Club with a wooden haft, and a head consisting of a perforated and carved cylindrical stone, bound with woven plant fibre and black ratite feathers.
Club, Mekeo People, Central Province, Papua New Guinea. Stone-headed clubs were produced in New Guinea in three basic types: there were those where the head of the club was ground from a piece of stone into a discus-like shape, there were those where it was ground into a smooth ‘stoned olive’ shape, and there were those of this kind shown here. Sometimes termed ‘pineapple clubs’, the stone heads of these durable and efficient clubs were elaborately (and laboriously) worked in fine-grained igneous rock. As can clearly be seen, the longitudinal grooves and ridges are first worked into the head, and these are then sawn up into little pyramidal points. Among the Mekeo people, the people of Keakama village specialised in producing these club-heads, and they became a valuable export for them to supply to other Mekeo areas, and neighbouring foreign tribes. Stone, wood, vegetable fibre, feathers. Late 19th Century. Formerly in the private collection of Mr W. D. Webster.
fighting
