a mace?
 

Any thoughts on this? I wondered at first whether it might be a counter-weight for a lance but now think it was made as a mace. Could it be Ottoman or Persian or Chinese ? And, how old?

The ironwork, with the octagonal shaft worked into a socket, the head cut into segments and the punched decoration, is obviously the work of a capable blacksmith but is far removed from the sort of gold/jewel inlaid Oriental maces you usually see illustrated. I will need to look at a way of cleaning off the red rust without taking off the black patination.

The wooden handle looks like the sort of barkless-sapling you would see on an African spear and is to my eyes a mismatch with the ironwork, but both the wood and iron have the same barely-legible graffiti you often see on 19th/early 20th century collector’s items. So the handle and head have been together for some decades.