- Collection type
- Object
- Description
- Game counter. Made from a strip of reed painted white with black tips. [AB [OPS move] 13/12/2017]
- Long description
- Game counter. Made from a strip of reed painted white with black tips. Associated with a Zuni 'war god' or ahayu'da figure [1911.32.1 .1]. [AB [OPS move] 13/12/2017]
- Geographical reference
- New Mexico
- Cultural groups
- Zuni
- Date / Period
- Date made: 1885
- Date collected
- By 1911
- Acquisition information
- Donated: 1911
- Materials and processes
- Material Reed Plant, Material Pigment, Process Painted
- Dimensions
- Width: max 17 mm, Length: max 183 mm
- Object numbers
- Accession number: 1911.32.1.16
- 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
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