Four Early Aboriginal Spears

This group consists of two Tiwi spears and two North East Arnhem Land Spears

This group of four spears were collected in the 1940s. The double barbed spears are from the Tiw people on Bathurst and Meville Island and are used in the Pukumani Ceremony. Following the instructions of their great ancestor, Purukaparli, the Tiwi people of Bathurst and Melville Islands (off the north coast of Arnhem Land) honour the dead through the Pukumani ceremonies carried out around carved and painted grave posts companied with body adornment and painted ceremonial spears . The other two spears are from Arnhem Land, both the hard wood tip and the flaked stones are attached with native fibre and resin to long cane spear shafts