1884.12.269

Collection type

Object

Description

Club of highly polished dark wood with wide carved head. [SM 23/03/2007]

Long description

Club of highly polished dark wood with wide carved head. The head bears an abstracted face design on both sides with small human heads carved in relief for the eyes and nose and simple ears projecting out with blunt ends. The handle is decorated with tufts of light coloured hair bound on with sennit. There is a hole in the butt with a small amount of sennit cord stuck inside it. [SM 23/03/2007]

Geographical reference

French Polynesia (Overseas Collectivity of France)

Oceania > Polynesia > French Polynesia (Overseas Collectivity of France)

Marquesas Islands

Person

Maker Unknown Maker

Field collector Unknown Collector

PRM source Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers founding collection

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1874

Date collected

By 1874

Acquisition information

Donated: 1884

Materials and processes

Material Wood Plant, Material Animal Hair, Material Sennit Coconut Seed Fibre Plant, Process Carved, Process Bound, Process Decorated

Dimensions

Length: max 1440 mm, Width: max 182 mm

Object numbers

Accession number: 1884.12.269 PR Cat other PR nos: 1740

Research and responses

The following notes are drawn from research compiled by Andy Mills as part of the DCF Cutting Edge project in 2006-2007: 'The u‘u is the best-known Marquesan weapon form, and they are among the commonest type of Marquesan material culture to be found in ethnographic museum collections. This reflects the cultural prominence of the toa or warrior in Marquesan society (as elsewhere in Polynesia), and the importance of the culture of arms-bearing. The u‘u was to some extent the mark of toa (warrior) status, and was carried in daily life, as well as in battle. These objects were carved by tuhuka – specialist woodcarvers, cognate terms and institutions to the tufunga of Tonga (from which the Marquesas were anciently settled) and the tufuga of Samoa. The head implied in their name is well justified, and many examples contain upwards of fifteen different sets of eyes or a face, nested within the overall anthropomorphic structure of the club’s head. The ‘fractal’ or nested structure of these anthropomorphic representations has sparked much discussion in the Polynesian art historical community, and is a feature which can be recognised in a multitude of artforms and cultures across the Pacific. The facial motifs in general are known as tiki, and Kjellgren & Ivory (Kjellgren, E. & Ivory, C. (2005) Adorning the World: Art of the Marquesas Islands. London: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 33) have discussed the cultural significance of faces within Marquesan society, remarking that mata‘enana (n. ‘face people’) are the ancestors, and matatetau (vb. ‘to count faces’) is the recitation of one’s genealogy; from this, they argue quite plausibly that the face must be seen as the instantiation of ancestrally-derived efficacy or mana. In this way, we can recognise the weapon as decoratively empowered to contain the ancestral mana of the warrior, thus enabling it to be brought and applied to the battlefield.' [El.B 29/02/2008]

Associated publications

Illustrated twice in black and white as numbers 1a (from PRM000081346) and 2 (from PRM000081343) in Plate Gamma G in Die Sammlungen, Volume 3 of Die Marquesaner und ihre Kunst: Studien über die Entwicklung Primitiver Südseeornamentik nack Eigenen Reiseeergebnissen und dem Material der Museen, by Karl von den Steinen (Berlin: Verlag von Dietrich Reimer / Ernst Vohsen, 1928): 'OXFORD-D II' and 'OXFORD-D I'. [JC 26 3 2015] Listed on page 421 of 'Appendix F. Accession and Collection Dates for Canoe Models, Bowls, Paddles, and Clubs' in 'Marquesan Art in the Early Contact Period, 1774–1821', by Carol Susan Ivory (Seattle: University of Washington, Ph.D. thesis, 1990): 'IV. Clubs A. Traditional Clubs... [Collection Date] 19thC [Collector] [Accession Date] [Museum] PITT [Museum ID] 1740 (399) [sic] [Object Type] Club'. [JC 19 3 2015]

Search terms: Weapon, Figure, Club