Three African spears for ID

[Iain]

Originally Posted by colin henshaw

Hi Iain

Good looking spears - would you be able to post images of them full length, also of the butt ends ?

Spears with those shoe ends are usually from the Sahel of West Africa, although Madagascar spears are similar, but the Madagascar ones I have seen usually have longer shoes. Isn't there an illustration of a cavalryman with a double-bladed spear in the 19th century exploration book by Denham ? The types with the inlaid brass like that, I usually think of as Hausa... Its very difficult to allocate African spears to specific tribes (although I havn't really made a close study). The following very general points may assist :-

a) Where there is Islamic influence, the construction is normally more sophisticated.
b) Spears north of the Zambesi are usually socketed and tanged southwards.
c) Spears sourced in the UK are more likely to be from ex-British colonies, eg Nigeria. Likewise spears from France would be more likely to originate from ex-French colonies etc...

I am attaching some extracts from the book "Weapons & Implements of Savage Races" by L Montague, 1921 that may be of interest. Also images of a couple of my Sahel spears for general comparison.

All the best
Colin

Hi Colin,

Thanks for the info and images.

Actually I had hoped I had something like what Denham pictured. Unfortunately the differences were pretty clear once it was in hand.

I'll try to take some overall shots later this week. Bit tricky with the big one due to the size, the butts on two of them are already shown above, the Ethiopian one I didn't photograph the shaft since it has no butt (doesn't look like it ever did).