Wooden club. With an expanding conical head. Bound to it is a feather and a model shield with a miniature club, bow and arrow attached. [AB [OPS move] 13/12/2017]

Collection type: Object
Description: Wooden club. With an expanding conical head. Bound to it is a feather and a model shield with a miniature club, bow and arrow attached. [AB [OPS move] 13/12/2017]
Long description: Wooden club. With an expanding conical head. Bound to it is a feather and a model shield with a miniature club, bow and arrow attached. The shield has a stringwork face and has four feathers attached to string tied to the edges, one feather has become detached. There is a bundle of feathers and a shell bound to the club beneath the head. Associated with a Zuni 'war god' or ahayu'da figure [1911.32.1 .1]. [AB [OPS move] 13/12/2017]
Geographical reference: United States of America
Northern America > North America > United States of America; New Mexico
Cultural groups: Zuni
Person: Maker Frank Hamilton Cushing; Field collector Unknown Collector; PRM source Edward Burnett Tylor
Date / Period: Date made: 1885
Date collected: By 1911
Acquisition information: Donated: 1911
Materials and processes: Material Bird Feather, Material Wood Plant, Material Shell, Material String, Process Carved, Process Strung, Process Bound
Dimensions: Depth: max 97 mm, Width: max 123 mm, Length: max 611 mm
Object numbers: Accession number: 1911.32.1.13
Research and responses: In 1993, this object was the subject of a repatriation claim by the Zuni Tribal Council. The claim was turned down by the Committee for the Pitt Rivers Museum at its meeting on 26 October 1993. For an account of the claim, see 'The Zuni War God at the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford and its Contested Status', a paper presented by Jeremy Coote at 'Point of No Return? Museums and Repatriation', a Museums Association seminar, held at the Museum of London on Tuesday 4 November 1997. A copy of this paper is held in the RDF and another copy is available for consultation at the Balfour Library, Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. For a published account of the case, see “Whose Idea Was This? Museums, Replicas, and the Reproduction of Knowledge’, by Gwyneira Isaac, in Current Anthropology, Vol. 52, no. 2 (April 2011), pp. 211–33; copy in RDF and online at http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/659141. [JC 11 8 2010, 8 8 2011]
Associated publications: A photograph of the set-up ahayu'da on display in the Museum was reproduced in black and white to illustrate 'Travellers' Trophies', by Guy Brett, in The Times (12 January 1971). [JC 26 6 1998]

Search terms: Religion, Ritual and Ceremonial, Figure, Religious Object, Ceremonial Object