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1884.13.30

Part of a staff or ceremonial object. [EH [OPS move] 24/7/2017]

1884.13.30

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Collection type
Object
Description
Part of a staff or ceremonial object. [EH [OPS move] 24/7/2017]
Long description
Part of a staff or ceremonial object. Wooden, carved in stylised form of a human face with two eyes and tongue extended. The 'tongue' is carved with swirled line patterns, and the head is flat on the reverse. Rectangular ?handle with two circular perforations, possibly a joint where the object attaches to a larger object. [EH [OPS move] 24/7/2017]
Cultural groups
Māori
Date / Period
Date made: Before 1874
Date collected
By 1874
Acquisition information
Donated: 1884
Materials and processes
Material Wood Plant, Process Carved, Process Perforated
Dimensions
Length: max 304 mm, Width: max 70 mm, Depth: max 45 mm
Object numbers
Accession number: 1884.13.30 PR Cat other PR nos: 2150
Research and responses

Taiaha is the name of a ceremonial and fighting club with curved edge below the point and a round handle. [AP Leverhulme project on founding collection 1995-1998]

In Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum Pitt Rivers ms collections there is a handwritten list [P141] headed 'A catalogue of M.General [sic - Major General] Pitt Rivers' Anthropological Collection Objects illustrating Animal Form conventionalised in Ornamentation from different countries' which seems to be a list of all items which were associated with the display entitled 'Illustrations of Human and Animal form Cases 92 - 93' in Bethnal Green and South Kensington Museums. A photocopy of this list is held by Alison Petch [AP 23/03/2005]

In 1978, David Simmons recorded the holdings of Māori material in a number of museums in Europe and North America including, in May 1978, the Pitt Rivers Museum. (For copies of his notes and related correspondence, see RDF: Researchers: Simmons.) In 1996, Simmons put together the ‘draft catalogues’ he had prepared, depositing copies in, at least, the National Library of New Zealand / Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa and the British Museum. The ‘draft catalogue’ of the Māori material in the PRM, which includes photocopies of some of the relevant catalogue index cards and annotations supplied by PRM assistant curator Lynne Williamson in 1982, was included in ‘Draft Catalogues of Maori Material in English Museums II. Prepared by David Simmons from records made in 1978… Compiled in Auckland in 1996’. It is now widely accepted that Simmons’s assertions about the provenance and history of individual Māori objects are not to be trusted without further evidence and/or documentation. Nevertheless, as the entries in this document have been referred in the literature, in July 2016 I obtained from the British Museum scans of the pages devoted to the PRM’s collections (numbered by hand as pages 43 to 62), printing out a copy for the RDF. For the entry for this object, see page 51 (page 7 on Simmons's original list). [JC 28 7 2016]

Search terms: Ritual and Ceremonial, Figure, Weapon, Staff, Club, Ceremonial Object