One of three wooden pegs from an animal trap. For the associated objects see 1934.8.11 .1

Collection type: Object
Description: One of three wooden pegs from an animal trap. For the associated objects see 1934.8.11 .1 - .6 [AB [OPS move] 4/9/2017]
Long description: One of three wooden pegs, tied together across the middle with a single piece of plant fibre string. This has been tied twice around 1934.8.11.6, looped once around the body of 1934.8.11.5, and then once around 1934.8.11.4 before being tied off in a knot. The string itself is a golden brown colour (Pantone 143C), and is made up of a single twisted strand; the ends are fraying; the string may be European. Each peg has been carved from a single piece of wood, sharpened to a point at one end. [RTS 13/4/2004]. 1934.8.11.5-6 are more irregularly shaped than .4, and neither appears to have been polished. All rods are probably made from the same wood (Pantone 7508C), but in the case of .4, the darker outer bark has been left in place (Pantone 462C) [RTS 13/4/2004].
Geographical reference: South Sudan
Africa > Eastern Africa > South Sudan; Warab Fanamweir
Cultural groups: Dinka
Person: Field collector Percy Horace Gordon Powell-Cotton; Field collector Hannah Powell-Cotton; PRM source Percy Horace Gordon Powell-Cotton
Date / Period: Date made: Before 1933
Date collected: 3rd May 1933
Acquisition information: Donated: 1934
Materials and processes: Material Wood Plant, Material Plant Fibre, Process Carved, Process Polished
Object numbers: Accession number: 1934.8.11.6 Other numbers: 2224
Research and responses: Fanamweir is now located in the administrative district of Warab in the Southern Sudan. Powell-Cotton made ethnographic films during his 1932-3 shooting expedition to southern Sudan; footage included a Dinka hunter setting a trap, which is described by his wife Hannah: "In a game track a Dinka hunter laid a noose and set its weighty spring-trap, formed like a bow strung with twisted hide" (Mrs Powell Cotton, "Village Handicrafts in the Sudan", Man 34 (112), pp 90-91). There are several photographs of a Dinka man demonstrating the use of this trap in the Pitt Rivers Museum collection, which are probably stills taken from this footage; see Photograph Accession Numbers 1998.207.3.1-9. These have explanatory notes written on the back of each print, which identify the various parts of the trap with the letters A to J. A was the Bow (1934.8.11.1), C seems to be a stick that takes the tension when the trap is set; G is a small loop that the end of C is fitted through as the trap is set, and this is attached somehow to H, which is the wooden disc, 1934.8.11.3, while J may be one of the group of pegs. The trap was set by placing the wooden disc in the ground, covering it with stones, and arranging the hide noose around it. The bow was set up a small distance away in a depression in the ground with the bow string facing the disc, and a longer stick pulled over the string to fit into a small loop at the disc end; this stick was then tied to the pegs and the trap set, then covered over with earth.
Dang (plural deng) is a Dinka word meaning bow (D.G. Beltrame 1880, Grammatica e Vocabolario della lingua Denka, p. 190 gives definition as 'arco, schioppo, lancia); Nebel defines the term dhang, pl. dhèng, as ‘bow, rifle’ (Nebel 1979, Dinka-English Dictionary, p. 27). See also Schweinfurth 1873, The Heart of Africa, where dang is used to described a bow-shaped type of parry shield. The Nuer also use the word to describe a type of staff with curling ends, which may be related to this form [RTS 22/6/2005]

Search terms: Hunting, Trap, Hunting accessory

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