Poison darts in shady corners...

The cliffhanger note...

Bamboo quiver from Guyana, bought by Oxford in 1897.

Every time I'm lured back to Oxford I seem to end up having a quick poke around the Pitt Rivers - the museum at the end of the universe. Shrivelled heads and totem poles, etc. This time, on a whirlwind visit before rushing to the station, I thought I'd try and track down a few objects from the Guianas considering I'm off to Cayenne on Thursday...

For your delectation, then, I present an arrow from the Maroni River (apparently collected by the Oxford ethnologist Audrey Butt Colson in the 60s, with a cryptic note attached about its past career as a murder weapon) and a quiver from (British) Guyana acquired in 1897. There's also a set of poison darts from the opening of the Pitt Rivers in 1884 hiding innocently in a dark corner of the upper gallery (also Guyana).

I'm sure the rest of the Guianas collections is pretty huge (the Pitt Rivers has so many objects the storage is supposedly larger than the museum...), but then, alas, I had to run for the train ;)