African ceremonial brass Kota weapon from Gabon.
Dimensions: Height: 45cm - Width: 35.5cm - Depth: 5cm
Weight: 1.29kg
Offensive weapons are used to attack and impress the opponent. Offensive weapons are divided into several categories: hand weapons, throwing weapons, bows and arrows.
Wooden hand weapons include clubs, wooden throwing weapons, and wooden shock weapons.
Metal-bladed hand weapons: This type of weapon is, with a few exceptions, designed for hand-to-hand combat. Axes, which are primarily used for splitting, ceremonial axes, bird-head axes, and adzes are used. Straight or curved knives are objects with multiple uses. There are straight or curved daggers, straight or curved swords, short swords, sabers, sickle weapons, disc-shaped knives, and finally, throwing knives.
Throwing weapons, javelins, spears, harpoons, and assegais, allow for attacks from afar. Although their primary function is to hit a target at a distance, these weapons can also have other uses. The javelin is light and is generally thrown; the spear, heavier, serves more as a thrusting weapon; the assegai, significantly shorter than previous models, is used as a thrusting, shock, or dodging weapon. The harpoon always has a fixed or removable barbed tip. Derived from hunting weapons, it found its way to the battlefield.
The last category consists of bows and arrows, light weapons par excellence, used to hit a target at very long distances. Probably designed for hunting, these weapons found their place in the warrior's equipment. The crossbow existed only among the Fang of Gabon.
It is clear that with the introduction of firearms, which allowed killing from very far away, all these weapons were less prized. Nevertheless, the simplest models survived for a long time as hunting weapons, while the more elaborate ones were retained for prestige, ceremonies, and worship.
Black African societies, like all others, had a barter system before the introduction of currency and developed standards of exchange for objects and food. Weapons or blades of weapons were used as currency or dowry.
For further information: contact@galeries-arts.com
arts-ethniques.com, a gallery of African primitive art and Asian crafts, presents its gallery of African and Asian art, tribal, and ethnic art, with the purchase and sale of African masks, African statues, African objects, Buddha statues, bronze deities, and African Pounou statues and masks from Gabon. Also discover its gallery of contemporary African art with paintings and modern African paintings. arts-ethniques.com invites you to browse its catalog of African primitive, tribal, and primitive art and Asian crafts. arts-ethniques.com is a supplier of African art, a wholesaler of African crafts, and an importer of African masks. Paintings, pictures, and sculptures of unique art, art brut, modern, and contemporary art are sold at studio prices. Sale of Chinese furniture, wooden and bronze Buddha statues.
