Arrow Identification?
 

Hi folks. A friend of mine sent be photos of this spear hoping i might be able to ID it, but it is out of my range of knowledge. Anyone know anything about this?
It does seem meant for throwing as it seems to be fletched for flight stability.
I am sorry, i don't know the exact dimensions here, but hopefully the form is obvious to somebody here. Thanks!

Looks more like an Arrow to me.

Unfortunately no idea where it could be from.

Methinks its an arrow from South America somewhere, maybe Guyana/Northern Brazil ?

The overall shape of the tip of the arrowhead, the file work on the shank and the decoration on the shaft looks very similar to that found on some Philippine arrows that I have seen.

Best,
Robert

Yes, arrow is probably more appropriate, but i did not see this in person and my friend gave me no image of the entire object with size reference.
But i do believe we have narrowed it down and what we found seems to confirm my original belief that it is SEA. This seems to be from Aeta Negrito in the mountainous parts of Luzon. Can anyone confirm that to know any more about these arrows? First time i am seeing such a beast.

I did find some talk of these on an archery forum, but i'd love to find out more for my friend's sake.
http://www.primitivearcher.com/smf/i...?topic=22060.0
I changed the thread title to reflect "arrow" rather than spear.

Anyone else has some tidbits here. I tried searching our archives, but found very little on arrows from Luzon. Bill posted some arrows in this thread that may well be PI, but they seem a bit different from this in the shaft so i'm not sure they are from the same area.
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...ht=luzon+arrow

The fletching looks either Negrito or Igorot. Both are from Central/Northern Luzon. There are similarly shaped arrow heads shown in Krieger's plates elsewhere on this site—those hunting arrowheads are detachable and ascribed to the Negritos.

There is some information also in Fox's article on The Pinatubo Negritos, part of which is found here.

Ian.

Thanks Ian.

Most interesting thread! Never seen something similar before!

Here is one more image of this arrow with the companion that my friend recently acquired. Seems there's not a lot of information about these floating around the web, unless i've just been using the wrong key words. Would it be fair to consider these a rare find?

Boy I learned something...........

If you are referring to the article that Ian posted, yes, very informative indeed.
Still, i would like to see more examples of this form of arrows, but i haven't managed to track down too many. I'm curious to know if any of our members have any examples in their collections. It's a shame a nice example of the bow didn't come with these very fine arrows. Great details about the construction of the bows in this article. Less about the forging if these particular heads.

David--I sent you a PM regarding similar arrows in an online auction that is active.

Ian.

Thanks Ian. What i see in that link is indeed similar, though these have a particular method of rattan binding and shaft decoration that is not apparent in these others, yet i do see something similar in the link i posted in post #6 which identifies that arrow as Aeta Negrito, so i leaning towards that over Igorot. :shrug:

Hi David:

Yes, I agree that your friend's arrows are most likely Negrito. BTW, they are the finest examples of Negrito arrows I have seen. The workmanship on these is first class! The carving of the shafts, the form of the arrow heads, and just their overall condition is excellent. Bows and arrows of this quality were often used as "bride price" that was paid to the family of a bride by the prospective husband's family. I suspect these may have been made for that purpose, and for a family of distinction among the Aeta Negrito groups.

Thanks for posting these here.

Ian.