Photo Credits: Jean-Paul Rojas.
Display Title: Lithic Spear Point
Digital Number: TCISVM-0015Material Type: Chert
Time Period: Pre-colonial
Provenance: Quinn Hill, Great Corn Island
Location: Private Collection in Quinn Hill, Great Corn Island
A bifacial lithic tool manufactured out of chert by removing flakes from both sides of the stone. This tool likely served as a lithic spear point for hunting. The artefact was recovered from a disturbed context in the contemporary neighborhood of Quinn Hill, Great Corn Island, and is currently housed in a private collection.
In his ethnological chapter “The Caribbean Lowland Tribes: The Mosquito, Sumo, Paya, and Jicaque” in the Handbook of South American Indians Volume 4: The Circum-Caribbean Tribes (1948) German-Mexican anthropologist Paul Kirchhoff describes the hunting practices of the Kukras and specifically differentiates between the customs of the Corn Islands and Bluefields. Referencing colonial European writer Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin (1678), Kirchhoff (1948: 224) writes: “the arrows used about the Laguna de Bluefields (Kukra) were 6 to 8 feet (2 to 2.6 m.) long with a flint tip and a wooden hook (possibly some type of barb?). Some arrows were weighted with pebbles. Stunning arrows have blunt knobs made of hard wood or beeswax.” In contrast, he describes how: “the bow has not been reported from the Corn Islands. Spears or javelins were formerly used for hunting. Slings, traps, and snares were used prinicipally [sic] for birds” (ibid.: 220). Given these ethnohistoric observations, it can be inferred that this bifacial lithic tool most likely served as a spear point for spears or javelins, which have been described as the primary hunting tool used by the Kukra of the Corn Islands. These observations also provide some unique insight into some of the historic intra-tribal cultural differences between the insular Kukra (Corn Islands) and the mainland Kukra (Bluefields).
Additional Photos:
Photo Credits: Jean-Paul Rojas.