Throwing Club, Fiji

Throwing clubs, or i ula, were invariably made of a single piece of wood, usually an uprooted shrub. The present lot is an i ula tavatava, its name referring to the form of its “elegant fluted head” (Clunie, Fijian Weapons and Warfare, Suva, 1977, p. 60), rather than to the characteristic zig-zag grip carving, which is also known as tavatava.

The Wesleyan missionary Thomas Williams wrote that a “weapon much used is the missile club, which is worn stuck in the girdle, sometimes in pairs, like pistols. […] This is hurled with great precision, and used formerly to be the favourite implement of assassination.” (Williams, and Stringer, ed., Fiji and the Fijians, Vol. I: The Islands and their Inhabitants, London, 1858, p. 57).