Middle Sepik dagger.

[machinist]

I picked up a couple that belong in this thread, One cassowary and one from a person. I know little about these cultures so if anyone has any opinions about the engraving styles and their origin please share. As I understand it human bone daggers were taken from the skeleton of an honored ancestor rather than the victims of cannibalism. Such daggers are quite rare, a survey off American museums found 21 out of 499 daggers to be from human bones. The human one has a deep covering of soot with the orange patina of the bone peeking through. I hope this does not offend anyone, we all draw the line somewhere and we all end up as bones