Fragment of a roof finial of a large clan house, a sculpture of the Kanak people made of Houp wood, 18th century. Height: 101 cm. Museé du Louvre, Pavillion des Sessions. Accession Number: Inv. 96.2.1. Public Domain. Photo by Jastrow (2006).
From Wikipedia:
A flèche faîtière is a carved rooftop spear or spire or finial that adorns Kanak houses, particularly the Great Houses of the Kanak Chiefs, in New Caledonia.[1][2][3]
This is an example of such houses:
Kanak house with flèche faîtière. Tjibaou cultural center, Nouméa, New Caledonia. CC-BY-SA by Fanny Schertzer.
It is interesting to compare the shape of one of these flèches as it appears in the cultural flag of the Kanak people with the plasma column instabilities and otgher petroglyphs.
Fig. 31. (Left) Plasma instability profiles for a pulse illuminated section of a plasma column. Laser shadowgrams. (Right) Experimental and simulation derived geometries for extreme plasma currents in a plasma column. The illumination is strongest where the plasma is dense, that is, along the edges of the figures below and the cross-section of the center toroid.
Fig. 32. (Left) Configuration and cross-sectional views of the intense current discharge. (Right) Petroglyphs. All are from the Western U.S. except the lower right figure that is from the United Arab Emirates.
Fig. 33. (Left) Configuration and cross-sectional views of the intense current discharge as viewed obliquely to the plasma column. At times, two or more toroids are seen in line-of-sight emission. (Right) Petroglyphs.
