1899.62.392.1

Collection type

Object

Description

"Cap of death" made of spider's web.

Geographical reference

Vanuatu

Oceania > Melanesia > Vanuatu

Tanna

Person

Field collector H.A. Tufnell

Field collector Henry Archibald Tufnell

Field collector Sir William MacGregor

PRM source Henry Anson

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1899

Date collected

By 1899

Acquisition information

Donated: 1899

Materials and processes

Material Spider Web, Material Textile, Process Tied

Dimensions

Diameter: max 265 mm

Object numbers

Accession number: 1899.62.392.1

Research and responses

This object is mentioned in the letter from Anson to Balfour pasted into the Accessions Book: '6. The Tana cap of death is made from spiders web. It was drawn over widows eyes when they were strangled.' [Added in pencil in another hand: 'at the husband's funeral'] [LM 18/1/2000]

Associated publications

Referred to on page 50 of Mourning Dress: A Costume and Social History, by Lou Taylor (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983). Taylor writes: 'Techniques of widow murder varied from strangling, clubbing and smothering to burial alive. In the Melanesian New Hebrides a special conical cap made of spiders' webs was used for smothering widows - the task being performed by the widow's son. One such hood was in the collection of Exeter Museum and another in the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford.' NB The example in 'Exeter Museum' is is illustrated in black and white on page 108 of Volume 1 of Women of All Nations: A Record of Their Characteristics, Habits, Manners, Customs and Influence (2 vols), by T. Athol Joyce and N. W. Thomas (London: Cassell and Company, 1908) and the practice briefly discussed on page 106, to which Taylor refers in her notes (note 67, page 307). [JC 27 10 2014]

Search terms: Clothing Headgear, Religion, Death, Punishment and Torture, Headdress