Eric,
Welcome to the forum! and it is great to see another who is fascinated with these remarkable colonial arms. You show some amazing examples, and I would like to know more on your thoughts on regional aspects of the styles.
The curious birds head (?) or serpentine zoomorphic on the knuckleguard, is this in your opinion more to the southern regions and Central or South American? It seems these occur on the striated shell guard examples which we have tentatively considered South American in a number of cases.
The Potosi style hilts are it seems distinctive with the turned down, bird head type pommel (Adams, 1985 I think notes these as Potosi). I have found one of these in Santa Fe, N.M. with heavy blacksmith style, wedge type blade. Naturally that does not secure actual provenance as there are no boundaries to diffusion over years.
Another interesting feature of the heavy colonial blades, is the curious uptick at the point on it seems a good number of them.
Best regards
Jim
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