Spear Thrower (200 BCE–200 CE): Art, History and Details

Spear Thrower (200 BCE–200 CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Spear throwers improve a spear's range and thrust. The spear was placed against the stone pivot and hurled using the thumb rest, carved as a figure with a skeletal chest, back-bent head, and a severed human head at its rear. This figure, frequent in art, is not well understood, but its appearance here suggests a connection to death. The shaft's carving makes clever use of the bone's marrow cavity.

Object facts

• Title: Spear Thrower
• Date: 200 BCE–200 CE
• Culture: Peru, South Coast, late Paracas or early Nasca style
• Type: Arms and Armor
• Technique: bone, hematite, cotton thread, sinew
• Dimensions: Overall: 5.8 x 2 cm (2 5/16 x 13/16 in.)
• Collection: AA - Andes
• Department: Art of the Americas
• Accession number: 1940.507

A detail from the museum

Spear throwers, also called atlatls, use leverage to propel a spear faster and farther through the air.

Collection credit

The Norweb Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Ubbelohde-Doering, Heinrich. The Art of Ancient Peru. New York: F.A. Praeger, 1952.
• Cleveland Museum of Art. The CMA Companion: A Guide to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2014.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.