Walking stick - Specimen details
| Catalogue Number: 73624 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No Image | Plant Name | 104.00 OLEACEAE Olea europaea | Entry Book Number | 3.1996.1 | |
| Artefact Name | Walking stick | Vernacular Name | |||
| Iso Country | Oman | TDWG Region | Oman | ||
| Parts Held | Walking stick | Geography Description | Oman, Asia-Temperate, Arabian Peninsula, Dhofar, Jebel Dhofar | ||
| Uses | Walking stickUse: MATERIALS User: Man | TDWG use | MATERIALS | ||
| Storage | Bottles etc, outsize | Related Items | |||
| Donor | Donor No | ||||
| Donor Date | Donor Notes | ||||
| Collector | Jones R | Collector No | |||
| Collection Notes | Collection Date | 00/00/1996 | |||
| Exhibition | Expedition | ||||
| Number Components | Publication | ||||
| Notes: | Made and used by the Bedu of Jebel Dhofar, Dhofar. Locally called mifan. Purchased by Roddy Jones in Jebel above Salalah. Following excerpt from Miller AG, Morris M. 1988. Plants of Dhofar. The Southern Region of Oman. Traditional, Ec and Med Uses., It provided the hardest, closest grained wood of the area, and was therefore in heavy demand for making implements essential to daily life as well as the weapons which were used in the frequent internecine conflicts. In particular, the wood wasused to ma, ke the short heavy staff (J:xotrok), without which no adult male would go anywhere, and the throwing stick (J:ekit), formerly carried as a weapon, which was pointed at botoh ends, a thickened section in the middle (J:kursodot), porviding the handhold. Th, ese tow vital implements were made with great care, usually by a recognised expert. He firstly selected a suitable branch from a tree, cut it and roughly shaped it, removing the smaller side branches, leaves and twigs. Then he put it in a liquid mixture, of cow dung, urine and earth to soak for at least a week, after which the bark was easily removed from the heartwood (J:obbot). Then the stick was carved into its final shape, hardened over a slow fire, then planed and rubbed down. Finally it was oiled, and burnished at intervals with butter until it was smooth and glossy. Such sticks had a real marketable value, and were always in high demand. A pretty variant of the xotrok was made for camel herders and for the girls and young women who herded the i, mmature livestock: the bark was cut round and removed at regular intervals along the length of a slim branch before the stick was soaked and fire hardened - the result when the whole of the bark was stripped off was a stick attractively striped in cream a, nd dark brown. This was called (J:xotrok ekizi bis). | ||||