from the maa

23 February, 2015

Visited Cambridge yesterday, and popped into the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

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Bow and arrow from the Solomon Islands circa 1920s. Both are covered with elaborately plaited cane, which at least suggests that they were status symbols rather than efficient hunting weapons. That arrow reminds me of a multi-stage rocket…

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These are 19th century Aboriginal Australian arrowheads knapped from scavenged glass.

From an article on another museum’s website: “Since first contact, Australian Aboriginal people have ingeniously adapted discarded European goods from campsites, shipwrecks and rubbish to their own ends. Salvaged clear, green and brown bottle glass was often used for knife blades, spearheads and arrowheads because it could be flaked using a large pebble, in much the same way as quartz, from which most traditional blades were made…. a sharp stick or animal bone was used to ‘pressure flake’ very fine, serrated edges.”

Away from archery, possibly the greatest treasure of the MAA is one of the Star Carr red-deer headresses which looks like something out of True Detective; 9,500 years old and looking probably as strange and terrifying as it did then. The human need for ritual and magical thinking goes back a long way.

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