1895.22.234

Collection type

Object

Description

Sickness hope (tabu sign). Object made up of a long stick, half a coconut, twigs and leaves bound together with yarn. The coconut half has broken away from the object. [ASh [OPS move] 5/5/2017]

Geographical reference

Solomon Islands

Oceania > Melanesia > Solomon Islands

New Georgia Vaholi District

Person

Field collector Henry Boyle Townshend Somerville

Field collector HMS Penguin

PRM source Henry Boyle Townshend Somerville

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1894

Date collected

1893 - 1894

Acquisition information

Donated: 1895

Materials and processes

Material Coconut Plant, Material Plant Leaf, Material Yarn, Process Split, Process Bound

Dimensions

Depth: max 43 mm, Width: max 770 mm, Length: max 1230 mm

Object numbers

Accession number: 1895.22.234

Research and responses

For an account of Somerville's collection from the Solomon Islands, see 'The H. B. T. Somerville Collection of Artefacts from the Solomon Islands in the Pitt Rivers Museum’, by Deborah Waite, in The General’s Gift: A Celebration of the Pitt Rivers Museum Centenary, 1884–1984 (JASO Occasional Papers, no. 3), edited by B. A. L. Cranstone and Steven Seidenberg (Oxford: JASO, 1884), pp. 41–52. (Copy in RDF: Collectors: Somerville.) [JC 24 2 2007]

For an account of Somerville's collecting in the Solomon Islands, see 'Notes and Queries, Science, and “Curios”: Lieutenant Boyle Somerville’s Ethnographic Collecting in the Solomon Islands, 1893–1895’, by Deborah Waite, in JASO: Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, Vol. XXXI, no. 3 (Michaelmas 2000), pp. 277-308. (Copy in RDF: Collectors: Somerville.) [JC 24 2 2007]

Associated publications

Ref. Waite, D.B. 1984. 'The H.B.T. Somerville Collection of Artefacts from the Solomon Islands in the Pitt Rivers Museum'. In. B.A.L. Cranstone & S. Seidenberg (eds) The General's Gift. JASO Occasional Paper No. 3, Oxford. [LM 30/11/99]

Search terms: Religion, Medicine, Amulet, Ceremonial Object