English: Cast copper alloy Zulu assegai (stabbing spear) blade of the Umkhonto (long-bladed spear) type, with a tapering tang bound secured with a woven wire collar into a short wooden haft. The wire collar was originally found with the blade, but is now missing. The tang shape is quite distinctive, square in section tapering to a point, 12 mm wide and 133 mm long. The Royal Armouries in Leeds have several similar examples, Nos xxvil.265-7 (without hafts or collars) and xxvil. 211 (with hafts) (Thom Richardson pers comm).

19th century

A possible explanation for the reason why this blade has ended up in a culvert in Cornwall can be found in the links between the nearby mines of Wheal Fortune and Wheal Vor with miners that worked abroad in South Africa and brought back souvenirs or trophies of this sort which may then have been lost or disposed of. There were many mines and Cornish miners around the present-day Kwazulu-Natal area, for example, formerly known as Zululand, which was being taken over by the British Army during the 19th century, when this blade was probably obtained.

In 1810 work was re-started at Great Wheal Vor near Tregonning Hill. By 1820 it employed over 500 men underground. In the 1860s it was described as 'probably the richest tin mine in the world' by the Mining Journal. It closed in 1877, so that local miners then went abroad to find their fortune.