adze
- Museum number
- Am1855,1126.328
- Description
-
Adze made of copper, bone, hide.
- Production date
- 1855 (before)
- Dimensions
-
Length: 31 centimetres
-
Width: 15 centimetres
- Curator's comments
-
Collected by Robert McClure, HMS Investigator, Prince of Wales Strait (according to mss registration annotation)
-
Parker Snow 1858 .p 29: '289. Hatchets of the newly discovered Esquimaux. They are shaped like an adze; from Victoria Land; by Captain Collinson, C.B.' Register: '328. Adze. flat copper blade 7 in. long, 2 in. wide, fixed with thongs at the end of a curved bone handle 11 3/4 inches long.' The printed information is then corrected in manuscript: '328 & 329 are from Prince of Wales Strait, & were brought by Capt. (Sir Robt.) McClure H.M.S.Investigator'. Jenness 1946 pp. 102-204 discusses this adze type and illustrates four examples. Sometime the blade is lashed directly to the shaft, at other times it is wedged into a separate head. He thinks that Hearne's 1771 comments about adzes refer to chisels, and says that by the 20th. century almost every adze was equipped with an iron blade.
- Location
- On display (G26/dc10)
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited:
1999 25 Jun-Present, BM Room 26; Gallery of North America, Case: "The Arctic"
1987-1990 3 Dec-1 Jul, Museum of Mankind, Room 3; Living Arctic: Hunters of the Canadian North
- Acquisition date
- 1855
- Department
- Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- Registration number
- Am1855,1126.328