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Weapons Collection
Costume Collection, Dramatic Arts
University Art Museum

Gypsum
from the Cave of Swords, Mexico
C. D. Woodhouse Collection, Geology

Sword
Zaire, Kassai Province
iron, wood, copper wire
Margaret Mallory Collection of African Ethnological Material
University Art Museum

 

Weapons tended to be well represented in the sixteenth-century collection, especially royal collections, since they were instruments of power and emblems of the aristocracy as the military class. They were also highly practical objects in that world. The gypsum crystal is an example of the kind of object that would have been prized for its unusual shape. The resemblance to a sword--a man-made artifact--meant the object crossed one of the greatest boundaries in conceptualizing the world, that between the artificial and the natural.