Reed Arrow (tip damaged). New Guinea. Original catalogue: Melanesia. Provenance subsequently complemented with “New Hebrides”.
Length of shaft 55 cm, length of head 34 cm.
In two parts i960. Shaft of nodal reed. Rear end, now crushed, seems to have been cut off straight. Foreshaft of wood with tip of bone with triangular cross-section and groove-like sides. In one groove traces of smeared-on substance (poison?). At its base this tip has three fibre lashings and between the two lowest a ball-like part, probably a wax¬ like substance. Wooden foreshaft below shows carved decoration painted in red and black, the latter slightly blue-tinted. Above some ring-shaped fibre plaitings, as also below on the preserved section of reed shaft.
An identical tip of bone but with varying carved decoration on the foreshaft and thus also somewhat different from the present specimen is to be found on a couple of arrows from Simbang, Finschhafen, New Guinea, in the collections of the Ethnographical Museum of Sweden (Coll. E. N. 255—256). (Rydén 1963:100)