species of mammal.
Furthermore I have my doubts if there is any real ivory to be used on a dugong at all. While the dugong do not grow any canine teeth, the males do have two 'tusk-like' incisors, however these are fairly small, certainly compaired to tusks of other classic ivory-species, but also compaired to the objects they are supposedly carved into, i.e. sword and dagger handles.
To clarify, it is not that I believe that dugong 'tusks' was never a source of ivory, it is just that I have never seen anything to convince me otherwise. In the face of new evidence I am certainly anticipating a change of my position.

I submit to you here a picture of the skull from a Dugong dugon: http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.ed....jpg/view.html

Here one of a dugong skull in relation to a human male: http://www.customs.gov.au/site/content8949.asp


This concludes my introduction on these forums. I hope you found the above interesting – if you indeed made it all the way here to the end – and I apologize in advance for any linguistical or grammatical errors on the way. English is not my native language.

I am looking much forward to my time here with you gentlemen, thank you!



All the best, - Thor Koch

WELCOME TO THE FORUM WE OFTEN DIG UP THE BONES OF OLD POSTS HERE. :D
IT IS GOOD TO FIND SOMEONE WHO HAS ACTUALLY WORKED WITH THESE SKULLS. I HAVE SEEN THE BONES A FEW TIMES BUT DID NOT DO ANYTHING WITH THEM, LUCKY FOR ME. I HAVE SEEN THE TUSKS USED FOR CIGARETTE HOLDERS SO THAT SHOULD GIVE AN IDEA OF SIZE. YOUR PICTURES GIVE A GOOD IDEA OF SIZE I HAVE TAKEN THE LIBERTY OF INCLUDING YOUR PICTURES HERE AS OFTEN PICTURES VANISH IF NOT PROPERLY POSTED HERE AS SERVERS CHANGE OR VANISH AND INFORMATIO0N IS THUS LOST.
I HATED TO SEE GOOD SPECIMINS OF RARE MATERIAL SUCH AS SKULLS AND SUCH LAY IN A TRASH HEAP IN THE SWAMP BUT AM GLAD I DID NOT TRY TO SAVE THEM AS IN THE ONE LINK WHERE THE WOMAN LIKELY WENT TO JAIL AND WAS HEAVELY FINED EVEN IF SHE DID NOT KNOW WHAT THE SKULL WAS. THERE BUT FOR CAUTION GO I.
I FOUND THAT IT WAS EVEN AGINST THE LAW FOR THE OWNERS OF ANIMAL ATTRACTIONS IN AUSTRALIA TO KEEP SKULLS OR BONES OF THEIR ANIMALS OR TO PICK UP ROAD KILL TO FEED TO THEIR ANIMALS WITHOUT PERMITS. FOUND THIS OUT BY ASKING IF HE HAD ANY OLD TAZMANIAN DEVIL SKULLS AROUND I COULD LOOK AT. DID GET TO HOLD A LIVE ONE THEY SURE MAKE SOME SCARY NOISE AND SHOW SOME TEETH , MUCH SAFER LOOKING AT A SKULL. :D

Hi Vandoo! I'm here to tell you that you're right about the dugong ivory! I found a very nicely made 18th century Chinese bracelet made with pieces of dugong "tusks" (incisors), but can't for the life of me find the reference now. - I'll check into this topic again when I find it!

In the meantime, here is a native Australian piece from a collection at the University of Glasgow: http://www.huntsearch.gla.ac.uk/cgi-...&browseMode=on

http://www.huntsearch.gla.ac.uk/arch.../E1928_49a.jpg

This is a much more crude piece than aforementioned Chinese bracelet, but it does however show that dugong ivory is both practically usable and that it indeed has a history of use in several cultures. As you yourself pointed out back in post No. #5 however, the size and shape of these "tusks" are not suitable for mandau handles.


So to recap, these are the standing questions atm:

1): Has bone been used as a source of mandau handle material, as we see it with sambar stag and wood?

2): IF bone has been used as handle material, which animal species did then supply the bone?


This is SO exciting I think, and I feel confident that we will get around it in due time. :)


All the best, - Thor

ITS GOOD TO SEE SOME PICTURES OF ITEMS ACTUALLY MADE FROM THESE TUSKS. I WAS A MARINE ZOOLOGY/ OCEANOGRAPHY MAJOR BACK IN THE LATE 1960'S SO HAVE A WIDE RANGE OF INTRESTS IN THE FIELD.
ONE THING I HAVE OFTEN WONDERED ABOUT THIS FAMILY OF ANIMALS IS THAT THEY HAVE SURVIVED AS WELL AS THEY HAVE. THEY ARE LARGE AND SLOW, STAY MOSTLY IN THE SHALLOWS, THEY HAVE NO MEANS OF DEFENSE. THERE HAVE NEVER BEEN VAST GROUPS OF THEM AND THEY ARE EDIBLE. MAN HAS FOUND THEM EASY TO HUNT AS THEY MUST SURFACE TO BREATHE AND NOT DANGEROUS AND ONE COULD MAKE A FEAST FOR A FAIRLY LARGE VILLAGE. EVEN MORE PUZZELING IS HOW DO THEY PROTECT THEMSELVES AND THEIR YOUNG FROM THE NATURAL PREDATORS. I WOULD THINK SALT WATER CROCODILES AND ALLIGATORS WOULD HAVE WIPED OUT THE DUGONG AND MANATEE LONG AGO. MAN WIPED OUT THE STELLER SEA COW BUT WHY HAD IT SURRVIVED LIVING WITH KILLER WHALES FOR SO LONG.
THERE ARE STILL A LOT OF UNKNOWNS ABOUT THE SPECIES BUT I SUSPECT THEY MUST HAVE SOME MEANS OF PROTECTION FROM THE NATURAL PREDATORS IN THEIR ENVIRONMENTS BUT UNFORTUNATELY NONE FROM MANKIND.

MANATEES,WITH HUMANS FOR COMPARISON THE BIG MALES GET UP TO 18 FEET LONG SO IT LOOKS ABOUT RIGHT. BUT I DON'T KNOW IF ITS MADE UP OR AN ACTUAL PICTURE. THE DUGONG IS SIMULAR IN SIZE WITH A DIFFERENT TAIL.

I think we're talking photoshop here Barry . :)

Manatees swim by my Mother's dock in Florida all the time .
I have never seen one that large in FLA waters at least .