Samoan weapons

[fearn]

Originally Posted by colin henshaw

Hi KraVseR

I have read your thread and can offer the following input :-

a) In my opinion, the best reference for identification of Oceanic weapons, and other artefacts, is the following :-
"Ethnographical Album of the Pacific Islands" by James Edge-Partington,
reprint 1996.
Its a big, heavy book, but you can find most items there.

b) In my copy of the Rev. Wood book, the cocoa-nut fibre suit is captioned as being from Kingsmill Islands (now Kiribati).

c) I had always thought of those shark tooth weapons as being from Micronesia and Hawaii, but Samoa is relatively close to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, so perhaps there was some crossover, or it could be a simple mistake in the book ?

Regards.

There's an old, old thread about the general construction difference between Micronesian and Polynesian sharks'-tooth weapons. Basically, in Polynesia (primarily Hawaii) so far as we were able to determine, a slot was cut for the base of the tooth along with one or more holes in the tooth and slot, and one tooth was tied into each slot (as seen in this thread). In modern replicas, the teeth are often glued on, then a cord is strung down to a hole drilled elsewhere in the club. This is not the way the original weapons were built.

In Micronesia (e.g. Kiribati and Truk), they braced the teeth between two thin splints, presumably of pandanus or coconut wood, and then tied the splinted teeth to whatever the body of the weapon, using cords that went entirely around the weapons and passed from tooth across to tooth (you can see that construction in this article). The neatest trick here was drilling the hole in the shark tooth, since that's harder than it looks, at least in my experience.

Although I'm sure construction techniques are all jumbled together now that island artists are learning from books and selling to tourists, I'm fairly confident that in pre-WW2 pieces, the construction techniques are separate and distinct. That should help you figure out which piece came from where.

Best,

F