Wooden staff, or two handed club, known as a ua, with a janus head one end the eyes of bird bone inlaid with obsidian. [ZM 27/4/2016]

Collection type: Object
Description: Wooden staff, or two handed club, known as a ua, with a janus head one end the eyes of bird bone inlaid with obsidian. [ZM 27/4/2016]
Geographical reference: Rapa Nui
Oceania > Polynesia > Rapa Nui
Person: Field collector Unknown Collector; PRM source James Edge Partington
Date / Period: Date made: Before 1913
Date collected: By 1913
Acquisition information: Purchased: 03/1913
Materials and processes: Material Wood Plant, Material Bone, Material Obsidian Stone, Process Carved, Process Inlaid
Dimensions: Length: max 1026 mm, Depth: max 32 mm, Width: max 56 mm
Object numbers: Accession number: 1913.65.35 Other numbers: G.4
Research and responses: On page 147 of Steven Hooper, Pacific Encounters Art & Divinity in Polynesia 1760-1860, (London: British Museum Press, 2006) there is a colour image of a similar club from Rapa Nui, which is in the collections of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery (RAMM) at Exeter (accession number E1216). The caption on the same page reads: 'This bifacial staff (ua) has obsidian inlay in the eyes of both faces. Staffs served both as weapons and as insignia of high status, but, as with anthropomorphic weapons and staffs generally in Polynesia, they could also be regarded as portable god images, embodiments of ancestors who are watchful over their descendants.' [ZM 30/8/2016]

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