Lot 184
ABORIGINAL GLASS SPEAR POINT
KIMBERLEY, WESTERN AUSTRALIA
African & Oceanic Art and Antiquities
Auction: 16 September 2020 at 15:00 BST
Description
pressure flaked glass, formed of green glass worked into a spear point
Dimensions
8.7cm long
Footnote
Provenance:
Private collection, United Kingdom
Note:
For a similar example please see The Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, accession number 1932.34.1
"This spear point, like the many more like it in museum collections around the world, represents the coming together of two different artistic or technological traditions to create 'hybrid' objects. In this case, Australian Aboriginal methods of producing stone tools were hybridized with imported European materials to produce a sharper and more easily manufactured spearhead. But more than this ingenious re-use of material, these weapons are also excellent examples of the sort of pressure-flaked spear points that have been produced in the northern Kimberley and Arnhem Land for more than three thousand years. These points are bifacial, that is, they are worked on both sides of the blade. They were regarded very highly by many Aboriginal groups throughout Northern and Western Australia. Consequently, they have been documented as passing more than 1,000km to the south through trade. Known examples include those manufactured in bottle glass, porcelain from the insulators of cross-country telegraph cabling, as well as more the more traditional materials of quartzite and basalt used in pre-colonial times." The Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford