Antique luzon blade need help in identifying

[Ian]

Originally Posted by algrennathan

Just my take on this. Yes, his account give us an idea of blade typology or names during his time. But the question is, how accurate is the account? How credible is the author? Who was he? Was this peer reviewed? These questions arise cause the fact that it was only a thesis and not a published work makes this a bit sketchy.

Hi algrennathan,

I think that you will be searching long and hard to obtain many peer-reviewed/scientific publications that you are seeking. There are some American anthropological papers that are reasonably reputable, but these have problems too. What was observed in use by various ethnic groups were not necessarily of their own manufacture. For example, the account of Fox on the Negrito clans on Mt Pinatubo included various knives and swords that they acquired from Pampangan smiths. Also, the Tinguian in northern Luzon (see Faye Cooper-Cole's account) used some indigenous weapons but also knives and swords from the Ilokanos of Ilocos Norte.

The "name game" of trying to find specific indigenous names for a particular blade is often pretty fruitless because the same item can have many different names, depending on the local culture or preference. You will find many places in our Archives where discussions have highlighted different names for the same item, often with passionate arguments for various preferred names. Often there is no universally accurate descriptor for a particular blade, and to try to tease apart what it may be called among various social groups becomes difficult (even for those within the particular culture). A single blade form can have different names among different groups, and the same name can apply to different blade styles among different groups. When we translate many of the native terms, they often reduce to general descriptors, such as "knife" or "sword" in the original language, which is not very helpful. Consider, for example, itak, punal, sundang, bolo, talibong, espada, daga, etc.

Information on the local naming of blades is often so sparse that we are forced to take what we can get, imperfect as it may be.