I would like to thank everyone so far for their very much appreciated opinions and help on this.
Kino, thank you for the comparative photo of your barong that helps to show how the camera angle can make an object appear very different from how it actually looks. I'm still not so sure that the photos I have posted show a Jungayan pommel on the sword in question, or if what looks to be part of the hilt is actually some kind of debris laying on the ground behind the subject. If you look real close at either of the above photos the very end section (possible Jungayan pommel) seems to be casting a shadow. Or like I said earlier, it could all just be that my not so great anymore vision is causing me to see things that are not there.
