Mystery knife

[Ian]

Attached is my transcription of what Robert sent. It is incomplete and definitely not the whole article published by Fox, but it is everything that I have.

Fox appears to have been an ethnobotanist with expertise in the plants used by these indigenous people of the Philippines. If you don't fancy reading the Latin plant names, just pass right along to the general text. He describes, in considerable detail, the manufacture and materials used for men's and boy's bows and arrows, the creation and attachment of arrowpoints, the significance of different shaft lengths for the arrows, and even how to make and string the bow. In case you were wondering which vines were used for the bowstrings, it's all here in great detail.

The space devoted to edged weapons is small but informative. He provides drawings of various bolos (Plate 9) and gives their respective names and uses. The materials used to make the knives and scabbards are described, including the sources of the glues and resins needed to secure hilts, scabbards, arrow heads, etc. It would be nice to have the complete article (which seems to run to several hundred pages and may have been this guy's doctoral dissertation).

To help with orienting where the various groups are and the geographical features I've attached a picture of the Central Luzon Region. I have indicated Mt. Pinatubo, the site of the old Clark AFB, and the nearby town of Apalit in the Province of Pampanga. More about Apalit in a later post.

Very interesting reading this article, and I've enjoyed going through it in the process of transcribing the text. Because of size limitations on files, the article is split into two parts, one for the text and the second for the Plates.

Ian.