- Collection type
- Object
- Description
- Wooden 'pineapple' headed club, Totokia. [FB 09/12/2011]
- Long description
- Wooden 'pineapple' headed club, Totokia. The beaked battle hammer club has an arched neck with studded head, with seven rows of regular carved studs and beaked end. The length of the handle has been bound with lengths of plaited sennit fibre becoming detached from the club. A length of cotton textile has been tied around the handle just above the butt and another piece is tied just below the arched neck. [JC [OPS Move] 20/09/2016]
- 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 Wood Plant, Material Sennit Coconut Seed Fibre Plant, Material Cotton Seed Fibre Textile Plant, Process Carved, Process Bound, Process Woven, Process Dyed, Process Plaited
- Dimensions
- Length: max 795 mm, Depth: max 65 mm, Width: max 230 mm
- Object numbers
- Accession number: 1899.62.686
- Research and responses
Sometimes called pineapple club, pandanus club or battle-hammer, I tuki or totokia, see F Clunie 'Fijian Weapons and Warfare' 1977 Fiji Museum, Suva, Bulletin of the Fiji Museum no.2 and R. Ewins, Fijian Artefacts: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery collection' Australia 1982. [AP Leverhulme project on founding collection 1995-1998]
Battle-hammers - Ai tuki and Totokia. Sometimes called pineapple clubs, or more accurately pandanus clubs (since they were fashioned after the pandanus fruit). The word i tuki also means hammer, and they were just that, with an arched neck, heavy studded head, and cone-shaped 'business end'. The totokia ('pecker' or 'beaked' battle hammer) was a development, the beak being used to deliver the coup de grace by neatly piercing the skull. It has been called by Clunie 'the most Fijian of all war clubs' R. Ewins, Fijian Artefacts: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery collection' Australia 1982, p.37. [FB 09/12/2011]
1899.62.686
Wooden 'pineapple' headed club, Totokia. [FB 09/12/2011]
1899.62.686
Digital asset copyright: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford
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